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A water wheel is a machine for converting the kinetic energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a large wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with numerous blades or buckets attached to the outer rim forming the drive mechanism. Water wheels were still in commercial ...
Watermill of Braine-le-Château, Belgium (12th century) Interior of the Lyme Regis watermill, UK (14th century). A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower.It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering.
These include all three variants of the vertical water wheel as well as the horizontal water wheel. [6] Apart from its main use in grinding flour, water-power was also applied to pounding grain, [7] crushing ore, [8] sawing stones [9] and possibly fulling and bellows for iron furnaces. [10]
Boykin Mill, Boykin, an operating grist mill where meal and grits have been ground by water power for over 150 years. Suber's Corn Mill , Greer , built in 1908 by Walter Hillary Suber. It was constructed on 100 acres (0.40 km 2 ) that was passed down from his father, James Ashfield Suber, who was a Civil War veteran.
A water wheel had two general designs: the undershot and the overshot. The undershot water wheel generated power from the natural flow of a running water source pushing upon the wheel's submerged paddles. The overshot water wheel generated power by having water flow over its buckets from above. This was usually achieved by building an aqueduct ...
The main difference between early water turbines and water wheels is a swirl component of the water which passes energy to a spinning rotor. This additional component of motion allowed the turbine to be smaller than a water wheel of the same power. They could process more water by spinning faster and could harness much greater heads.
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The origins of the water-returning engine begin with blowing engines used to provide the draught for blast furnaces and smelters.Although early furnaces may have been powered by human- or animal-powered bellows, [i] once the Industrial Revolution began the new enlarged furnaces were blown by water wheel-powered blowing houses.