Page 25 - Inventions - A Visual Encyclopedia (DK - Smithsonian)

TRIP HAMMER Water-powered cloth
By the 1st century bce, the ancient Chinese were using mill, 17th-century print
massive pieces of equipment called trip hammers to process
food, crush bamboo to make paper, or shape red-hot metal.
Too heavy to be lifted by a single person, a trip hammer
has to be raised by mechanical means. The earliest of these
devices were powered by waterwheels.

1. Flowing water
turns the wheel.
3. Lever mechanism
attached to the shaft
lifts up the trip hammer
and brings it down
onto molten metal. EARLY BREAKTHROUGHS

2. Wheel turns Trip hammer powered
a central shaft. by a waterwheel
POWERING MILLS
An important use of waterwheels was in
NORIA the making of cloth. The power of the
During the Middle Ages, Arab engineers invented a type of turning wheel drove machinery that could
waterwheel known as the noria. A noria raised water from spin thread and weave and finish materials.
streams or lakes so that it could be carried into homes for Before the invention of coal-powered
drinking or washing, or to farmland for watering crops. As the engines in the 18th century, cloth mills
wheel turned, hollow chambers around the rim scooped up had to be located near running water.
the water and emptied it into a trough to be piped elsewhere.

HOW WATERWHEELS WORK
Blades or buckets are positioned around the rim of a
waterwheel. As falling or flowing water strikes them,
it turns the wheel. The rotation turns an axle at the
center of the wheel that is linked to machinery.

Water strikes Direction of
blades or wheel’s rotation
paddles set
on the rim,
pushing the Direction
wheel around. of flowing
water

Wheel partly submerged
in running water

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