![]() The waterpower system employed by the Moravians (see map) encompassed an area of the Monocacy Creek just north of the grist mill-fulling mill complex and extended to the saw mill on Sand Island where the Monocacy emptied into the Lehigh River. Thus the vertical wheel became the mainstay of European power technology in the medieval period and remained the mainstay well into the 19th century. And it was capable of delivering more power from a given volume and fall of water than the horizontal wheel. It was more easily adapted to tasks other than grain milling. The vertical waterwheel, on the other hand, was usually the best means of economically and reliably securing a relatively large amount of mechanical power from a shaft. It remained largely an item of peasant culture. The horizontal wheel did not make possible the performance of large-scale industrial work, work that would have been either impossible or marginal with the animate power sources that were its alternatives. ![]() It could be used only for a single task like milling grain and it was wasteful of water. For most of the era of waterpower, the typical horizontal watermill was capable of generating little more power than a donkey or horse and often not that much. Waterpower grew to be a central element in Western technology, industry, and society during the medieval and early modern periods of history primarily because it was a more intensive or concentrated form of power than man or animal power. In some cases the vertical waterwheel not only increased production and reduced labor but also allowed things to be done that would not have been done otherwise such as deep-level mining. With the vertical wheel much more cloth was fulled, wood sawed, iron shaped, pipes bored, sugar crushed and linseed oil pressed than if manpower or animal power had been used alone. This intensive mechanical power was recognized and developed and by 1800 applied to a wide variety of tasks such as fulling cloth, sawing wood, shaping iron, boring pipes, crushing sugar, and pressing linseed oil. In its vertical form (the horizontal form was not as powerful and while it saved labor it generally did not increase overall production) the waterwheel was a much more concentrated source of power than any energy source used previously. In other areas, however, the vertical wheel more significantly increased productive capabilities. ![]() #Big time donkey power free#While the power generated by a donkey, for example, was equal to that of 15 men, even a small two- to three- horsepower vertical waterwheel could free as many as 30-60 men or women from the task of grinding grain, for example. The labor-saving potential of the waterwheel was considerable. ![]()
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