Rivers: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Middleton Nick

Author:Middleton, Nick [Middleton, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2012-04-25T16:00:00+00:00

Water power

The energy in flowing and falling water has been harnessed to perform work by turning waterwheels for more than 2,000 years. The moving water turns a large wheel and a shaft connected to the wheel axle transmits the power from the water through a system of gears and cogs to work machinery, such as a millstone to grind corn. An early description of a water-powered mill for grinding grain is given by a Roman engineer named Vitruvius, who compiled a treatise in ten volumes covering all aspects of Roman engineering, and the eastern Mediterranean is strongly associated with the first use of this technology, although a separate tradition of using water power also emerged at about the same time in China. Roman waterwheels were frequently connected to other forms of hydraulic engineering, such as aqueducts and dams, designed to transport river water and control its flow to the wheels. Multiple sets of Roman watermills for grinding grain into flour on a large scale are known from the Krokodilion River near Caesarea Maritima in today’s Israel, and from Chemtou and Testour on the River Medjerda (the ancient Bagradas River) in the Roman cornbelt of North Africa, part of Tunisia today. The mills just outside the town of Caesarea Maritima consisted of four vertical waterwheels fed by an aqueduct from a dam on the river.

The power of rivers became widely used in the ancient world for milling grain but also for other purposes. Water-powered mills were also developed to drive trip-hammers for crushing ore and saws for cutting rock. All sorts of water-powered machines became more and more common in medieval Europe, gradually taking over tasks from manual labour. The early medieval watermill was able to do the work of between 30 and 60 people, and by the end of the 10th century in Europe, waterwheels were commonly used in a wide range of industries, including powering forge hammers, oil and silk mills, sugar-cane crushers, ore-crushing mills, breaking up bark in tanning mills, pounding leather, and grinding stones. Nonetheless, most were still used for grinding grains for preparation into various types of food and drink. The Domesday Book, a survey prepared in England in AD 1086, lists 6,082 watermills, although this is probably a conservative estimate because many mills were not recorded in the far north of the country. By 1300, this number had risen to exceed 10,000.

All across Europe, the watermills generally belonged to lords, to city corporations, or to churches or monasteries. Cistercian monasteries were instrumental in the initial development in England of the ‘fulling’ mill in the late 12th century. Fulling, or felting, was one in a sequence of processes during the production of woollen cloth produced on the monastic estates. It involved scouring and consolidation of the fibres of the fabric, both necessary for proper finishing. The introduction of water-powered technology revolutionized fulling, a process that had hitherto relied on human power to beat the cloth. On the Isle of Wight in southern England, for instance, the

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