A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume I (of 2)

There are also other passages of the ancients which are commonly supposed, but without certain grounds, to allude to water-mills. Among these is the following verse of Lucretius400:

Ut fluvios versare rotas atque haustra videmus.

It appears also that the water-wheels to which Heliogabalus caused some of his friends and parasites to be bound401, cannot be considered as mills. These, as well as the haustra of Lucretius, were machines for raising water, like those mentioned in the before-quoted passage of Vitruvius402. It is however evident that there were water-mills at Rome at this period; and it affords matter of surprise that we do not find mention oftener made of them, and that they did not entirely banish the use of the laborious hand- and cattle-mills. That this was not the case, and that the latter were very numerous for some time after, may be concluded from various circumstances. When Caligula, about twenty-three years after the death of Augustus, took away all the horses and cattle from the mills, in order to transport effects of every kind which he had seized, there arose a scarcity of bread at Rome; from which Beroaldus justly infers that water-mills must have been then very rare403. Nay, more than three hundred years after Augustus, cattle-mills were so common at Rome, that their number amounted to three hundred404. Mention of them, and of the hand-mills always occurs, therefore, for a long time after in the laws. The Jurist Paulus, who lived about the year 240, particularizing the bequest of a baker, mentions asina molendaria and mola, a mill-ass and a mill405. In the year 319 Constantine ordered that all the slaves condemned to the mills should be brought from Sardinia to Rome406. Such orders respecting mill-slaves occur also under Valentinian407. When by the introduction of Christianity, however, the morals of men became improved, slaves were less frequent; and Ausonius, who lived under Theodosius the Great, about the end of the third century, expressly says, that in his time the practice had ceased of condemning criminals to slavery, and of causing mills to be driven by men.

Public water-mills, however, appear for the first time under Honorius and Arcadius; and the oldest laws which mention them, about the year 398, show clearly that they were then a new establishment, which it was necessary to secure by the support of government; and the orders for that purpose were renewed and made more severe by Zeno towards the end of the fifth century408. It is worthy of remark, that in the whole code of Justinian one does not find the least mention of wooden pales or posts, which occur in all the new laws; and which, when there were several mills situated in a line on the same stream, occasioned so many disputes. The mills at Rome were erected on those canals which conveyed water to the city; and because these were employed in several arts, and for various purposes, it was ordered that by dividing the water the mills should be always kept going. The greater part of them lay under Mount Janiculum409; but, as they were driven by so small a quantity of water, they probably executed very little work; and for this reason, but chiefly on account of the great number of slaves, and the cheap rate at which they were maintained, these noble machines were not so much used, nor were so soon brought to perfection as they might have been. It appears, however, that after the abolition of slavery they were much improved and more employed; and to this a particular incident seems in some measure to have contributed.

When Vitiges, king of the Goths, besieged Belisarius in Rome, in the year 536, and caused the fourteen large expensive aqueducts to be stopped, the city was subjected to great distress; not through the want of water in general, because it was secured against that inconvenience by the Tiber; but by the loss of that water which the baths required, and, above all, of that necessary to drive the mills, which were all situated on these canals. Horses and cattle, which might have been employed in grinding, were not to be found: but Belisarius fell upon the ingenious contrivance of placing boats upon the Tiber, on which he erected mills that were driven by the current. This experiment was attended with complete success; and as many mills of this kind as were necessary were constructed. To destroy these, the besiegers threw into the stream logs of wood and dead bodies, which floated down the river into the city; but the besieged, by making use of booms, to stop them, were enabled to drag them out before they could do any mischief410. This seems to be the invention of floating-mills, at least I know of no other. It is certain that by these means the use of water-mills became very much extended; for floating-mills can be constructed almost upon any stream, without forming an artificial fall; they can be stationed at the most convenient places, and they rise and fall of themselves with the water. They are however attended with these inconveniences, that they require to be strongly secured; that they often block up the stream too much, and move slowly; and that they frequently stop when the water is too high, or when it is frozen.

After this improvement the use of water-mills was never laid aside or forgotten: they were soon made known all over Europe; and were it worth the trouble, one might quote passages in which they are mentioned in every century. The Roman, Salic, and other laws411 provided security for these mills, which they call molina or farinaria; and define a punishment for those who destroy the sluices, or steal the mill-irons (ferramentum). But there were water-mills in Germany and France a hundred years before the Salic laws were formed. Ausonius, who lived about the year 379, mentions some which were then still remaining on a small stream that falls into the Moselle, and which were noticed also by Fortunatus412, in the fifth century. Gregory of Tours, who wrote towards the end of the sixth century, speaks of a water-mill which was situated near the town of Dijon; and of another which a certain abbot caused to be built for the benefit of his convent413. Brito, who in the beginning of the thirteenth century wrote in verse an account of the actions of Philip Augustus king of France414, relates how by the piercing of a dam the mills near Gournay (castrum Gornacum or Cornacum) were destroyed, to the great detriment of the besieged. In the first crusade, at the end of the eleventh century, the Germans burned in Bulgaria seven mills which were situated below a bridge on a small rivulet, and which seem to have been floating-mills415. In deeds of the twelfth and thirteenth century, water-mills are often called aquimollia, aquimoli, aquismoli, aquimolæ416. Petrus Damiani, one of the fathers of the eleventh century, says, “Sicut aquimolum nequaquam potest sine gurgitis inundantia frumenta permolere, ita, &c.417”

At Venice and other places, there were mills which righted themselves by the ebbing and flowing of the tide, and which every six hours changed the position of the wheels. Zanetti418 has shown, from some old charters, that such mills existed about the year 1044; and with still more certainty in 1078, 1079, and 1107. In one charter are the words: Super toto ipso aquimolo molendini posito in palude juxta campo alto; where the expression aquimolum molendini deserves to be particularly remarked, as it perhaps indicates that the mill in question was a proper grinding-mill. Should this conjecture be well-founded, it would prove that so early as the eleventh century water-mills were used not only for grinding corn, but for many other purposes.

It appears that hand- and cattle-mills were everywhere still retained at private houses a long time after the erection of water-mills. We read in the Life of St. Benedict, that he had a mill with an ass, to grind corn for himself and his colleagues. Among the legendary tales of St. Bertin, there is one of a woman who, because she ground corn on a fast-day, lost the use of her arm; and of another whose hand stuck to the handle, because she undertook the same work at an unseasonable time. More wonders of this kind are to be found at later periods in the Popish mythology. Such small mills remained long in the convents; and it was considered as a great merit in many ecclesiastics, that they ground their own corn in order to make bread. The real cause of this was, that as the convents were entirely independent of every person without their walls, they wished to supply all their wants themselves as far as possible; and as these lazy ecclesiastics had, besides, too little labour and exercise, they employed grinding as an amusement, and to enable them to digest better their ill-deserved food. Sulpicius Severus419 gives an account of the mode of living of an Eastern monk in the beginning of the fifth century, and says expressly that he ground his own corn. Gregory of Tours mentions an abbot who eased his monks of their labour at the hand-mill, by erecting a water-mill. It deserves here to be remarked, that in the sixth century malefactors in France were condemned to the mill, as is proved by the history of Septimina the nurse of Childebert420.

The entrusting of that violent element water to support and drive mills constructed with great art, displayed no little share of boldness; but it was still more adventurous to employ the no less violent but much more untractable, and always changeable wind for the same purpose. Though the strength and direction of the wind cannot be any way altered, it has however been found possible to devise means by which a building can be moved in such a manner that it shall be exposed to neither more nor less wind than is necessary, let it come from what quarter it may.

It is very improbable, or much rather false, that the Romans had wind-mills, though Pomponius Sabinus affirms so, but without any proof421. Vitruvius422, where he speaks of all moving forces, mentions also the wind; but he does not say a word of wind-mills; nor are they noticed either by Seneca423 or Chrysostom424, who have both spoken of the advantages of the wind. I consider as false also, the account given by an old Bohemian annalist425, who says that before the year 718 there were none but wind-mills in Bohemia, and that water-mills were then introduced for the first time. I am of opinion that the author meant to have written hand- and cattle-mills instead of wind-mills.

It has been often asserted that these mills were first invented in the East, and introduced into Europe by the crusaders; but this also is improbable; for mills of this kind are not at all, or very seldom, found in the East. There are none of them in Persia, Palestine, or Arabia, and even water-mills are there uncommon, and constructed on a small scale. Besides, we find wind-mills before the crusades, or at least at the time when they were first undertaken. It is probable that these buildings may have been made known to a great part of Europe, and particularly in France and England426, by those who returned from these expeditions; but it does not thence follow that they were invented in the East427. The crusaders perhaps saw such mills in the course of their travels through Europe; very probably in Germany, which is the original country of most large machines. In the like manner, the knowledge of several useful things has been introduced into Germany by soldiers who have returned from different wars; as the English and French, after their return from the last war, made known in their respective countries many of our useful implements of husbandry, such as our straw-chopper, scythe, &c.

Mabillon mentions a diploma of the year 1105, in which a convent in France is allowed to erect water- and wind-mills, molendina ad ventum428. In the year 1143, there was in Northamptonshire an abbey (Pipewell) situated in a wood, which in the course of 180 years was entirely destroyed. One cause of its destruction was said to be, that in the whole neighbourhood there was no house, wind- or water-mill built, for which timber was not taken from this wood429. In the twelfth century, when these mills began to be more common, a dispute arose whether the tithes of them belonged to the clergy; and Pope Celestine III. determined the question in favour of the church430. In the year 1332, one Bartolomeo Verde proposed to the Venetians to build a wind-mill. When his plan had been examined, a piece of ground was assigned to him, which he was to retain in case his undertaking should succeed within a time specified431. In the year 1393, the city of Spires caused a wind-mill to be erected, and sent to the Netherlands for a person acquainted with the method of grinding by it432. A wind-mill was also constructed at Frankfort in 1442, but I do not know whether there had not been such there before.

To turn the mill to the wind, two methods have been invented. The whole building is constructed in such a manner as to turn on a post below, or the roof alone, together with the axle-tree, and the wings are moveable. Mills of the former kind are called German-mills, those of the latter Dutch. They are both moved round either by a wheel and pinion within, or by a long lever without433. I am inclined to believe that the German-mills are older than the Dutch; for the earliest descriptions which I can remember, speak only of the former. Cardan434, in whose time wind-mills were very common both in France and Italy, makes however no mention of the latter; and the Dutch themselves affirm, that the mode of building with a moveable roof was first found out by a Fleming in the middle of the sixteenth century435. Those mills, by which in Holland the water is drawn up and thrown off from the land, one of which was built at Alkmaar in 1408, another at Schoonhoven in 1450, and a third at Enkhuisen in 1452, were at first driven by horses, and afterwards by wind. But as these mills were immoveable, and could work only when the wind was in one quarter, they were afterwards placed not on the ground, but on a float which could be moved round in such a manner that the mill should catch every wind436. This method gave rise perhaps to the invention of moveable mills.

It is highly probable, that in the early ages men were satisfied with only grinding their corn, and that in the course of time they fell upon the invention of separating the meal from the pollard or bran. This was at first done by a sieve moved with the hands; and even yet in France, when what is called mouture en grosse is employed, there is a particular place for bolting, where the sieve is moved with the hand by means of a handle. It is customary also in many parts of Lower Saxony and Alsace, to bolt the flour separately; for which purpose various sieves are necessary. The Romans had two principal kinds, cribra excussoria and pollinaria, the latter of which gave the finest flour, called pollen. Sieves of horse-hair were first made by the Gauls, and those of linen by the Spaniards437. The method of applying a sieve in the form of an extended bag to the works of the mill, that the meal might fall into it as it came from the stones, and of causing it to be turned and shaken by the machinery, was first made known in the beginning of the sixteenth century, as we are expressly told in several ancient chronicles438.

This invention gave rise to an employment which at present maintains a great many people; I mean that of preparing bolting-cloths, or those kinds of cloth through which meal is sifted in mills. As this cloth is universally used, a considerable quantity of it is consumed. For one bolting-cloth, five yards are required; we may allow, therefore, twenty-five to each mill in the course of a year. When this is considered, it will not appear improbable, that the electorate of Saxony, according to a calculation made towards the end of the seventeenth century, when manufactories of this cloth were established, paid for it yearly to foreigners from twelve to fifteen thousand rix-dollars. That kind of bolting-cloth also which is used for a variety of needle-work, for young ladies’ samplers, and for filling up the frames of window-screens, &c., is wove after the manner of gauze, of fine-spun woollen yarn. One might imagine that this manufacture could not be attended with any difficulty; yet it requires many ingenious operations which the Germans cannot easily perform, and with which they are, perhaps, not yet perfectly acquainted. However this may be, large quantities of bolting-cloth are imported from England. It indeed costs half as much again per yard as the German cloth, but it lasts much longer. A bolting-cloth of English manufacture will continue good three months, but one of German will last scarcely three weeks. The wool necessary for making this cloth must be long, well-washed, and spun to a fine equal thread, which, before it is scoured, must be scalded in hot water to prevent it from shrinking. The web must be stiffened; and in this the English have an advantage we have not yet been able to attain. Their bolting-cloth is stiffer as well as smoother, and lets the flour much better through it than ours, which is either very little or not at all stiffened. The places where this cloth is made are also not numerous. A manufactory of it was established at Ostra, near Dresden, by Daniel Kraft, about the end of the seventeenth century; and to raise him a capital for carrying it on, every mill was obliged to pay him a dollar. Hartau, near Zittau, is indebted for its manufactory to Daniel Plessky, a linen-weaver of the latter, who learned the art of making bolting-cloth in Hungary, when on a visit to his relations, and was enabled to carry it on by the assistance of a schoolmaster named Strietzel. Since that period this business has been continued there, and become common439. The cloth which is sent for sale, not only everywhere around the country, but also to Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, is wove in pieces. Each piece contains from sixty-four to sixty-five Leipsic ells: the narrowest is ten, and the widest fourteen inches in breadth. A piece of the former costs at present from four to about four dollars and a half, and one of the latter six dollars. This cloth, it must be allowed, is not very white; but it is not liable to spoil by lying in warehouses. Large quantities of bolting-cloth are made also by a company in the duchy of Wurtemberg. At what time this art was introduced there I cannot say; for every thing I know of it I am indebted to a friend, who collected for me the following information in his return through that country. The cloth is not wove in a manufactory, but by eighteen or twenty master weavers, under the inspection of a company who pay them, and who supply all the materials. The company alone has the privilege of dealing in this cloth; and the millers must purchase from their agents whatever quantity they have occasion for440. The millers however choose rather, if they can, to supply themselves privately with foreign and other home-made bolting-cloth, as they complain that the weavers engaged by the company do not bestow sufficient care to render their cloth durable: besides, the persons employed to carry about this cloth for sale, often purchase secretly cloth of an inferior quality in other places, and sell it as that of the company. Bolting-cloth is made also at Gera, as well as at Potsdam and Berlin; at the latter of which there is a manufactory of it carried on by the Jews.

For some years past the French have so much extolled a manner of grinding called mouture économique, that one might almost consider it as a new invention, which ought to form an epoch in the history of the miller’s art. This art, which however is not new, consists in not grinding the flour so fine at once as one may wish, and in putting the meal afterwards several times through the mill, and sifting it through various sieves. This method, which in reality has nothing in it either very ingenious or uncommon, was known to the ancient Romans, as we may conclude from the account of Pliny, who names the different kinds of meal, such as similago, simila, flos, pollen, cibarium, &c.; for these words are not synonymous, but express clearly all the various kinds of meal or flour which were procured from the same corn by repeated grinding and sifting. In general, the Romans had advanced very far in this art441; and they knew how to prepare from corn more kinds of meal, and from meal more kinds of bread, than the French have hitherto been able to obtain. Pliny reckons that bread should be one-third heavier than the meal used for baking it; and that this was the proportion in Germany above a hundred years ago, is known from experiments on bread made at different times, which, however uncertain they may always have been, give undoubtedly more bread than meal442. In latter times the arts of grinding and of baking have declined very much in Italy; and sensible Italians readily acknowledge that their bread is much inferior to that of most parts of Europe, and that in this respect the Germans are their masters443. Rome indeed forms an exception; for one can procure there as good bread as in Germany; but it is necessary to acquaint the reader, that it is not baked by Italians but by Germans; and all the bread and biscuit baked at Venice in the public ovens, either for home consumption, the use of shipping, or for exportation, is the work of German masters and journeymen. They are called to Venice expressly for that purpose; and at Rome they form at present a company, and have a very elegant church. The ovens of these German bakers are seldom suffered to cool, and the greater part of the owners of them become rich; but as through avarice they often continue their labour, without interruption, in the greatest heat for several days and nights, scarcely one in ten of them lives to return with his wealth to Germany. The Germans have, it is certain, long supplied the inhabitants of proud Rome, the metropolis of Catholic Christendom, with bread; for in the fifteenth century it was customary in all the great families to use no other than German bread, as is very circumstantially related by Felix Fabri, a Dominican monk, who wrote about the end of the above century, and died in 1502444.

The mouture économique has been long known in Germany. Sebastian Muller, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, gave so clear a description of it, that the French even acknowledge it445. This author says that one Butré, who came to Germany to teach the Germans to grind and to bake, was not a little disconcerted when he found his scholars more expert than their officious master, and that he met with nothing to console him but that, according to his opinion, the mill-stones at Carlsruhe were too small, and that the bolting-sieves were not made in the same manner as those at Paris446.

Millers and bakers, even in France, practised sometimes this method of grinding so early as the sixteenth century; but it was some time forbidden by the police as hurtful. In the year 1546, those were threatened with punishment who should grind their corn twice447; and in 1658 this threat was renewed, and the cause added, that such a practice was prejudicial to the health448. Such prohibitions however, made by the police without sufficient grounds, could not prevent intelligent persons from remarking that the bran still contained meal, which, when separated from it, would be as proper for food as the first. Those who had observed this were induced, by the probability of advantage, to try to separate the remaining meal from the bran; and the attempt was attended with success, but it was necessary to keep it concealed. Malouin relates, that above a hundred years before, a miller at Senlis employed this method, and that the same practice was generally, though privately, introduced at all the mills in the neighbourhood. There were people who made a trade of purchasing bran in order to separate it from the meal, which they sold; and it is probable that many of them carried the art too far, and even ground bran along with the meal. This was done chiefly during times of scarcity, as in the year 1709. As men at that time were attentive to every advantage, this art was more known and more used, so that at length it became common. The clergy of the royal chapel and parish church at Versailles sent their wheat to be ground at an adjacent mill; it was, according to custom, put through the mill only once, and the bran, which still contained a considerable quantity of meal, was sold for fattening cattle. In time, the miller, having learned the mouture économique, purchased the bran from these ecclesiastics, and found that it yielded him as good flour as they procured from the whole wheat. The miller at length discovered to them the secret, and gave them afterwards fourteen bushels of flour from their wheat, instead of eight which he had given them before. This voluntary discovery of the miller was made in 1760, and it is probable that the art was disclosed by more at the same time. A baker named Malisset proposed to the lieutenant-général de police to teach a method, by which people could grind their corn with more advantage; and experiments were set on foot and published, which proved the possibility of it. A mealman of Senlis, named Buquet, who had the inspection of the mill belonging to the large hospital at Paris, made the same proposal; the result of his experiments, conducted under the direction of magistrates, was printed; the investigation of this art was now taken up by men of learning, who gave it a suitable name; and they explained it, made calculations on it, and recommended it so much, that the mouture économique engaged the attention of all the magistrates throughout France449. Government sent Buquet to Lyons in 1764, to Bordeaux in 1766, to Dijon in 1767, and to Montdidier in 1768; and the benefit which France at present derives from this improvement is well worth that trouble. Before that period, a Paris sétier yielded from eighty to ninety pounds of meal, and from one hundred and fifty to one hundred and sixty pounds of bran; but the same quantity yields now one hundred and eighty-five, and according to the latest improvements one hundred and ninety-five pounds of meal. In the time of St. Louis, from four to five sétiers were reckoned necessary for the yearly maintenance of a man, and these even were scarcely sufficient; as many were allowed to the patients in the hospital aux Quinze-Vingts; and such was the calculation made by Budée in the sixteenth century450. When the miller’s art was everywhere improved, these four sétiers were reduced to three and a half, and after the latest improvements to two.