Wa′ter-mill.
Water-mills were probably invented in
Asia.
One is described near one of the palaces of
Mithridates of
Pontus, 70 B. C. See grinding-mill.
Strabo speaks of one on the Tiber, 70 B. C.
Antipater, the contemporary of
Cicero, alludes to one in an epigram.
Vitruvius, 50 B. C., describes their construction as similar to the
tympanum, with circumferential floats or paddles which were acted upon by the force of the stream, driving the wheel round.
On the axis of the water-wheel was another wheel with cogs, which meshed into the cogs of a horizontal wheel, on the upper head of whose axis was a tenon inserted in the millstone.
Pliny refers to water-mills (died A. D. 79).
Public water-mills were established in
Rome in the time of
Honorius and
Arcadius (A. D. 398). They were driven by the water of the aqueducts.
When the
Goth Vitiges besieged
Rome, A. D. 555, he caused the water-supply of the fourteen aqueducts to be cut off, and reduced the people to great straits for meal.
Procopius says that below the bridge which reaches the walls of the Janiculum.
Belisarius extended ropes, well fastened and stretching across the river.
secured on both banks; to these he moored two boats of equal size, separated by a small space in which a water-wheel revolved and turned the grain-mills erected on the boats.
At different places on the river, where the current was strongest, he arranged other mills, and thus ground a sufficient provision for the city.
This was in the reign of Justinian.
 |
|
Lane water-motor, attached to a sewing-machine. |
