The hand-powdered rolls were first used to emboss narrow strips for coins and to flatten and thin soft metals like gold and lead. But the development of the machinery capable of thinning work hardening metals and alloys required the improvement of the materials for the rolls and the their supporting structures as well as the increased power available in the post-medieval period.
It is likely that the early rolling mill technology came from the slitting mill, and Tylecote 1990 (249) quotes C.S. Smith’s reference to the earliest description of a rolling mill of 1568 for the preparation lead window ‘cames’. Clearly the use of rolls to form metal was of interest at this period, as in 1496 Leonardo da Vinci drew a design for a rolling mill.