While the Quern was in the height of its success as the premier mill of the world, there came about a final development which ultimately abolished both it and all other hand mills. The revolving principle of the Quern was retained, but human and cattle labor was abolished, and water power adopted instead. The mill, as he knew it, is believed to be identical with a very primitive and crude contrivance that soon spread throughout Europe and Asia, and survives in some places still. A little way above the pivot, a horizontal water wheel was fixed on the spindle, and the stream playing down on the vanes of the water turned, with this latter, both the spindle and the top stone of the mill. The Roman water mill, a much superior contrivance, was introduced about sixty years after the Greek mill, and, as described by Vitruvis about the year 20 B.C., was in all essential particulars identical with the world known water mill of modern times.
Wind mills are of comparatively late origin.
Amid many apocryphal allusions to wind mills of very remote periods, the earliest known was an English one erected at Bury St. Edmunds in 1191. This type seems to have been universal till as late as about 1595, when the Dutch were accredited with the invention of the fixed tower mill. Of course, the grinding apparatus of the wind mill was merely copied from that of the water mill, the only change being in the accessories suitable to the aerial motor. Steam was first introduced into water mills solely for the purpose of pumping water from below the wheel back again into the race. This was the case about the years 1780-1790.