Steam mill
A steam mill is a mill that is driven by steam power (mostly by a steam engine , more rarely a steam turbine ).
history
The first steam mills were built in England, the motherland of industrialization , at the end of the 18th century. The best known was the Albion Mill in London from 1786. Around 1820 the first steam mills were built in Germany: 1816 in Waldenburg / Silesia , 1818 in Magdeburg and 1822 in Berlin .
In the course of the 19th century, steam power then replaced the two classic types of drive for mills, water and wind power , as the dominant form. Compared to wind power, steam power has the advantage that it is independent of the weather and can therefore be accessed reliably and as required. Compared to hydropower, which was not subject to as strong natural fluctuations as wind power, there was an additional advantage that no water rights had to be acquired. These advantages offset the disadvantage that, in contrast to wind and water, the drive energy was not available free of charge; the fuel for the steam boiler (usually coal ) had to be bought.
The need-based availability and the elimination of the power restriction formed the basis for a change in the milling industry away from small, handcrafted mills to large industrial companies. Steam power was thus indirectly responsible for the much lamented (first) mill deaths at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.
For example, Karl Marx analyzed : "With the acquisition of new productive forces, people change their mode of production, and with the change in the mode of production, the way of earning a living, they all change their social conditions. The hand mill results in a society with feudal lords, the steam mill a society with industrial capitalists. "
In the 20th century, the steam drive in most mills was again replaced by internal combustion engines and finally the electric drive , but this did not have such a profound impact on the structure of the milling industry, since the industrial mills could easily be converted to the new drives.
technology
Unlike wind and water mills, in which the vertical shaft normally directly through gears to or millstones drive, there was a steam mill from a central boiler and a central steam engine from which the driving force belt drives on different machines, especially the grinders , in the mill was distributed. Individual machines could be switched on and off as required via the belts. It is not uncommon for a steam engine to drive more than 10 grinders and auxiliary machines.
The mill buildings were large, multi-story, factory- style buildings .
Steam engine at the Holmes Mill in Clitheroe, England
Steam engine in the Bamford Mill in England. In the foreground the output for the drive belts
Millstone driven by a belt drive
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Franz M. Feldhaus: The technology of prehistoric times, historical times and primitive peoples. (PDF; 2.6 MB). Engelmann, Leipzig / Berlin 1914.
- ^ Max Fromm von Kreuznach: The milling industry in Baden and in the Rhine Palatinate. Printed and published by G. Braunschen Hofbuchdruckerei, Karlsruhe 1907.
- ↑ Karl Marx: The misery of philosophy . In: MEW. 4, p. 130.
