WATER WHEELS

​The water wheel, which dates back to 4000 BC, enabled man for the first time to use an inanimate power source for industrial production.  This world changing event had a major impact on technological and industrial development.  Early water wheels were used for crop irrigation, grinding grains, and running pumps to supply drinking water to villages.  In later years, they drove sawmills, forge bellows, tilt-hammers, and trip hammers, and even powered textile mills.  As the water wheel is considered one of the greatest inventions in history, we constructed one to illustrate to visitors the water wheel's functionality.  While we are not grinding grain or doing anything productive with our wheel, it depicts the efficiency of the water wheel.  The wheel was so important to industry that most factories in the the days were built along rivers or other sources of steadily flowing water.