Water Mills (History)
Introduction
Hydraulic mill or water mill and its variants dipper or weir mill and aceña, is the set of devices, constructions and hydraulic machines dedicated since Antiquity to the use of the natural driving force of water "Water (element)") of rivers, tides, etc. The essential model is composed of a wheel – or turbine – that triggers a double mechanical process of translation and force, which in turn will be used in various industrial or agricultural uses, from its oldest applications for grinding cereals or irrigation, to its use as a hydroelectric plant to produce electricity.[1][2].
An important way to classify water mills is by the orientation of the wheels (vertical or horizontal), one driven by a vertical waterwheel through a gear mechanism and the other equipped with a horizontal waterwheel without such a mechanism. The first type can be further divided, depending on where the water hits the wheel vanes, into bottom draft, top draft, chest draft and reverse (back draft or reverse draft) waterwheel mills. Another way to classify water mills is by an essential feature about their location: tide mills use the movement of the tide; Floating mills are water mills on board (and constituting) a ship.
History
Contenido
Hay dos tipos básicos de molinos de agua, uno impulsado por una rueda hidráulica vertical a través de un mecanismo de engranaje, y el otro equipado con una rueda hidráulica horizontal sin dicho mecanismo. El primer tipo se puede dividir aún más, dependiendo de dónde el agua golpee las paletas de las ruedas, en molinos de rueda hidráulica de tiro inferior, superior, tiro de pecho y de giro inverso.
Western world
The Greeks invented the two main components of watermills, the waterwheel and the toothed gear, and used, along with the Romans, bottomdraft, topdraft and breaststroke waterwheel mills.[3].
The earliest evidence of a water-powered wheel appears in the technical treatises "Pneumatica" and "Parasceuastica" by the Greek engineer Philo of Byzantium (ca. 280-220 BC).[4] The British historian of technology M.J.T. Lewis has shown that those parts of Philo of Byzantium's mechanical treatise describing water wheels and previously thought to be Arabic actually date back to the Greek original of the century BC. C...[5] The gear known in Latin as (copied by the Arabs as sakia), was already fully developed, and was first attested in a Hellenistic wall painting from the century BC. C. in Ptolemaic Egypt.[6].