Customer Reviews

Stronger than a Hundred Men: A History of the Vertical Water Wheel (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology)

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This is the only book I've read on water wheels, but it's fascinating. It seems like a pretty thorough history going back as far as possible, and it discusses theories about how the ideas developed and includes many drawings and a few photographs. Lot of material here. Seems pretty thorough and interesting and authoritative for a textbook on *any* subject.

Setting out to restore a dam and millpond on my farm, I felt the need to understand something about the history of waterpower. This book was very helpful. (I also consulted a book from 1939 titled LOW DAMS.) I found 100-Men very informative, especially regarding its more recent history of smaller waterpower over the past century, when this technology was, sadly, allowed to decay, and was lost and largely forgotten, due to cheap oil. Trying to recover this resource is doubly difficult today, due to scarcity of know-how and restrictive ordinances. I also bought a book titled MICROHYDRO, by Davis, which is very up to date.

I've completed work on the dam. The waterpower feature will come in phase two. For now, it's fun to watch the water rush through the spillway and be able to vary the elevation and flow. The pond, which had been reduced to a rivlet for many years, is now more than seven feet deep.

If you are interested in the History of Technology , especially waterpower, I highly recommend this book. It is the best overview of the impact and development of all styles of vertical waterpower that I have read.