Hydropower or hydraulic power is the
force or
energy of moving water. It may be captured for some useful purpose. Prior to the widespread availability of commercial
electric power, hydropower was used for
irrigation, and operation of various machines, such as
watermills,
textile machines, and
sawmills. The energy of moving water has been exploited for millennia. In
India,
water wheels and
watermills were built; in
Imperial Rome, water powered mills produced flour from grain, and in China and the rest of the Far East, hydraulically operated "pot wheel" pumps that raised water into irrigation canals. In the 1830s, at the peak of the
canal-building era, hydropower was used to transport
barge traffic up and down steep hills using
inclined plane railroads. Direct mechanical
power transmission required that industries using hydropower had to locate near the waterfall. For example, during the last half of the 19th century, many
grist mills were built at
Saint Anthony Falls, utilizing the 50 foot (15 metre) drop in the
Mississippi River. The mills contributed to the growth of
Minneapolis. Today the largest use of hydropower is for
electric power generation, which allows low cost energy to be used at long distances from the water source.
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