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History of Technology 1: History of Waterwheels 268 Views
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Transcript
- 00:00
look up in the sky it's a bird it's a plane it's a waterwheel [Waterwheel flying by in the sky]
- 00:09
waterwheel that seems super dangerous anyway the waterwheel was used power [Hamster running in a wheel]
- 00:14
mills and other devices all over the world for more than two thousand years
- 00:18
dinky little farms cobble together small wheels to grind their wheat and big [Lots of wheat being poured into a pile]
- 00:23
scary empires built huge waterwheel complexes to make food for their armies [Soldier telling the hamster to run faster]
Full Transcript
- 00:27
some of the biggest and most advanced water wheels were used in ancient Rome [Water wheel bounces in front of the colosseum]
- 00:32
you know gladiators Julius Caesar toga party that ancient Rome let's think of
- 00:36
its awesomeness the Roman Empire stretched over the entire Mediterranean [Roman empire spreading out over the globe]
- 00:40
Sea for those of you keeping score at home that's a lot of mouths to feed and [Lots of hands reaching out to Cesar]
- 00:45
if it turns out feeding so many people without modern industrial technology is [Water wheel rolls past hungry people]
- 00:49
really really hard especially when Caesar refused to share his salad so the
- 00:55
Romans had to go beyond the power of individual human labor they created huge
- 00:58
waterwheels powered factories that ground massive amounts of grain these
- 01:03
kind of innovations allowed the Romans to feed the entire empire and Caesar got [Food being handed out]
- 01:08
to eat his precious salad around the same time in history water
- 01:11
mills were becoming an important source of energy in the Han Dynasty in China [Water wheel next to the dynasty in China]
- 01:14
its Chinese didn't just grind grain with them Chinese blacksmith also used water
- 01:20
wheels that powered the bellows for their iron forges on Chinese farmers
- 01:24
used water wheels to move water through irrigation ditches and into rice paddies [Water wheel being used on a farm]
- 01:28
by 1086 ze over 5000 water wheels stretched all across England you will [Water wheel covering a map of the UK]
- 01:35
Europe was a happenin place for water wheels Europeans were harnessing huge
- 01:40
amounts of natural kinetic energy in those days so what did they do with it [2 men throwing a harness round a water wheel]
- 01:44
also most of Western Europe relied on cereal crops like wheat barley Cap'n
- 01:48
Crunch and oats survived all of which had to be ground before they were edible [The seeds and the box of cereal is planted]
- 01:53
okay fine maybe not scab crush but waterwheels also powered giant hammers [Giant hammer hitting a pile of wood]
- 01:58
and mule powered hammers could be used to smash wood into pulp to make paper the
- 02:04
thing - without paper we wouldn't be able to procrastinate at work so [Guy chucking balls of paper into a bin]
- 02:07
efficiently we'll also needed a beat-down before it could be turned into [Guy about to hit a sheep with a hockey stick]
- 02:11
cloth and later on watermills were in charge of grinding
- 02:15
gunpowder and that sounds totally safe precise yeah well all these new [Explosions at a factory]
- 02:20
applications for water power had major consequences for Europe first the
- 02:24
European economy could grow far beyond its smallish population because people
- 02:28
were making more stuff with less labour and second European attitudes toward [Two guys assembling toys]
- 02:33
technology and machines were changing sooo pretty soon Europeans were saying
- 02:37
what are the sources of energy and we exploit along with Kentucky water will
- 02:43
be flying in the sky that seems super dangerous yes ah what's up with that [Water wheel falls out the sky and hits a guy, then everyone else runs away]
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