Rice mills, called pecker, cog, and water mills... The first... so called, from the pestle's striking... in the manner of a wood pecker.

The rice was then cut with the sickle and carried in on the head, then threshed with the flail, then milled and dressed, in some cases wholly by human labor, and in others by a rude machine, called a pecker mill.

the capacity of such a pecker mill was increased simply by mounting several in a row to be driven by a common shaft.

By the 1780s two types of mills were used that utilized animal power, those being the pecker mill and the cog mill.

John Drayton claimed in the early 18oos that the most common device was this "pecker" mill run by livestock

The first mechanical mills were harnessed to animals: the so-called pecker mill (named for the resemblance of the pestle when in action to the bill of a woodpecker) and the cog mill, a large horizontal cogwheel turned by oxen or horses.

The pecker mill is likely the fulcrum device developed by Guerrard in 1691.

Pecker mill

Meaning

Noun