overshot mill quotation

The Mills Machine Overshot is a rugged, external catch, fishing tool that is economical and simple to use. Overshots are manufactured like taper taps except they go over the O.D. of the fish. Like taper taps, overshots are stocked in a variety of sizes and standard connections so we are able to get something to you rapidly. To build an overshot from scratch takes four to six days due to the heat treat process necessary to harden the teeth. It is speedier to build a sub to fit a stocked overshot and match your needs than to build the entire product. We can build the overshot with oversize guides to more easily catch the fish or with a wall hook to snag behind a fish leaning against the drill hole wall. Your Mills sales representative will work with you to get the fastest solution to your problem at the lowest cost. The carbonized threads on overshots are extremely hard and brittle. Be extra careful to avoid impact. In use, slowly lower the tool down the hole until the fish is engaged. Then slowly rotate the tool while applying some down pressure. Mark the drill rod to tell how far into the fish you have penetrated. Overshots can be reworked by annealing, re-threading the overshot and then re-heat treating the re-threaded area. We will quote you pricing as necessary.

A mill race, millrace or millrun, mill lade (Scotland) or mill leat (Southwest England) is the current of water that turns a water wheel, or the channel (sluice) conducting water to or from a water wheel. Compared with the broad waters of a mill pond, the narrow current is swift and powerful. The race leading to the water wheel on a wide stream or mill pond is called the head race (or headrace), and the race leading away from the wheel is called the tail race (or tailrace.

A mill race has many geographically specific names, such as leat, lade, flume, goit, penstock. These words all have more precise definitions and meanings will differ elsewhere. The original undershot waterwheel, described by Vitruvius, was a "run of the river wheel" placed so a fast flowing stream would press against and turn the bottom of a bucketed wheel. In the first meaning of the term, the millrace was the stream; in the sense of the word, there was no separate channel, so no race. The example of Mill Lade in Godmanchester refers to a wide channel leading to moorings where laden vessels unload, similar waterways known by the similar name of Lode exist in neighbouring districts.

As technology advanced, the stream was dammed by a weir. This increased the head of water. Behind the weir was the millpond, or lodge. The water was channelled to the waterwheel by a sluice or millrace- this was the head race. From the waterwheel, the water was channelled back to the course of the stream by a sluice known as the tail race. When the tail race from one mill led to another mill where it acted as the head race this was known as the mid race. The level of water in the millrace could be controlled by a series of sluice gates.

During the October Tryst (as the cattle gathering was known), Crieff was a prototype "wild west" town. Milling with the cattle were horse thieves, bandits and drunken drovers. The inevitable killings were punished on the Kind Gallows, for which Crieff became known throughout Europe.

A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with a number of blades or buckets arranged on the outside rim forming the driving car. Water wheels were still in commercial use well into the 20th century but they are no longer in common use. Uses included milling flour in gristmills, grinding wood into pulp for papermaking, hammering wrought iron, machining, ore crushing and pounding fibre for use in the manufacture of cloth.

Some water wheels are fed by water from a mill pond, which is formed when a flowing stream is dammed. A channel for the water flowing to or from a water wheel is called a mill race. The race bringing water from the mill pond to the water wheel is a headrace; the one carrying water after it has left the wheel is commonly referred to as a tailrace.

Overshot and backshot water wheels are typically used where the available height difference is more than a couple of meters. Breastshot wheels are more suited to large flows with a moderate head. Undershot and stream wheel use large flows at little or no head.

There is often an associated millpond, a reservoir for storing water and hence energy until it is needed. Larger heads store more gravitational potential energy for the same amount of water so the reservoirs for overshot and backshot wheels tend to be smaller than for breast shot wheels.

Overshot and pitchback water wheels are suitable where there is a small stream with a height difference of more than 2 metres (6.5 ft), often in association with a small reservoir. Breastshot and undershot wheels can be used on rivers or high volume flows with large reservoirs.

Stream wheels mounted on floating platforms are often referred to as hip wheels and the mill as a ship mill. They were sometimes mounted immediately downstream from bridges where the flow restriction of the bridge piers increased the speed of the current.

Breastshot wheels are less efficient than overshot and backshot wheels but they can handle high flow rates and consequently high power. They are preferred for steady, high-volume flows such as are found on the Fall Line of the North American East Coast. Breastshot wheels are the most common type in the United States of America

A vertically mounted water wheel that is rotated by water entering buckets just past the top of the wheel is said to be overshot. The term is sometimes, erroneously, applied to backshot wheels, where the water goes down behind the wheel.

A typical overshot wheel has the water channeled to the wheel at the top and slightly beyond the axle. The water collects in the buckets on that side of the wheel, making it heavier than the other "empty" side. The weight turns the wheel, and the water flows out into the tail-water when the wheel rotates enough to invert the buckets. The overshot design is very efficient, it can achieve 90%,

Overshot wheels require a large head compared to other types of wheel which usually means significant investment in constructing the headrace. Sometimes the final approach of the water to the wheel is along a flume or penstock, which can be lengthy.

A backshot wheel (also called pitchback) is a variety of overshot wheel where the water is introduced just before the summit of the wheel. In many situations, it has the advantage that the bottom of the wheel is moving in the same direction as the water in the tailrace which makes it more efficient. It also performs better than an overshot wheel in flood conditions when the water level may submerge the bottom of the wheel. It will continue to rotate until the water in the wheel pit rises quite high on the wheel. This makes the technique particularly suitable for streams that experience significant variations in flow and reduces the size, complexity, and hence cost of the tailrace.

The direction of rotation of a backshot wheel is the same as that of a breastshot wheel but in other respects, it is very similar to the overshot wheel. See below.

Some wheels are overshot at the top and backshot at the bottom thereby potentially combining the best features of both types. The photograph shows an example at Finch Foundry in Devon, UK. The head race is the overhead timber structure and a branch to the left supplies water to the wheel. The water exits from under the wheel back into the stream.

A special type of overshot/backshot wheel is the reversible water wheel. This has two sets of blades or buckets running in opposite directions so that it can turn in either direction depending on which side the water is directed. Reversible wheels were used in the mining industry in order to power various means of ore conveyance. By changing the direction of the wheel, barrels or baskets of ore could be lifted up or lowered down a shaft or inclined plane. There was usually a cable drum or a chain basket on the axle of the wheel. It is essential that the wheel have braking equipment to be able to stop the wheel (known as a braking wheel). The oldest known drawing of a reversible water wheel was by Georgius Agricola and dates to 1556.

The earliest waterwheel working like a lever was described by Zhuangzi in the late Warring States period (476-221 BC). It says that the waterwheel was invented by Zigong, a disciple of Confucius in the 5th century BC.Chinese of the Eastern Han Dynasty were using water wheels to crush grain in mills and to power the piston-bellows in forging iron ore into cast iron.

Water wheels in China found practical uses such as this, as well as extraordinary use. The Chinese inventor Zhang Heng (78–139) was the first in history to apply motive power in rotating the astronomical instrument of an armillary sphere, by use of a water wheel.mechanical engineer Ma Jun (c. 200–265) from Cao Wei once used a water wheel to power and operate a large mechanical puppet theater for the Emperor Ming of Wei (r. 226–239).

The ancient Greeks invented the waterwheel independently and used it in nearly all of the forms and functions described above, including its application for watermilling.Hellenistic period between the 3rd and 1st century BC.

The Romans used waterwheels extensively in mining projects, with enormous Roman-era waterwheels found in places like modern-day Spain. They were reverse overshot water-wheels designed for dewatering deep underground mines.Vitruvius, including the reverse overshot water-wheel and the Archimedean screw. Many were found during modern mining at the copper mines at Rio Tinto in Spain, one system involving 16 such wheels stacked above one another so as to lift water about 80 feet from the mine sump. Part of such a wheel was found at Dolaucothi, a Roman gold mine in south Wales in the 1930s when the mine was briefly re-opened. It was found about 160 feet below the surface, so must have been part of a similar sequence as that discovered at Rio Tinto. It has recently been carbon dated to about 90 AD, and since the wood from which it was made is much older than the deep mine, it is likely that the deep workings were in operation perhaps 30–50 years after. It is clear from these examples of drainage wheels found in sealed underground galleries in widely separated locations that building water wheels was well within their capabilities, and such verticals water wheels commonly used for industrial purposes.

Taking indirect evidence into account from the work of the Greek technician Apollonius of Perge, the British historian of technology M.J.T. Lewis dates the appearance of the vertical-axle watermill to the early 3rd century BC, and the horizontal-axle watermill to around 240 BC, with Byzantium and Alexandria as the assigned places of invention.Strabon (ca. 64 BC–AD 24) to have existed sometime before 71 BC in the palace of the Pontian king Mithradates VI Eupator, but its exact construction cannot be gleaned from the text (XII, 3, 30 C 556).

The first clear description of a geared watermill offers the late 1st century BC Roman architect Vitruvius who tells of the sakia gearing system as being applied to a watermill.

About the same time, the overshot wheel appears for the first time in a poem by Antipater of Thessalonica, which praises it as a labour-saving device (IX, 418.4–6).Lucretius (ca. 99–55 BC) who likens the rotation of the waterwheel to the motion of the stars on the firmament (V 516).central Gaul.Barbegal watermill complex a series of sixteen overshot wheels was fed by an artificial aqueduct, a proto-industrial grain factory which has been referred to as "the greatest known concentration of mechanical power in the ancient world".

In Roman North Africa, several installations from around 300 AD were found where vertical-axle waterwheels fitted with angled blades were installed at the bottom of a water-filled, circular shaft. The water from the mill-race which entered tangentially the pit created a swirling water column that made the fully submerged wheel act like true water turbines, the earliest known to date.

Apart from its use in milling and water-raising, ancient engineers applied the paddled waterwheel for automatons and in navigation. Vitruvius (X 9.5–7) describes multi-geared paddle wheels working as a ship odometer, the earliest of its kind. The first mention of paddle wheels as a means of propulsion comes from the 4th–5th century military treatise

Ancient water-wheel technology continued unabated in the early medieval period where the appearance of new documentary genres such as legal codes, monastic charters, but also hagiography was accompanied with a sharp increase in references to watermills and wheels.

The earliest excavated water wheel driven by tidal power was the Nendrum Monastery mill in Northern Ireland which has been dated to 787, although a possible earlier mill dates to 619. Tide mills became common in estuaries with a good tidal range in both Europe and America generally using undershot wheels.

Cistercian monasteries, in particular, made extensive use of water wheels to power watermills of many kinds. An early example of a very large water wheel is the still extant wheel at the early 13th century Real Monasterio de Nuestra Senora de Rueda, a Cistercian monastery in the Aragon region of Spain. Grist mills (for corn) were undoubtedly the most common, but there were also sawmills, fulling mills and mills to fulfil many other labour-intensive tasks. The water wheel remained competitive with the steam engine well into the Industrial Revolution. At around the 8th to 10th century, a number of irrigation technologies were brought into Spain and thus introduced to Europe. One of those technologies is the Noria, which is basically a wheel fitted with buckets on the peripherals for lifting water. It is similar to the undershot water wheel mentioned later in this article. It allowed peasants to power watermills more efficiently. According to Thomas Glick"s book, Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valencia, the Noria probably originated from somewhere in Persia. It has been used for centuries before the technology was brought into Spain by Arabs who had adopted it from the Romans. Thus the distribution of the Noria in the Iberian peninsula "conforms to the area of stabilized Islamic settlement".Spaniards, the technology spread to the New World in Mexico and South America following Spanish expansion

The assembly convened by William of Normandy, commonly referred to as the "Domesday" or Doomsday survey, took an inventory of all potentially taxable property in England, which included over six thousand mills spread across three thousand different locations.

The type of water wheel selected was dependent upon the location. Generally if only small volumes of water and high waterfalls were available a millwright would choose to use an overshot wheel. The decision was influenced by the fact that the buckets could catch and use even a small volume of water.

Harnessing water-power enabled gains in agricultural productivity, food surpluses and the large scale urbanization starting in the 11th century. The usefulness of water power motivated European experiments with other power sources, such as wind and tidal mills.canals, put Europe on a hydraulically focused path, for instance water supply and irrigation technology was combined to modify supply power of the wheel.feudal state.

The water mill was used for grinding grain, producing flour for bread, malt for beer, or coarse meal for porridge.fulling mill, which was used for cloth making. The trip hammer was also used for making wrought iron and for working iron into useful shapes, an activity that was otherwise labour-intensive. The water wheel was also used in papermaking, beating material to a pulp. In the 13th century water mills used for hammering throughout Europe improved the productivity of early steel manufacturing. Along with the mastery of gunpowder, waterpower provided European countries worldwide military leadership from the 15th century.

Millwrights distinguished between the two forces, impulse and weight, at work in water wheels long before 18th-century Europe. Fitzherbert, a 16th-century agricultural writer, wrote "druieth the wheel as well as with the weight of the water as with strengthe [impulse]".Leonardo da Vinci also discussed water power, noting "the blow [of the water] is not weight, but excites a power of weight, almost equal to its own power".laws of force. Evangelista Torricelli"s work on water wheels used an analysis of Galileo"s work on falling bodies, that the velocity of a water sprouting from an orifice under its head was exactly equivalent to the velocity a drop of water acquired in falling freely from the same height.

The most powerful water wheel built in the United Kingdom was the 100 hp Quarry Bank Mill water wheel near Manchester. A high breastshot design, it was retired in 1904 and replaced with several turbines. It has now been restored and is a museum open to the public.

Water wheels were used to power sawmills, grist mills and for other purposes during development of the United States. The 40 feet (12 m) diameter water wheel at McCoy, Colorado, built in 1922, is a surviving one out of many which lifted water for irrigation out of the Colorado River.

Two early improvements were suspension wheels and rim gearing. Suspension wheels are constructed in the same manner as a bicycle wheel, the rim being supported under tension from the hub- this led to larger lighter wheels than the former design where the heavy spokes were under compression. Rim-gearing entailed adding a notched wheel to the rim or shroud of the wheel. A stub gear engaged the rim-gear and took the power into the mill using an independent line shaft. This removed the rotative stress from the axle which could thus be lighter, and also allowed more flexibility in the location of the power train. The shaft rotation was geared up from that of the wheel which led to less power loss. An example of this design pioneered by Thomas Hewes and refined by William Armstrong Fairburn can be seen at the 1849 restored wheel at the Portland Basin Canal Warehouse.

Australia has a relatively dry climate, nonetheless, where suitable water resources were available, water wheels were constructed in 19th-century Australia. These were used to power sawmills, flour mills, and stamper batteries used to crush gold-bearing ore. Notable examples of water wheels used in gold recovery operations were the large Garfield water wheel near Chewton—one of at least seven water wheels in the surrounding area—and the two water wheels at Adelong Falls; some remnants exist at both sites.Walhalla once had at least two water wheels, one of which was rolled to its site from Port Albert, on its rim using a novel trolley arrangement, taking nearly 90 days.water wheel at Jindabyne, constructed in 1847, was the first machine used to extract energy—for flour milling—from the Snowy River.

The early history of the watermill in India is obscure. Ancient Indian texts dating back to the 4th century BC refer to the term cakkavattaka (turning wheel), which commentaries explain as arahatta-ghati-yanta (machine with wheel-pots attached). On this basis, Joseph Needham suggested that the machine was a noria. Terry S. Reynolds, however, argues that the "term used in Indian texts is ambiguous and does not clearly indicate a water-powered device." Thorkild Schiøler argued that it is "more likely that these passages refer to some type of tread- or hand-operated water-lifting device, instead of a water-powered water-lifting wheel."

According to Greek historical tradition, India received water-mills from the Roman Empire in the early 4th century AD when a certain Metrodoros introduced "water-mills and baths, unknown among them [the Brahmans] till then".ancient India, predating, according to Pacey, its use in the later Roman Empire or China,

The industrial uses of watermills in the Islamic world date back to the 7th century, while horizontal-wheeled and vertical-wheeled water mills were both in widespread use by the 9th century. A variety of industrial watermills were used in the Islamic world, including gristmills, hullers, sawmills, shipmills, stamp mills, steel mills, sugar mills, and tide mills. By the 11th century, every province throughout the Islamic world had these industrial watermills in operation, from al-Andalus and North Africa to the Middle East and Central Asia.crankshafts and water turbines, gears in watermills and water-raising machines, and dams as a source of water, used to provide additional power to watermills and water-raising machines.factory complexes built in al-Andalus between the 11th and 13th centuries.

The engineers of the Islamic world developed several solutions to achieve the maximum output from a water wheel. One solution was to mount them to piers of bridges to take advantage of the increased flow. Another solution was the shipmill, a type of water mill powered by water wheels mounted on the sides of ships moored in midstream. This technique was employed along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in 10th-century Iraq, where large shipmills made of teak and iron could produce 10 tons of flour from corn every day for the granary in Baghdad.flywheel mechanism, which is used to smooth out the delivery of power from a driving device to a driven machine, was invented by Ibn Bassal (fl. 1038–1075) of Al-Andalus; he pioneered the use of the flywheel in the saqiya (chain pump) and noria.Al-Jazari in the 13th century and Taqi al-Din in the 16th century described many inventive water-raising machines in their technological treatises. They also employed water wheels to power a variety of devices, including various water clocks and automata.

Overshot (and particularly backshot) wheels are the most efficient type; a backshot steel wheel can be more efficient (about 60%) than all but the most advanced and well-constructed turbines. In some situations an overshot wheel is preferable to a turbine.

The development of the hydraulic turbine wheels with their improved efficiency (>67%) opened up an alternative path for the installation of water wheels in existing mills, or redevelopment of abandoned mills.

The power is how fast that energy is delivered which is determined by the flow rate. It has been estimated that the ancient donkey or slave-powered quern of Rome made about one-half of a horsepower, the horizontal waterwheel creating slightly more than one-half of a horsepower, the undershot vertical waterwheel produced about three horsepower, and the medieval overshot waterwheel produced up to forty to sixty horsepower.

Smeaton, "An Experimental Inquiry Concerning the Natural Powers of Water and Wind to Turn Mills, and Other Machines, depending on Circular Motion," Royal Society, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 51 (1759); 124–125

Wikander 2000, p. 400: This is also the period when water-mills started to spread outside the former Empire. According to Cedrenus (Historiarum compendium), a certain Metrodoros who went to India in c. A.D. 325 "constructed water-mills and baths, unknown among them [the Brahmans] till then".

Donners, K.; Waelkens, M.; Deckers, J. (2002), "Water Mills in the Area of Sagalassos: A Disappearing Ancient Technology", Anatolian Studies, Anatolian Studies, Vol. 52, vol. 52, pp. 1–17, doi:10.2307/3643076, JSTOR 3643076, S2CID 163811541

Lucas, A.R. (2005). "Industrial Milling in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: A Survey of the Evidence for an Industrial Revolution in Medieval Europe". Technology and Culture. 46 (1): 1–30. doi:10.1353/tech.2005.0026. S2CID 109564224.

Murphy, Donald (2005), Excavations of a Mill at Killoteran, Co. Waterford as Part of the N-25 Waterford By-Pass Project (PDF), Estuarine/ Alluvial Archaeology in Ireland. Towards Best Practice, University College Dublin and National Roads Authority

Wikander, Örjan (2000), "The Water-Mill", in Wikander, Örjan (ed.), Handbook of Ancient Water Technology, Technology and Change in History, vol. 2, Leiden: Brill, pp. 371–400, ISBN 978-90-04-11123-3

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Watermills were a staple of some villages, most towns, and all cities from the ancient world onwards. Mills provided the power to grind grain into the principal processed food, flour, which fed society right into the modern period. And as populations grew, simple hand-mills, or querns, were unable to keep up with demand for flour. More importantly for the Middle Ages, however, feudal lords who had the resources to build mills also had the power to enforce mandatory milling (and fees) at those mills and saw mills as a great source of income (and control). At the same time, two interlocked logics encouraged the building of more and more watermills for agricultural purposes. Simple economies of scale argued for the construction of mills, so anyone who was able to (either economically or through the license of a lord or town council) did so. In any event, the farmers bringing grain to and taking flour away from the mills needed those mills sited where they were useful to the farmers, as well as where they were able to do useful work. Other types of mills, such as lumber, paper, or fulling mills, had similar needs regarding siting; they needed to be close to the timbermen, papermakers or cloth merchants. Otherwise a mill was about as useful as a truck stop on a two-lane dirt road.

Regardless of the reasons that a person, town, or lord might want a mill, and independent of the economic and material ability to build a mill, mills require certain conditions in order to run, and run effectively. We will deal with each type of mill separately below, but speaking geographically, mills need to be situated within the environment so that natural and social resources can be harnessed to best effect. For natural resources, this means water flow for watermills and wind for windmills; both need to be situated in the landscape in such a way so that the raw materials can arrive at the mill and the finished product can be taken from the mill economically and effectively. For flour and grist mills, this meant the grain had to be relatively close at hand to the mill, with a nearby market for flour. Other uses of mills — to saw wood, to full cloth, and later to pulp rags for paper, among them —also had certain requirements that conditioned the placement of mills in the landscape.

The goal of this lesson is to explain to students why mills appeared where they did and have students then explore their local surroundings for evidence of the once-common milling industry in every city, town, or even rural village.

Watermills need a source of water to turn their waterwheels and provide power to the millstones, sawblade, or other industrial machinery. Any site with flowing water will do, to some extent, but some are better than others. By the end of this section, students should be able to consider the following questions and pose solutions to the others:

There are 3 basic types of waterwheels: horizontal, undershot, and overshot. Horizontal waterwheels revolve in the horizontal plane (which means, confusingly, their axles are vertical) much like a top-load washing machine. The undershot and overshot waterwheels are both types of vertical waterwheels, which rotate like a Ferris wheel. The undershot wheel"s lower blades or paddles dip into the stream and are rotated by the moving water passing the mill. The overshot wheel, by contrast, has a flume that delivers water to the top of the wheel and the weight of the water falling into the wheel"s buckets turns the wheel by the force of gravity.

It is apparent, then, that the type of stream one has to work with will probably determine the sort of waterwheel one can even build. Overshot wheels, for example, have to be situated in a stream where there is sufficient fall of water equal to the diameter of the wheel. In theory, a millwright could build an overshot wheel of any diameter —1 foot, even — but for these wheels to be strong enough to turn millstones, a drop of at least 10 feet, and sometimes as much as 30 is desirable. Therefore, overshot wheels are only possible in a very hilly area, and are often sited near natural waterfalls. If no natural waterfalls are available, a dam could be built some way upstream and a small, level canal, or leat, built leading to the mill, which is situated some way downstream of the dam. By this time, the water level from the millpond can be significantly higher than the mill itself, providing enough drop for the water to power the wheel.

Undershot wheels, on the other hand, can be as large as the millwright wants to make them, rising up above a stream, since only the lower paddles are immersed in the water. The limiting factor here, however, is that the water needs to be moving by the mill with some considerable velocity to have enough force to turn the blades. If the stream is too shallow, or too lazy, too little force will be imparted to the blades to turn the mill"s machinery. Therefore, horizontal mills often appear in river valleys on relatively sizeable streams or rivers, and here, too, often a small dam or weir may be constructed to divert and concentrate the water into the millrace.

So how can students find mill sites or old mills in their local landscapes? There are three ways to approach this: topographically, toponymically, or cartographically.

Topographic exercises can teach students how to read contour maps and connect that area of geographical science to where they live and how their town developed. Here the teacher should bring out a topographic map of the area and teach the students how to read shadings, contour lines, and basic map symbols. S/he should then suggest that the students pretend these are blank maps of undeveloped land and that their task is to determine where to build the mill. With an understanding of the type of mill and its requirements, as well as the requirements of the community, they should be able to select a place and justify their choice.

Students can explore old maps, phone directories, town histories, and the existing fabric of towns as clues to where mills once stood within individual towns. Further, in an era before mechanized transport, mills needed to be placed no more than a few miles apart for goods to move easily to and from them. Where waterpower was available, some mills were more likely to be located near their raw materials than others - iron mills often needed to be near forests as the charcoal used to fuel them, although light, was bulky and awkward to transport (interestingly, the iron ore might move some considerable distance). Agricultural mills needed to be sited in the center of populations and agricultural fields, subject as always to the availability of water to power the mills. More specialized industrial mills usually clustered in cities, although sometimes the waste effluent from them caused problem for other townsfolk.

Above all, the logic of the mill was the logic of water. Water made the mills run, and performed all the functions ingenious medieval and colonial millers could ask of it. In the 12th century, Bernard of Clairvaux described the role of water in milling as follows: century:

The [river] Aube... passes and repasses the many workshops of the abbey, and everywhere leaves a blessing behind for its faithful service. The river climbs to this height by works laboriously constructed, and passes nowhere without rendering some service, or leaving some of its water behind. It divides the valley into two by a sinuous bed, which the labor of the brethren, and not Nature, has made, and goes on to throw half of its waters into the abbey, as if to salute the brethren and seems to excuse itself for not coming in its whole force, the canal that receives it being too small for it. If sometimes the stream, swollen by an inundation, rushes on with violent current, it is stopped by a wall, under which it is obliged to pass and so turned back upon itself, meets and checks the descending stream. Entering under the wall which, like a faithful porter allows it to pass, the stream first hurls itself impetuously at the mill; there, lashed into foam by their motion, it grinds the meal under the weight of the millstone and separates the fine from the coarse by a sieve of fine tissue. Already it has reached the next building where it fills a boiler and is heated for brewing, that drink may be prepared for the brethren, if it should happen that the vintage [wine] should not respond kindly to the labor of the vine-dresser�. But not even yet is its usefulness completed, for the fullers established near the mill call it to their aid; it is only right that, as in the mill, care is taken for the food of the brethren, so by these their clothing should be prepared. But the river does not hesitate nor refuse any who require aid; and you may see it causing to lift and drop alternately the heavy pestles, the fullers" great wooden hammers, or foot-shaped blocks (for that name seems to agree better with the treading work of the fullers) and so relieves them of the heaviest part of their labor.

When it has spun the shaft as fast as any wheel can move, it disappears in a foaming frenzy; one might say it had itself been ground in the mill. Leaving it here it enters the tannery, where in preparing the leather for the shoes of the monks it exercises as much exertion as diligence; then it dissolves in a host of streamlets and proceeds along its appointed course to the duties laid down for it... such as cooking, sieving, turning, grinding, watering, or washing, never refusing its assistance in any task. At last... it carries away the waste and leaves everywhere spotless.... How many horses would be worn out, how many men would have weary arms if this graceful river, to whom we owe our clothes and our food, did not labor for us?

Thus the river powered everything from brewing to milling to clearing out the latrines at the end. Consequently, the mill and water-powered technology in general tended to be the most important technology for any medieval community.

Americans viewed mills not merely as transformers of raw materials and local economies but as the seeds of new communities... the mill was a dynamic first cause; towns grew around it. Edward Kendall observed American conditions in 1808...: "To this mill, the surrounding lumberers, or fellers of timber bring their logs, and either sell them, or procure them to be sawed into boards or plank, paying for the work in logs. The owner of the saw-mill becomes a rich man; builds a large wooden house, opens a shop, denominated a store, erects a still, and exchanges rum, molasses, flower, and port, for logs. As the country has by this time begun to be cleared, a flower[flour]-mill is erected near the saw-mill. Sheep being brought upon the farms, a carding machine and fulling-mill follow. For some years, as we may imagine the store answers all the purposes of a public-house [saloon]. The neighbors meet there, and spend half the day, in drinking and debating. But the mills becoming every day more and more a point of attraction, a blacksmith, shoemaker, a tailor, and various other artisans and artificers, successively assemble. The village, however, has scarcely advanced thus far, before half of its inhabitants are in debt at the store, and before the other half are in debt all round. What therefore, is next wanted is a collecting attorney... whom the store or tavern-keeper receives as a boarder, and whom he employs in collecting his outstanding debts, generally secured by note of hand. "But as the advantage of living near mills is great, even where there is not (as in numerous instances there is) a navigable stream below the cataract... so a settlement, not only of artisans, but of farmers, is progressively formed in the vicinity; this settlement constitutes itself a society or parish; and, a church being erected, the village, larger or smaller, is complete."[2]

Compare the mill density on William Pensak"s [PSU-History] map of early Pennsylvanian colonial mills and the map of the early medieval Domesday map survey [from Ben Hudson]. How are the distributions of mills similar; how are they different? What political, geographic, or cultural differences could account for the differing mill distributions in two different countries six hundred years apart? (Remember that the mill technology is not significantly different from 1083 to 1700 - it will develop rapidly in the later 1700s.)

There are some areas where mills tend to be relatively evenly spaced, and other areas where you find a concentration of mills in a small area. Find an old map that shows a concentration of mills and consider what factors influence these densities: type of land? type of terrain? type of mill? governmental differences? population densities? Make reasoned arguments for why you find certain types of mills adjacent (or for that matter, do not find certain types by other types).

Go to your public library and ask to see the earliest map of your town or city. You should find a mill relatively centrally located, especially if a river flows through your town. If your town is not on a river, or is on a very flat area, see if there is a nearby town on the shoulder of a hill.

Log on to the Library of Congress American Memory collection of historic maps at memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/cityhome.html. Choose a selection of 19th century maps of towns and then compare the layouts of these towns and the location of the mills in each town. Consider where the mills are in relation to other important public buildings like city halls, churches, schools and the main street. If you can find a series of maps over time for the same place, see how the cities and mills evolved together.

Look for place names - streets, areas of town, small towns themselves — that have names of mill-related activities in them. You might consider looking for obvious names with "mill" in them, but also look for regional names.

Students could either be introduced to a gazetteer for your state or the complete list of place names for the entire US is at http://geonames.usgs.gov/. For example, searching "mill" in Pennsylvania, returns over 400 places, towns, and geographical features.

The other type of mill used to grind grain, as well as for other industrial uses (although less commonly), was the windmill. Windmills originated in the near east in the later first millennium C.E. (Sometimes 9th century Asia Minor — modern day Turkey — is mentioned, but we don"t know for sure.), but by the later 12th century, they had spread or had been independently (re)invented in England and the Low Countries (Holland and the Netherlands).

Windmills tend to be smaller than watermills in terms of power output and they also tend to take up less space on the ground. For one thing, the windmill does not need to be next to a river, nor does it need the millrace running from upstream to power the wheels. On the other hand, the windmill needs to be placed in a windy location, either on top of a hill or near the coastline where winds are unobstructed and relatively constant. But as the building of a windmill is rarely larger than a small house, they could also be found in urban settings, especially where the town was on a hill (as in some of the Quebec and Upper Canada [Ontario] windmills form the 18th and 19th centuries) or was a coastal port town (Both New York and Newport, RI had windmills right in the town in the 17th century.).

Since windmills tended to be placed either on exposed hills or near the seashore, locating them in the colonial context can be easy, although as you might expect, there were few windmills inland or in heavily forested areas where wind was not constant. In addition, although one of the best places to put a windmill would be on top of a tall hill or ridgeline (often the site of wind farms for electrical power generation today), this is a very inconvenient place for the farmers to bring their grain, which was generally grown in the valleys. Consequently, if you are considering locating the historic site of a windmill, coastal regions remain your best bet.

Many of the same exercises from the watermill section can be extended to windmills, although often determining whether a place with "mill" in its name was for a windmill or watermill can be difficult. If there was a river present, it was likely a watermill, but if on a hill, then a windmill was likely.

The functioning of technologies is not always immediately apparent to an observer, and the skills in building, maintaining, and running any large machine are skills that need nurturing and generational support. Hence, windmills tended to be strongly regional and even national in character. The Dutch are to this day identified with windmills, as are the Greek islands.

Explore some of the areas that are known to have been windmill intensive, such as Long Island in NY, Acquidnick Island in RI, and Nantucket and Martha"s Vineyard in MA. What nationality of settlers settled in these places? See for example, the use of mills in Colonial Cities.

Here we have a selection of geographical exercises for students to complete that will help them understand the location of mills as they relate to the natural environment.

The small Caribbean island of Nevis is a perfect case study of how natural resources determine mill placement. Look at the images of Nevisian mills to the right and notice the striking distribution of windmills. It should be obvious that they are clustered in a certain way. Find out why.

In the case of windmills, there is primarily one resource [wind!], so find out what the wind patters around Nevis are. Where is Nevis? Why are the winds like they are? What about the landscape determines local wind patterns?

Another way to look at the distribution of mills is through census records. Below is a small extract of various mill types by county in 1773. Students could graph that data on a map of PA counties and then discuss why they see the distribution that they do.