Hierapolis sawmill

The sawmill of Hierapolis was a Roman water-powered Steinsägemühle in Hierapolis in Asia Minor ( now Turkey ). Dated to the second half of the 3rd century AD Water Mill is the first known machine in which a rotary motion of the crankshaft and connecting rod using a linear motion has been implemented.

The existence of the mill is occupied by a relief on the sarcophagus of a local miller named Marcus Aurelius Ammianos. On the pediment of the stone coffin a water wheel is shown, which is fed by a mill-race. Via a gear train two frame saws are driven by separate via a connecting rod and a crankshaft due to mechanical necessity of additional square stone blocks (see graph). The accompanying inscription is written in Greek.

More sawmills

Similar power transmission mechanisms of crank and connecting rod, but without gears, are of archaeological excavations of two Steinsägemühlen of the 6th century AD in Jerash (Jordan) and Ephesus ( Turkey) known. Another sawmill could have stood in the Swiss Augusta Raurica, where they discovered a metal crankshaft from the 2nd century AD.

The operation of water-powered marble saws close to Trier refer AD the poem of the Roman poet Ausonius Mosella from the late 4th century. A passage in the works of St. Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335-394 ) points to the simultaneous existence of mechanized marble sawmill in the small Asian region, to ensure a wide dissemination of these industrial mills is likely in the late Roman Empire.

Based on findings, the introduction of the crank mechanism can be advanced with connecting rod for a whole millennium; with his invention were for the first time a technology culture all major components of the much later developed to fruition steam engine available: the generation of steam power ( Herons Aeolipile ), cylinder and piston ( in booster -metallic), non-return valves (in water pumps) and gears ( about water mills) Roman engineers were all already known.