ABSTRACT
Lack of suitable harness and of proper methods of protecting the hoofs of draught animals left the ancient world with man as the main prime-mover until the advent of the water-mill. The most primitive water-mill was the Greek form, often called the Norse mill, in which a vertical shaft or axle bore at its lower end a small horizontal ‘wheel’ composed of a number of scoops. Though the Norse mill provides little power and only a slow rotation of the millstones, sufficing to grind a small amount of flour for domestic consumption, it is the precursor of the water-turbine. The Greek mill, though mechanizing domestic corn-milling, would have had little effect had it not inspired a Roman engineer of the first century BC to construct the more efficient vertical or Vitruvian mill. Industrial production was already dependent on water power in the Roman flour factory at Barbegal, six miles from Arles.
