History of Water Wheels Timeline

The earliest vertical water wheel known in a tide mill dates from 6th-century Killoteran near Waterford, Ireland.

Image source: Tide mill

The first known horizontal wheel in a tide mill dates to around 630 at Little Island in Ireland.

Between the 8th and 10th centuries, Arabs brought irrigation technologies to Spain after adopting them from Roman traditions, helping introduce these devices into Europe.

By the 11th century, exploiting water power was commonplace in parts of Europe, supporting agricultural productivity, food surpluses, and large-scale urbanization.

The Domesday survey commissioned by William of Normandy recorded more than six thousand mills across three thousand English locations, compared with fewer than one hundred in the previous century.

Image source: Domesday Book

Fulling mills and steel mills may have spread from Islamic Spain to Christian Spain during the 12th century.

An exceptionally large water wheel was built at the early 13th-century Real Monasterio de Nuestra Señora de Rueda, a Cistercian monastery in Aragon.

The oldest known drawing of a reversible water wheel was made by Georgius Agricola in 1556.

Image source: Georgius Agricola

After the spread of Islam, engineers continued ancient Near Eastern water technologies. Excavation of a canal in the Basra region revealed remains of a water wheel dating from the 7th century.

Industrial uses of watermills in the Islamic world date to the 7th century, and both horizontal- and vertical-wheeled mills were widespread by the 9th century.

Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi's 10th-century Kitab al-Hawi described an Iraqi noria capable of lifting as much as 153,000 litres of water per hour.

Image source: Abu Bakr al-Razi

In 10th-century Iraq, large shipmills made of teak and iron operated along the Tigris and Euphrates. They could produce ten tons of flour daily for Baghdad's granary.

By the 11th century, every province across the Islamic world had industrial watermills, extending from al-Andalus and North Africa to West and Central Asia.

Large factory complexes in al-Andalus employed industrial watermills between the 11th and 13th centuries.

Ibn Bassal of al-Andalus pioneered the use of the flywheel to smooth power delivery in the sāqiya and noria.

Image source: Ibn Bassal

Al-Jazari in the 13th century and Taqi al-Din in the 16th century described numerous inventive water-raising machines in their technological treatises.

Image source: Islamic Golden Age

Ismail al-Jazari's Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices uses the term “Sindhi wheel” for a sāqiya and records inventive water-raising mechanisms.

Image source: Ismail al-Jazari

During the Delhi Sultanate, geared water-raising wheels were introduced into India from the Islamic world.

Image source: Delhi Sultanate

Millwrights distinguished the impulse and weight forces acting on water wheels long before the 18th century. In the 16th century, Fitzherbert wrote that a wheel worked through both the weight and the impulse of water.

Before 1750, it remained uncertain which force dominated in a water wheel, and it was widely understood that impulse and weight contributed with roughly equal importance.

Although water wheels had historically been very inefficient, major advances were made in the 18th century as demand for power increased and suitable water sites became limited.

In the mid- to late 18th century, John Smeaton's scientific investigation of water wheels produced major efficiency increases and supplied power needed for the Industrial Revolution.

John Smeaton measured a typical flat-board undershot wheel as using about 20 percent of the energy in the water striking it.

Image source: John Smeaton

Despite Australia's relatively dry climate, water wheels were constructed in the 19th century where suitable water resources were available.

Water wheels began to be displaced by smaller, less expensive, and more efficient turbines after Benoît Fourneyron developed his first model in 1827.

A water wheel constructed at Jindabyne in 1847 became the first machine used to extract energy from the Snowy River for flour milling.

A design pioneered by Thomas Hewes and refined by William Armstrong Fairburn can be seen in the restored 1849 wheel at the Portland Basin Canal Warehouse.

Water wheels remained in commercial use well into the 20th century, although they are no longer in common use today.

A 40-foot-diameter water wheel built at McCoy, Colorado, in 1922 survives as one of many wheels that lifted irrigation water from the Colorado River.