The word "noria" comes from the Arabic term, Na-urah, meaning "the first water machine." It was the earliest mechanical device propelled by means other than man or animal. The noria was an inevitable invention that sparked the development of countless types of hydraulic and rotating machines. Over the centuries, it has allowed civilizations to nourish their villages and crops with water, the most fundamental of resources. In time, this triggered the beginning of a new era - the turning of arid lands into prosperous empires.
Civilization Für Machinery
Operation in Antiquity The noria, used for raising water, was a type of undershot water wheel that activated no machinery beyond itself. It was a large, vertically situated wheel, sometimes as much as 50 to 80 feet in diameter, equipped with radial blades or paddles that rotated the apparatus as they were impacted by the flowing water that came into contact with the lower immersed portion of the wheel. Buckets or pots made of wood, bamboo or pottery were attached to the rim of the wheel. As the machine rotated, the buckets filled with water, which was carried upward and spilled near the top of the wheel into a trough. The buckets then returned empty to the bottom of the wheel to repeat the process.
In early civilization where the land was dry, a convenient method was needed to bring water to the crops. This basic necessity spurred the invention of the noria to lift and move water. The widespread distribution of these machines in antiquity indicates that farmers long ago had a need for more water than direct rainfall alone could provide. Norias are axiomatically associated with dry lands.2 The invention of the noria was clearly an enormous leap forward in both technology and the cultivation of land.
There is some possible evidence of water wheels in early China, but they were likely derivations of the western norias. Because the Chinese had developed geared machinery from an early age, it is likely that they powered these mechanical devices using water wheels and norias that were originally advanced in the West during the Hellenistic Age.
Much has changed since the early days of the noria, but the need for machinery reliability remains steadfast as an engineering imperative. In fact, we could say that the noria not only chronicles the evolution of the machine but it also stands as an icon for machine reliability. Consider the report that in Syria a noria has been in continuous operation for more than 1,000 years!
About the Company Noria Corporation is named after the historic and essential water wheel machine, the noria. Along with Machinery Lubrication, the company also publishes Practicing Oil Analysis and Reliable Plant magazines, as well as a Lube-Tips e-mail newsletter. In addition to publishing, Noria provides training courses and consulting services to help companies achieve world-class machinery lubrication and/or oil analysis programs. Noria also presents conferences and exhibitions to keep professionals up-to-date in their quest for lean manufacturing, improved reliability and lubrication excellence.
Farmers and engineers in the Golden Age inherited existing techniques of irrigation, preserving some while modifying, improving and constructing others. It was common across the Muslim world to see hundreds of windmills and waterwheels busily irrigating crops. But they did not have the capacity to supply ever town and village. Engineers like Al-Jazari designed water-raising machinery aimed to bring the supply directly to local people and enhance the framing capacity.
Aqueducts provided a way for cities to get a reliable supply of water from nearby sources and carry it to them for easy access. With the help of aqueducts, civilizations could settle in areas not immediately beside a major water source. One of these impressive aqueducts is the Tunnel of Eupalinos, an aqueduct built in Samos in the sixth century BC. It supplied water to Samos from across Mount Kastro, also known as Mount Castro.
Aside from vehicle and industrial usage, you can find hydraulic devices everywhere. You might even be sitting on one. Office chairs and dishwashers are two household objects that often use hydraulics. Other, more sophisticated machinery includes airplanes, construction equipment and elevators.
Hydropower is one of the most widely used and oldest forms of energy. Its applications range from irrigation to construction equipment and heavy machinery. It is so widespread that you probably have some type of hydraulic equipment in your home or office building.
From Carroll D. Wright. Journal of Social Science. 16:1 (1882). 101-126. One of the most attractive departments of human knowledge is what may be denominated the evolution of industrial forces. The progress of the systems of labor gives to science a field for the practical application of the doctrines of evolution, entirely relieved from the abstract philosophical distinctions, which, in greater or less degree, surround those doctrines when applied to growth in other departments. . . . The factory system is of recent origin, and is entirely the creation of influences existing or coming into existence during the last half of the eighteenth century. . . .As a great fact, the system originated in no preconceived plan, nor did it spring from any spasmodic exercise of human wisdom; on the contrary, "it was formed and shaped by the irresistible force of circumstances, fortunately aided and guided by men who were able to profit by circumstances." . . . In its origin the factory system found its application in the textile trades of England, and we are very apt now, when the term is used, to confine it in our minds to the production of cotton and woolen goods, although it has in reality embraced nearly all lines of the products of machinery. A factory is an establishment where several workmen are collected together for the purpose of obtaining greater and cheaper conveniences for labor than they could procure individually at their homes; for producing results by their combined efforts, which they could not accomplish separately; and for saving the loss of time which the carrying of an article from place to place, during the several processes necessary to complete its manufacture, would occasion. The principle of a factory is, that each laborer, working separately, is controlled by some associating principle, which directs his producing powers to effect a common result, which it is the object of all collectively, to attain. Factories are, therefore, the legitimate outgrowth of the universal tendency to association which is inherent in our nature, and by the development of which every advance in human improvement and human happiness has been gained. . . The usual mistake is to consider the factory system as the creator of evils, and not only evils, but of evil disposed persons. This can hardly be shown to be true, although it is that the system may congregate evils or evil disposed persons, and thus give the appearance of creating that which already existed. . . . The spasmodic nature of work under the domestic system caused much disturbance, for hand working is always more or less discontinuous from the caprice of the operative, while much time must be lost in gathering and returning materials. For these and obvious reasons a hand-weaver could very seldom turn off in a week much more than one-half what his loom could produce if kept continuously in action during the working hours of the day, at the rate which the weaver in his working paroxysms impelled it. The regular order maintained in the factory cures this evil of the old system and enables the operative to know with reasonable certainty the wages he is to receive at the next pay day. His life and habits become more orderly, and he finds, too, that as he has left the closeness of his home shop for the usually clean and well-lighted factory, he imbibes more freely of the health-giving tonic of the atmosphere. . . .[The] poorest factory in this country is as good a place to breathe in as Representatives Hall during sessions, or the ordinary school-room. In this respect the new system of labor far surpasses the old. . . . The regularity required in the mills is such as to render persons who are in the habit of getting intoxicated unfit to be employed there, and many manufacturers object to employing persons guilty of the vice; yet, notwithstanding all the efforts which have been made to stop the habit, the beer-drinking operatives of factory towns still constitute a most serious drawback to the success of industrial enterprises, but its effects are not so ruinous under the new as under the old system. . . . What is the truth as to wages? The vast influence of wages upon social life need not be considered here, but the question whether the factory system has increased them may be. I am constantly obliged, in my every day labors, to refute the assertion that wages under the factory system are growing lower and lower. The reverse is the truth, which is easily demonstrated; the progress of improvement in machinery may have reduced the price paid for a single article, yard, or pound of product, or for the services of a skilled and intelligent operative, but the same improvement has enabled the workman to produce in a greater proportion and always with a less expenditure of muscular labor and in less time, and it has enabled a low grade of labor to increase its earnings. At the same time, a greater number have been benefited, either in consumption or production by the improvement. Experience has not only evolved but proven a law in this respect, which is, the more the factory system is perfected, the better will it reward those engaged in it, if not in increased wages to skill, certainly in higher wages to less skill. Better morals, better sanitary conditions, better health, better wages, these are the practical results of the factory system, as compared with that which preceded it, and the results of all these have been a keener intelligence. . . . The domestic system of labor could not deal with machinery; machinery really initiated the factory system; that is, the latter is the result of machinery. But machinery has done something more--it has brought with it new phases of civilization, for while it means the factory system in one sense, it is the type and representative of the civilization in this period, because it embodies, so far as mechanics are concerned, the concentrated, clearly wrought out thought of the age. While books are present, machinery is the embodiment of thought. Industry and poverty are not hand-maidens, and as poverty is lessened good morals thrive. If labor, employment of the mind, is an essential to good morals, then the highest kind of employment, that requiring the most application and the best intellectual effort, means the best morals. This condition, I take courage to assert, is superinduced eventually by the factory system, for by it the operative is usually employed in a higher grade of labor than that which occupied him in his previous condition. For this reason the present system of productive industry is constantly narrowing the limits of the class that occupies the bottom step of social order. . . . 2ff7e9595c
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