Windmills: What are they used for? What do they do ...
The post mill was composed of a four bladed mill mounted onto a central post, which used wooden cog-and-ring gears to covert the motion of the horizontal shaft to vertical motion that turned a grind stone. The wooden cog-and-ring gear was used by Vitruvius, an engineer of the Augustan Age, to develop the first horizontal axis water wheel.
