High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A trip hammer, also known as a helve hammer, is a massive powered hammer used in: agriculture to facilitate the labor of pounding, decorticating and polishing of grain; mining, where ore from deep veins was crushed into small pieces; finery forges, for drawing out blooms made from wrought iron into more workable bar iron in fabricating various articless of wrought iron, brass, steel and other metals. Trip hammers were usually raised by a cam and then released to fall under the force of gravity. Historically, trip hammers were often powered by a water wheel, and are known to be used in China as long ago as 20 AD, in Rome by the first century AD and in medieval Europe by the 12th century. During the Industrial Revolution the trip hammer fell out of favor and was replaced with the power hammer. Often multiple hammers were powered via a set of line shafts, pulleys and belts from a centrally located power supply.