Weekly Photo Challenge – Movement

This week’s Photo Challenge theme is “movement”.

This is a mill wheel at Sturbridge Village, Connecticut – a reconstructed early nineteenth century town. The wheel is turning at a pretty brisk speed, propelled by the stream of water flowing over it. But that’s nothing. Inside the building, the shaft attached to the mill wheel connects to a series of gears that increase the speed, step by step, until it sets an enormous stone wheel spinning fast enough to grind rock-hard grains of wheat into flour.

It’s really a pretty impressive piece of pre-electronic (actually, medieval) technology.