From Ezra Stiles
als: University of Pennsylvania Library; copy: Yale University Library
Newport Rhode Isld October. 10. 1780.
Dear Sir

Mechanical Inventions, and Improvements in every Branch of experimental Philosophy, are at all times so agreeable to you, that it must give you pleasure to be informed of a Grist-mill, newly invented by an American which will soon come into general use, not only in America but in Europe & thro' the World. There are but 4 or 5 already built. I give you the Description from my own autoptical examination.

It has but one Wheel and that horizontal, constructed like the frustrum of a Cone inverted. Mr. Kelsy the inventor made it, in his first mill, six feet high, three feet diameter at one End & eighteen Inches diameter at the other: but that which I saw was according to the Dimensions in the Margin. It is made like an inverted pyramidical Barrel secured with 2 or 3 Iron Hoops; and affixed to or connected with the perpendicular wooden Shaft of perhaps four Inches Diameter with two radial crosses near the top & bottom. On the Inside are affixed sixteen narrow pieces of board two or 3 Inches wide & half an Inch thick, each running down the Length of the Vessel. These make interior Buckets, the Section of which exhibits this appearance. The Column of Water carrying this Wheel is but five Inches broad and three Inches thick, and is introduced atop and operates on the inside by percussion on the Valves or vertical slips of board, performing its circumgyrations in lateral Spirals five Inches in diameter: so that in a Wheel 5 feet high the water performs 12 Revolutions before it passes out at bottom. And altho' I am apprehensive that there is dead water towards the bottom of so high a wheel, yet I doubt not the operative momentum of the water continues for 3 or four Revolutions at least. In a common Water Wheel this momentum is lost after its operation upon one quarter or at most one third of the wheel. There may be probably an Amendment of this horizontal wheel by a Diminution of its length to perhps about three feet.

Ezra Stiles

Dr. Franklin
Addressed: His Excellency Benjamin Franklin Esq LL. D. / Minister Plenipotentiary from the Congress / of the United States / to the Court of / Paris
Notation: Stiles Octr. 10 1780
635204 = 033-404a.html