A report on Watermill

A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill.

Historically mills were powered by hand or by animals (e.g., via a hand crank), working animal (e.g., horse mill), wind (windmill) or water (watermill).

Classical mill designs are usually water-powered, though some are powered by the wind or by livestock.

Since ancient times, hydropower from watermills has been used as a renewable energy source for irrigation and the operation of mechanical devices, such as gristmills, sawmills, textile mills, trip hammers, dock cranes, domestic lifts, and ore mills.

A ship mill, more commonly known as a boat mill is a type of watermill.

A tide mill is a water mill driven by tidal rise and fall.

Grain-pounders with pestles, as well as ordinary watermills, are attested as late as the middle of the 5th century AD in a monastery founded by Romanus of Condat in the remote Jura region, indicating that the knowledge of trip hammers continued into the early Middle Ages.

Historical investigations into the origin of the paper mill are complicated by differing definitions and loose terminology from modern authors: Many modern scholars use the term to refer indiscriminately to all kinds of mills, whether powered by humans, by animals or by water.

Roller mills soon replaced stone grist mills as the production of flour has historically driven technological development, as attempts to make gristmills more productive and less labor-intensive led to the watermill and windmill.

From the medieval period, however, fulling was often carried out in a water mill, followed by stretching the cloth on great frames known as tenters, to which it is attached by tenterhooks.