of Milling History, General Mills, 1945.
A Typical Layout of a New Process Millstone Flour Mill of
1878, from the Northwestern Miller (September 7, 1894). The
basement contains the drive equipment, the first flour has mill
stones and flour packers, the middle floors has purifiers and
bolters, and grain cleaners (scourers). Please Note: The source
article "Archaeology of the Central Minneapolis Riverfront,
Part 2: Archaeological Explorations and Interpretive Potentials,"
The Minnesota Archaeological Society, Vol. 49, No. 1-2, stated
that: "the top floor has dust collectors." This is a
gross error, this is a typical layout of a millstone flour mill
before the dust explosion of the evening of May 2, 1878, when
the Washburn A New-Process Mill blew up taking with it 5 of the
countries best flour mills, grain elevators, and surrounding buildings.
Dust collectors had not yet become a standard feature of every
flour mill. Some mills only had dust rooms that were located underneath
the millstones filled with baffles to encourage the precipitation
of the dust. The largest flour mill in the world at that times
was the Washburn A New Process Mill that collected 3,000 pounds
of dust every day in two dust rooms.
"Flour for Man's Bread," by John Storck and
Walter Dorwin Teague.
This important volume is the first complete study of the history
of milling and its profound significance in the record of human
progress, from earliest times to the present.
Beginning with a detailed description of the use of grain by primitive
man, the discussion then proceeds to the early refinement of tools,
the accumulation of enormous grain empires in ancient times, the
gradual development of the centralized mill and modern milling
techniques, and the large-scale production and distribution methods
With over 130 illustrations prepared under the direction of the
noted industrial designer, Walter Dorwin Teague, this comprehensive
text will be enjoyed by those interested in the rise of our modern
industrial civilization, as well as students of agriculture, food
processing and other related fields.
Caption: A Norse Mill at Lewis, Figure 51, page 98.
Norse-type direct-drive mill, from Lewis in the Hebrdes Islands,
off the Scottish coast. The runner stone has been cut away to
show how it is mounted. Notice the rock used as a "damsel"
to agitate the shoe of the hopper. The water wheel of this mill
is served through a flume, though many mills of this type are
located directly in the stream. A gate can be dropped t shut off
the water from the flume.
Text pages 97, 98, and 99. Figure 51 reproduces a mill of the
Norse type, from Lewis in the Hebrides, which the upper stone
cut away to show how it is mounted on its axle. This mill, in
common with other northern examples, rotates in a clockwise direction,
whereas direct-drive mills of the eastern or Greek type run counterclockwise.
The paddles of northern water wheels are usually flat, whereas
most Greek-type direct-drive mills are fitted with scoops to catch
the water. Direct-drive mills permit only small-sale operation;
the stones used always of reduced size - down to about 27 inches
across - and rotation is slow. Their feed is automatic if the
hopper is equipped with a simple stone-agitated damsel, like the
one shown in the Lewis mill.
The prime achievements in the Vitruvian mechanism as compared
with any direct-drive mill were, first, the recognition of the
fact that a wheel placed vertically in a stream was more effective
than one placed horizontally - which would be true so long as
the principles of the turbine remained unknown; and, second, the
introduction of gears between wheel and millstones.
In spite of these potentialities, the Vitruvian mill was so radical
an advance, and so little related to the attitudes and social
patterns of its time, that many decades passed before it came
into general use. The early mills were no doubt highly imperfect:
we know, for example, that the overshot water wheel of a fifth-century
Athenian mill (figure 56) received its water from too great a
height, and that its moving parts rubbed against the stone walls
of its enclosure. In addition, the water mill required a large
capital investment in a society where slaves and animals were
cheap and plentiful. No classical writer celebrated the importance
of the invention - a fact easier to understand than its neglect
by modern historians.
"Flour for Man's Bread, A History of Milling,"
by John Storck and Walter Dorwin Teague, illustrated by Harold
Rydell, with references, a vocabulary of milling terms, and 131
black & white illustrations, plates, diagrams, drawings, maps
many by Harold Rydell, published by the University of Minnesota
Press, Minneapolis, pp (xiii), 382, 1952. First edition printed
with two different dust jackets. A comprehensive and scholarly
history of flour milling.
Caption: An Athenian Overshot Mill, Figure 56, page
109. Reconstruction of an overshot mill which was operated in
the late fifth century A.D. in the Athenian agora, or market place.
The dimensions are known from evidence left in the stone ruins.
Note the thinness of the millstones, and the fact that the reduction
gears they would rotate more slowly than the water wheel (compare
with Figure 50). The mill could be stopped by removing the slanting
section of the millrace and so causing the water to drop behind
Please Note: The above illustration is often used to describe
a Vitruvian mill. Text from pages 95 and 96: The Vitruvian ratio
used high-speed grinding. The ratio between speed and force changed
five times in a Vitruvius simple mechanism, results in the millstone's
revolving at a higher speed than the water wheel that drives it.
Shown above is a mill, like other early mills which remain or
records exist, the gear at the bottom of the horizontal axle was
smaller than the gear on the vertical shaft and the stone turned
more slowly that the wheel. Vitruvius explains: "the power
generated by the wheel is applied to work which has nothing to
do with its source, the water - a departure opening up great vistas
of usefulness." This is the first time, we have, not a tool
in human hands, but a true machine designed to transmit forces
and accomplish useful work This is the first time, a craft was
superseded by what we now know as machine production, and a movement
was started which would culminate in the Industrial Revolution
and the virtual elimination of the crafts as a source of essential
goods and services.
Forward to the Book
This volume brings to every reader many of the advantages of what
was originally projected as a Museum of Milling History. The idea
was seriously considered by General Mills in 1945. A tentative
site adjacent to the headquarters offices in Minneapolis had been
selected. It was planned to create life-sized moving dioramas
to tell the story of the "ancient and honorable" craft
of milling from earliest times to the present day.
Walter Dorwin Teague, the noted industrial designer of New York,
drew plans for the museum and arranged for the necessary fundamental
research. He engaged Dr. John Storck, scholar and author of a
distinguished history of civilization, to delve into the past
for knowledge in a field where he had few predecessors. The results
of their collaboration, along with the excellent illustrations
prepared under Mr. Teague's direction, are presented in this book.
Mounting costs and the materials scarcity following World War
II forced abandonment of the museum project in 1947. The present
volume, therefore, represents what might have been incorporated
into a museum. Of itself, this book is believed to be the first
complete exposition of the growth and development of flour milling,
and its relation to man's progress.
Essentially, the history of milling records the effort of man
to survive. His spark of life burns on the fuel of food. From
the cereals springs his energy. They are the coals for his bodily
warmth and well=being. Their discovery changed his mode of life.
He was a wanderer on the face of the earth when a crack on its
surface bound him to it. From the crack sprang the grasses, and
from these came the cereal seeds. Man stopped in his wanderings
to cultivate them. Of the cereals, wheat and maize emerged as
best adapted to man's needs.
Mans molars were his first grinding tools. When these became inadequate,
necessity forced him to invent other means. He rubbed the grain
between two stones, to better purpose. He took his tools where
he found them. He dropped them when they had served his ends.
But as his understanding grew, he perceived that stones of certain
forms were more efficient. These he shaped, and in the shaping
gave them a value which he treasured. These forms were the mortar
and the saddle stone. The Scriptures record there early value,
for the Law of Moses provided, "No man shall take the nether
or the upper millstone to pledge: for he taketh a man's life to
These devices gave him meal in quaintly, but the grain seeds were
small and the husks rough and numerous. To separate the husks
from the meal, he invented the screen to sift them, and thus he
obtained the first separation.
The rubbing together of the stones produced grit in the meal,
which was most unpleasant and tooth-wearing. Man's ingenuity then
suggested that the grist might be reduced if the stones used for
grinding were slightly separated. Thus caused the quern and the
millstone, with surfaces which "reduced" the grain rather
than ground it.
These were the first, and only, basic advances in the art of milling.
The techniques and tools were further improved, but flour milling
today is still reduction, and sifting, supplemented by air-classification.
The miller's tale recorded in this volume is necessary to an understanding
of our modern industrial civilization. The ways in which man has
made flour for his bread have forged the patterns of technological
progress: the refinement of tools, the increasing use of power,
the development of large scale production and distribution. That
progress has had far-reaching influence on man's social development.
And that story is not ended. Research in pointing to the way to
as yet unknown possibilities.
In the words of the authors, "American millers may have their
share in the most urgent business now before mankind - the business
of raising the standard of living the vast backward populations
of the world, so that they too may become fertile fields for the
spread of freedom and enlightment."
James F. Bell
(son of James S. Bell. James F. Bell became President of Washburn
Crosby Company, that became General Mills, Inc., in 1928.)
July 1, 1952.
Caption: A Tide Mill, Figure 58, page 113. Tide Mill.
At the left, the sluice gate is closed and the millrace gate is
open, with the water wheel in action. At the right, the incoming
tide has opened the sluice gate to fill the pond; the millrace
gate has been closed, and the mill is inactive. Milling can be
carried on in two periods of five or seven hours each for every
Caption: German Bolting-Bag Mill, Figure 83, page 193.
An early nineteenth-century German mill, with long bolting bag
shaken by mill power after the manner of the insert at the upper
right. A bolter of this type is illustrated in Ramelli (1588).
The overs of the bag were given a second sifting on a flat sieve,
which was also shaken by mill power.
Text, page 192. "On the Continent a slanting cloth-lined
sifting bag shaken back and forth by mill power was sometimes
used for bolting (Figure 83). Such an arrangement would make use
of only a small part of the entire cover area of the sifting bag,
although the bag might be reset from time to time to bring a new
area into service."
Please Note: This was the state of the art of flour milling in
Germany (Figure 83) at the time Oliver Evans invented his improvements
for automated flour milling, and in the early nineteenth-century
when two German flour millers-millwrights came to America to steal
the technology. Before the mechanical bolting bag sifter, a boy
(often the miller's helper or son) would stand in the basement
of the mill hitting the bag with a stick. The sifted or bolted
flour would fall through the bag, sock, or tube onto the floor
of the mill, and the tailings would often flow into the mill stream
where the bag collar was attached to an outside wall.
Source of Used Copies of "Flour for Man's Bread,"
by John Storck and Walter Dorwin Teague, can be found at Advanced Book
Exchange, Inc. & abebooks.com (http://dogbert.abebooks.com/abe/BookSearch).
Price ranges from 8 dollars to 80 dollars.
The original publication price was $7.50.
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