water wheel
water wheel [Co].A wooden or metal wheel with paddles or buckets of some kind attached to the outside so that when set in a watercourse it will rotate as a result of pressure from the movement of the water. The energy captured by such wheels in the form of rotary motion is usually transmitted via a connecting rod to some kind of machinery. Three main kinds of vertically set waterwheel can be identified: the undershot wheel rotated by water passing below the wheel; the overshot wheel where water is fed onto the top of the wheel, filling buckets which unbalance the wheel causing it turn; and the breastshot wheel where water is fed onto the wheel at an intermediate level. Water wheels appear to have been first used in the Greco-Roman world during the 1st century bc. The Roman engineer Vitruvius writing between 20 BC and 11 BC describes what is essentially an undershot wheel set vertically with a horizontal drive shaft. The use of such water wheels appears to...
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