Trip hammer

A mechanically powered hammer lifted by cams or trips and repeatedly dropped to forge metal or pound materials. Its repeated blows let one machine deliver work that would otherwise require sustained manual hammering.

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Cam: A rotating or sliding machine element that drives a follower through a prescribed motion. A cam lifts the hammer head and releases it for each blow.
Watermill: A mill that uses water power to drive machinery or perform industrial work. Trip hammers adapted the watermill’s power-transmission methods to metalworking.
Ironworking: The production and shaping of iron through processes such as smelting, forging, and rolling. Forging iron was the trip hammer’s central industrial use.
Blacksmith: A craft worker who forges and shapes iron or steel, traditionally by heating and hammering. Trip hammers mechanized heavy blows that blacksmiths otherwise supplied by hand.
Industrial Revolution: A period of major economic and technological change beginning in Britain in the eighteenth century. Trip hammers belonged to the mechanized production systems that preceded and accompanied industrialization.
Water wheel: A wheel that converts the energy of flowing or falling water into rotary motion. Water wheels supplied the power that drove many historic trip hammers.
Ancient China: The early civilization and historical period of Chinese states before imperial unification in 221 BCE. Chinese sources describe water-powered pounding machinery centuries before its European spread.
Wrought iron: A malleable iron alloy with very low carbon content and fibrous slag inclusions. Repeated hammer blows shaped wrought iron and helped expel slag.
Anvil: A heavy block with a hard surface on which metal is shaped by hammering. The anvil supports workpieces beneath the trip hammer’s descending head.
Mechanization: The replacement or augmentation of human labor by machines in production and other work. The trip hammer transferred repeated, forceful labor from people to powered machinery.