The Water Wheel

The water wheel is an age old invention that has

been used for everything from grinding grain to
generating electricity.
The earliest clear evidence of a Water wheel
comes from the ancient Greece and Asia Minor,
being recorded in the work of Apollonius of
Perge of c. 240 BC, surviving only in Arabic
translation.
Mithradates VI Eupator of Pontus had a water
mill at his palace at Cabira before 71 BC.
In the 1st century BC, the Greek epigrammatist
Antipater of Thessalonica was the first to make a
reference to the waterwheel, which Lewis has
recently argued to be a vertical wheel.

THE WATERMILL
A watermill is a structure that uses a water wheel
to drive a mechanical process such as grinding
flour, lumber or textile production, or metal
shaping.
A water mill that generates electricity is usually
called a hydroelectric power plant.
The first documented use of a water mill was in
the first century BC and the technology spread
quite quickly across the world.
Commercial mills were in use in Roman Britain
and by the time of the Doomsday Book in the late
11th Century there were more than 6,000 water
mills in England.
By the 16th Century waterpower was the most
important source of motive power in Britain and
Europe. The number of mills probably peaked at
more than 20,000 mills by the 19th Century.

VERTICAL WATER WHEEL
used most commonly in Great Britain
and the United States.
In the Scottish highlands and parts of
southern Europe mills often used a
horizontal wheel (with a vertical axle).
Water wheel powering a mine
hoist in De re metallica (1566)
Horizontal Wheel
This is a simple system, usually
used without gearing so that the
axle of the waterwheel become the
spindle of the mill.
This system is sometimes called the
Norse mill. In a sense it is the
ancestor of the modern water
turbine.

Undershot Wheel
A vertically-mounted water wheel
that is rotated by water striking
paddles or blades at the bottom of
the wheel is said to be undershot.
This is generally the least efficient,
oldest type of wheel.
Undershot wheels are also well
suited to installation on floating
platforms. The earliest were probably
constructed by the Roman general
Belisarius during the siege of Rome in
537.

Overshot Wheel
A vertically-mounted water wheel
that is rotated by falling water
striking paddles, blades or buckets
near the top of the wheel is said to
be overshot.
Backshot Wheel

A backshot wheel (also called
pitchback) is a variety of overshot
wheel where the water is
introduced just behind the summit
of the wheel.
It combines the advantages from
breastshot and overshot systems,
since the full amount of the
potential energy released by the
falling water is harnessed as the
water descends the back of the
wheel.

Breastshot Wheel
A vertically-mounted water wheel
design that is rotated by falling water
striking buckets near the centre of the
wheel's edge, or just above it, is said to
be breastshot.
Breastshot wheels are the most
common type in the United States of
America and are said to have powered
the American industrial revolution.
The individual blades of a breastshot
wheel are actually buckets, as are those
of most overshot wheels, and not
simple paddles like those of most
undershot wheels.

Schematic of the Roman Hierapolis sawmill, Asia Minor,
powered by a breastshot wheel
Hydraulic Wheel
A recent development of the breastshot wheel is a hydraulic wheel which
effectively incorporates a weir into the centre of the wheel.
This was developed by the French inventeur Michael Fonfrede and is
commercialised as the Aqualienne with an estimated hydraulic efficiency of
67% (max 76%).
Overshot and backshot wheels are the most efficient water wheel design; a
backshot steel wheel can be more efficient (about 60%) than all but the
most advanced and well-constructed turbines.
The development of the hydraulic water wheel design with their improved
efficiency (>67%) opens up an alternative path for the installation of
waterwheels in existing mills, or redevelopment of abandoned mills.