ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the problem of the mechanical crank in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Lynn White, Jr.'s White was extremely cautious in dealing with quern evidence, noting that many of them had been excavated without scrupulous attention paid to their stratification layers. With the evidence for industrial machines employing cranks pushed back to at least the second century ce, the related question of hand-cranked devices must be considered anew. With the existence of one ancient mechanical crank irrefutably established, it becomes easier to accept the existence of others even when the evidence is circumstantial. The astonishing fact that Vitruvius provided a careful enough description of the engaged crown gears to allow historians the rare occasion of being able to reconstruct an ancient machine based on a written account led to it being named the “Vitruvian Mill.”
