Rare How-To's

A “Short History of Technology” by T.K. Derry and Trevor I. Williams is a fascinating account. The book’s winning trait is to show how technology evolved in a dynamic relationship with culture and history, producing and responding to both. Most history texts treat technology as a supporting character. Here, it moves in and out of the spotlight. This passage treats some details about mill stones that I didn’t know. The channels engraved into the stone are so cool I wish I had a print of them hanging in my house:

“Tobacco likewise came from the New World, and was indeed offered to Columbus on his first landing….Trans-oceanic produce, however, did not for a long time replace the staple cereals of Europe, where flour-milling was a major industry, employing both water-and wind-power. Although the basic principles of the milling process remained unchanged–that is to say, grinding between a fixed and a rotating stone–there were many refinements of detail. The grooves, incised in both stones, were a key feature, since they both cut and ventilated the meal as it passed out to the circumference, and various characteristic patterns were evolved. The dressing of stones was done either by the miller or by a skilled itinerant craftsman, and the stones themselves were often brought from remote sources, their texture being of the first importance. Thus some English stones came from Andernach on the Rhine, and French stones were even exported to America. Mills were numerous and correspondingly small, each serving its own locality, since before the industrial revolution there was no strong inducement to transport grain long distances for grinding.”

pg. 68-69

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