Machine-History.Com

Chinese WaterWheel The Water Wheel is probably the oldest power driven machine or engine not operated by men or animals.
Early water power plants were either Norse Water Wheel styled like the Norse wheels, vertical undershot wheel, vertical overshot wheel, then geared vertical overshot and undershot.
WaterMills on the Grand Pont, Paris
An undershot wheel depends on the force or speed of the flowing water.

For an overshot wheel the weight of the water creates the energy. The water must be gathered above the wheel either by a dam or on a heavy drop stream with the water flowing through a flume or penstock. The huge Roman mill at Barbegal, France with 16 overshot wheels could grind 28 tons of wheat in a 10 hour day.

The Middle ages found many uses of the vertical water wheels from England, Hungary, India to China.
The water wheels ground corn (wheat), shake sieves, crushed olives, tanned leather, made paper, iron hammer forges, ran textile machines and worked bellows.
In a 12th century Cistercian report of 742 monasteries, nearly every monastery had a waterwheel power supply.
The Tidal Mill was an undershot horizonal wheel driver that took advantage of the ebb and flow of the ocean tides. Tidal Mill remains have been found in England from before the year 1000. On low lying land, dams were built with gates to catch the rising tide waters. When the tide dropped hindged gates were shut. After the water on the ocean side of the mill dropped enought, the trapped water was released to drive the wheel.
Barker Turbine Water Wheel
The turbine was next major improvement over the 3 earlier waterwheel designs. In 1740 Robert Barker of Scotland built the First Water Turbine called a Barker’s Mill. Power comes from the impact and reaction of water flowing thru the center and out pipe orifices. By 1827 Benoit Fourneyron of France built an enclosed practical turbine. Soon mills and factories were been powered by these ever improving water turbines.
Fourneyron Water Wheel Turbine
Fourneyron Turbine Wheel

Sources: www.Wikipedia.org, The Medival Machine by Jean Gimpel, From Man to Machine by Agnes Rogers, www.puddleandpond.com, www.waterhistory.org