Operating watermills - of which we can admire here a wooden miniature made by Robert Marichy, a woodturner in Arinthod in the Jura department - requires the motive water from a river or a canal. Its weight, falling from a certain height, causes the spinning of a vertical wheel which itself drives a horizontal axis through a system of gears. There are different types of wheels : the paddle wheel and the bucket wheel, like this one, with a circumference surrounded by small buckets intended to collect the motive water.