watermill
Sign in to savethumb|Watermill of Braine-le-Château, Belgium (12th century) thumb|Interior of the Lyme Regis watermill, UK (14th century) A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering. Such processes are needed in the production of many material goods, including flour, lumber, paper, textiles, and many metal products. These watermills may comprise gristmills, sawmills, paper mills, textile mills, hammermills, trip hammering mills, rolling mills, and wire drawi
AI overview
A watermill is a structure that harnesses the power of flowing water through a water wheel or turbine to drive mechanical processes like grinding grain, sawing wood, or hammering metal. These mills were essential for producing everyday goods such as flour, lumber, paper, textiles, and metal products throughout history.
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Article
18 sectionsContents
- History
- Western world
- Classical antiquity
- Middle Ages
- Ancient East Asia
- Ancient India
- Arabic world
- Persia
- Operation
- Milling corn
- Overshot and pitchback mills
- Tide mills
- Current status
- Applications
- See also
- Notes
- References
- External links
thumb|Watermill of Braine-le-Château, Belgium (12th century) thumb|Interior of the Lyme Regis watermill, UK (14th century) A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering. Such processes are needed in the production of many material goods, including flour, lumber, paper, textiles, and many metal products. These watermills may comprise gristmills, sawmills, paper mills, textile mills, hammermills, trip hammering mills, rolling mills, and wire drawing mills.
One major way to classify watermills is by wheel orientation (vertical or horizontal), one powered by a vertical waterwheel through a gear mechanism, and the other equipped with a horizontal waterwheel without such a mechanism. The former type can be further subdivided, depending on where the water hits the wheel paddles, into undershot, overshot, breastshot and pitchback (backshot or reverse shot) waterwheel mills. Another way to classify water mills is by an essential trait about their location: tide mills use the movement of the tide; ship mills are water mills onboard (and constituting) a ship.