Mill District

For three centuries, the Middlebury Falls powered a bustling mill district. Waterwheels first extracted power directly from the flow of water, most commonly to grind wheat into flour, but also to run sawmills and pound linen for paper making. Set just below a waterfall, a large wooden or metal wheel with buckets on its rim caught falling water, which filled the buckets and turned the wheel, transmitting power through an axle, belts, or gears to drive other machinery. During the Industrial Revolution, over about one hundred years, waterwheels evolved into turbines, a development based on scientific principles and methods. Unlike a waterwheel, in which water spilled over the wheel, a turbine used swirling downward water over propeller blades to spin a shaft and an attached wheel connected to belts and pullies that ran mill machinery, allowing a small turbine to be as effective as a much larger waterwheel. Hydroelectric power again relies on falling water: a dam on a river with a waterfall stores water in a reservoir, gravity sends it through a penstock to a turbine, and the spinning shaft turns a generator that produces electricity, which powerlines carry to factories and homes.

Middlebury, Vermont · United States