Watermill

A watermill is a structure that captures the power of moving water through a water wheel or turbine to drive machinery, historically used to grind grain into flour, cut lumber, make paper, process textiles and work metal. Water is diverted from a river or pond along a channel, often called a flume, mill race or penstock, toward the wheel or turbine, and the force of the moving water turns the blades and rotates an axle connected to the mill's other machinery, with sluice gates used to control flow for maintenance or flood control. The Greeks are credited with inventing the two essential components, the water wheel and toothed gearing, with the engineer Philo of Byzantium describing water driven wheels as early as 280 to 220 BC and the Roman engineer Vitruvius giving the first technical description of a watermill around 40 to 10 BC. Watermills spread widely through the Middle Ages, with England's Domesday Book recording 5,624 of them in 1086, growing to between 10,000 and 15,000 by 1300, and with mills especially common in medieval France and throughout the Islamic world by the eleventh century.