Current Status
By the early 20th century, availability of cheap electrical energy made the watermill obsolete in developed countries although some smaller rural mills continued to operate commercially into the 1960s. A few historic mills such as the Newlin Mill and Yates Mill in the USA and The Darley Mill Centre in the UK still operate for demonstration purposes. Small-scale commercial production is carried out in the UK at Daniels Mill, Little Salkeld Mill and Redbournbury Mill.
Some old mills are being upgraded with modern Hydropower technology, for example those worked on by the South Somerset Hydropower Group in the UK.
In some developing countries, watermills are still widely used for processing grain. For example, there are thought to be 25,000 operating in Nepal, and 200,000 in India. Many of these are still of the traditional style, but some have been upgraded by replacing wooden parts with better-designed metal ones to improve the efficiency. For example, the Centre for Rural Technology in Nepal upgraded 2,400 mills between 2003 and 2007.
Read more about this topic: Watermill
Famous quotes containing the words current and/or status:
“But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)