After the grains are harvested and threshed, they must be processed into rice or noodles before they can be eaten. In ancient my country, the water-powered mill was invented in grain processing. The water hammer is a machine that uses water power to pound rice. It is an important invention in agricultural machinery.
After entering the Tang Dynasty, there were more records about Shuidi, and its uses were gradually promoted. For anything that needs to be crushed, such as medicines, spices, ores, bamboo pulp, etc., you can use the labor-saving and powerful water hammer.
Shortly afterwards, the water mill was invented based on this principle. Zu Chongzhi, a scientist during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, built a water hammer mill. It was probably a large water wheel that drove both the water hammer and the water mill at the same time.
These achievements indicate the great development of ancient water tiller technology. To say the least, the continuous hammer invented by Du Yu is the direct ancestor of all heavy mechanical hammers before the advent of steam hammers. The Western forging hammer of the 18th century was actually a copy of the water hammer.
Mill is a machine that processes rice, wheat, beans, etc. into noodles. Mills use human power, animal power and water power. The progress of rice-pounding tools from pestles and mortars to foot-operated hammers to hydraulic hammers, especially the use of continuous grinding with multiple gears rotating together, has greatly improved efficiency compared with the past.
The simple crushing tool pestle and mortar appeared in our country during the Spring and Autumn Period. The pestle and mortar further evolved into the foot-operated pestle in the Han Dynasty. These tools use the lever principle and have the prototype of a crushing machine, but the crushing action is still intermittent.
The earliest crushing machinery to adopt continuous crushing action was the animal-drawn mill invented by Lu Ban in the late Spring and Autumn Period.