Johann Beckmann - A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume I (of 2)

De Rerum Varietate, lib. i. cap. 10.

This account I found in De Koophandel van Amsterdam, door Le Long. Amst. 1727, 2 vol. 8vo, ii. p. 584. “The moveable top for turning the mill round to every wind was first found out in the middle of the sixteenth century by a Fleming.” We read there that this is remarked by John Adrian Leegwater; of whom I know nothing more than what is related of him in the above work, that he was celebrated on account of various inventions, and died in 1650, in the 75th year of his age.

See Beschryving der Stadt Delft, Delft, 1729, folio 625.

Plin. lib. xviii. cap. 11.

At Midsummer 1502, machinery for bolting in mills was first introduced and employed at Zwikau; Nicholas Boller, who gave rise to this improvement, being then sworn master of the bakers’ company. It may be thence easily seen, that coarse and not bolted flour, such as is still used in many places, and as was used through necessity at Zwikau in 1641, was before that period used for baking. Chronica Cygnea, auct. Tob. Schmidten. Zwikau, 1656, v. vol. 4to, ii. p. 219. See also Theatri Freibergensis Chronicon. Freyberg, 1653, 4to, ii. p. 335. Anno 1580, a great drought and scarcity of water. Of all the mills near town there were only fifteen going; and in order that the people might be better supplied with meal, the bolting machinery was removed, and this was attended with such good consequences that each mill could grind as much as before. In Walser’s Appenzeller Chronik. 8vo, p. 471, we are told that about that time (1533), a freeman of Memmingen taught the people of Appenzel to make the beautiful white bolted flour so much and so far celebrated.

Transactions of the Economical Society at Leipsic, 1772. Dresden, 8vo, p. 79.

According to the general rescript of 1750, which has been often renewed. The company obtained this exclusive right as early as the year 1668.

Nicholson’s Journal, July 1800, p. 179.

Philosophical Magazine, 1805.

Phil. Trans. 1831, p. 147.