A windmill is a machine that converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by

means of vanes called sails. Originally, windmills were developed for milling grain for
food production. In the course of history, the windmill machinery was adapted to
many other industrial uses. An important non-milling use is to pump water, either for
land drainage or to extract groundwater.












Windmills in antiquity


Heron's wind-powered organ
The windwheel of the Greek engineer Heron of Alexandria in the first century AD is
the earliest known instance of using a wind-driven wheel to power a
machine.
[4][5]
Another early example of a wind-driven wheel was the prayer wheel,
which was used in ancient Tibet and Chinasince the fourth century.
[6]
It has been
claimed that the Babylonian emperor Hammurabi planned to use wind power for his
ambitious irrigation project in the 17th century BC.













Horizontal windmills


The Persian horizontal windmill


Hooper's Mill, Margate, Kent, an 18th-century European horizontal windmill
The first practical windmills had sails that rotated in a horizontal plane, around a
vertical axis.
[8]
According to Ahmad Y. al-Hassan, these anemone were invented in
eastern Persia as recorded by the Persian geographer Estakhri in the 9th
century.
[9][10]
The authenticity of an earlier anecdote of a windmill involving the
second caliph Umar (AD 634644) is questioned on the grounds that it appears in a
10th-century document.
[11]
Made of six to 12 sails covered in reed matting or cloth
material, these windmills were used to grind grain or draw up water, and were quite
different from the later European vertical windmills. Windmills were in widespread
use across the Middle Eastand Central Asia, and later spread to China
and India from there.





A similar type of horizontal windmill with rectangular blades, used for irrigation, can
also be found in 13th-century China (during the Jurchen Jin Dynasty in the north),
introduced by the travels of Yel Chucai to Turkestan in 1219.
[13]

Horizontal windmills were built, in small numbers, in Europe during the 18th and 19th
centuries,
[8]
for example Fowler's Mill at Battersea in London, and Hooper's Mill
at Margate in Kent. These early modern examples seem not to have been directly
influenced by the horizontal windmills of the Middle and Far East, but to have been
independent inventions by engineers influenced by the Industrial Revolution.


















Vertical windmills
Due to a lack of evidence, debate occurs among historians as to whether or not
Middle Eastern horizontal windmills triggered the original development of European
windmills. In northwestern Europe, the horizontal-axis or vertical windmill (so called
due to the plane of the movement of its sails) is believed to date from the last quarter
of the 12th century in the triangle of northern France, eastern England and Flanders.
The earliest certain reference to a windmill in Europe (assumed to have been of the
vertical type) dates from 1185, in the former village of Weedley in Yorkshire which
was located at the southern tip of the Wold overlooking the Humber estuary.
[19]
A
number of earlier, but less certainly dated, 12th-century European sources referring
to windmills have also been found. These earliest mills were used to grind cereals.







Post mill


A windmill on the background of the 1792 Battle of Valmy, France
Main article: Post mill
The evidence at present is that the earliest type of European windmill was the post
mill, so named because of the large upright post on which the mill's main structure
(the "body" or "buck") is balanced. By mounting the body this way, the mill is able to
rotate to face the wind direction; an essential requirement for windmills to operate
economically in north-western Europe, where wind directions are variable. The body
contains all the milling machinery. The first post mills were of the sunken type, where
the post was buried in an earth mound to support it. Later, a wooden support was
developed called the trestle. This was often covered over or surrounded by a
roundhouse to protect the trestle from the weather and to provide storage space.
This type of windmill was the most common in Europe until the 19th century, when
more powerful tower and smock mills replaced them.














Hollow-post mill
In a hollow-post mill, the post on which the body is mounted is hollowed out, to
accommodate the drive shaft.
[21]
This makes it possible to drive machinery below or
outside the body while still being able to rotate the body into the wind. Hollow-post
mills driving scoop wheels were used in the Netherlands to drain wetlands from the
14th century onwards.


















Tower mill
Main article: Tower mill
By the end of the 13th century, the masonry tower mill, on which only the cap is
rotated rather than the whole body of the mill, had been introduced. The spread of
tower mills came with a growing economy that called for larger and more stable
sources of power, though they were more expensive to build. In contrast to the post
mill, only the cap of the tower mill needs to be turned into the wind, so the main
structure can be made much taller, allowing the sails to be made longer, which
enables them to provide useful work even in low winds. The cap can be turned into
the wind either by winches or gearing inside the cap or from a winch on the tail pole
outside the mill. A method of keeping the cap and sails into the wind automatically is
by using a fantail, a small windmill mounted at right angles to the sails, at the rear of
the windmill. These are also fitted to tail poles of post mills and are common in Great
Britain and English-speaking countries of the former British Empire, Denmark, and
Germany, but rare in other places. Tower mills with fixed caps are found around the
Mediterranean Sea. They are built with the sails facing the prevailing wind direction.
















Smock mill
Main article: Smock mill
The smock mill is a later development of the tower mill, where the tower is replaced
by a wooden framework, called the "smock." The smock is commonly of octagonal
plan, though examples with more, or fewer, sides exist. The smock is thatched,
boarded or covered by other materials, such as slate, sheet metal, or tar paper. The
lighter construction in comparison to tower mills make smock mills practical as
drainage mills as these often had to be built in areas with unstable subsoil. Having
originated as a drainage mill, smock mills are also used for a variety of purposes.
When used in a built-up area it is often placed on a masonry base to raise it above
the surrounding buildings.











Sails
Main article: Windmill sail
Common sails consist of a lattice framework on which a sailcloth is spread. The
miller can adjust the amount of cloth spread according to the amount of wind
available and power needed. In medieval mills, the sailcloth was wound in and out of
a ladder type arrangement of sails. Postmedieval mill sails had a lattice framework
over which the sailcloth was spread, while in colder climates, the cloth was replaced
by wooden slats, which were easier to handle in freezing conditions.
[22]
The jib sail is
commonly found in Mediterranean countries, and consists of a simple triangle of
cloth wound round a spar.
In all cases, the mill needs to be stopped to adjust the sails. Inventions in Great
Britain in the late 18th and 19th centuries led to sails that automatically adjust to the
wind speed without the need for the miller to intervene, culminating in patent sails
invented by William Cubitt in 1813. In these sails, the cloth is replaced by a
mechanism of connected shutters.
In France, Berton invented a system consisting of longitudinal wooden slats
connected by a mechanism that lets the miller open them while the mill is turning. In
the 20th century, increased knowledge of aerodynamics from the development of the
airplane led to further improvements in efficiency by German engineer Bilau and
several Dutch millwrights.
The majority of windmills have four sails. Multiple-sailed mills, with five, six or eight
sails, were built in Great Britain (especially in and around the counties
of Lincolnshire andYorkshire), Germany, and less commonly elsewhere. Earlier
multiple-sailed mills are found in Spain, Portugal, Greece, parts of Romania,
Bulgaria, and Russia
[23]
A mill with an even number of sails has the advantage of
being able to run with a damaged sail and the one opposite removed without
resulting in an unbalanced mill.




Machinery
Main article: Mill machinery

Gears inside a windmill convey power from the rotary motion of the sails to a
mechanical device. The sails are carried on the horizontal windshaft. Windshafts can
be wholly made of wood, or wood with a cast iron poll end (where the sails are
mounted) or entirely of cast iron. The brake wheel is fitted onto the windshaft
between the front and rear bearing. It has the brake around the outside of the rim
and teeth in the side of the rim which drive the horizontal gearwheel called wallower
on the top end of the vertical upright shaft. In grist mills, the great spur wheel, lower
down the upright shaft, drives one or more stone nuts on the shafts driving each
millstone. Post mills sometimes have a head and/or tail wheel driving the stone nuts
directly, instead of the spur gear arrangement. Additional gear wheels drive a sack
hoist or other machinery. The machinery differs if the windmill is used for other
applications than milling grain. A drainage mill uses another set of gear wheels on
the bottom end of the upright shaft to drive a scoop wheel or Archimedes'
screw. Sawmillsuse a crankshaft to provide a reciprocating motion to the saws.
Windmills have been used to power many other industrial processes,
including papermills, threshing mills, and to process oil seeds, wool, paints and stone
products.










Spread and decline


The total number of wind-powered mills in Europe is estimated to have been around
200,000 at its peak, compared to some
500,000 waterwheels.
[22]
With the
coming of the industrial revolution, the
importance of wind and water as
primary industrial energy sources
declined and were eventually replaced
by steam (in steam mills) and internal
combustion engines, although
windmills continued to be built in large
numbers until late in the 19th century.
More recently, windmills have been
preserved for their historic value, in
some cases as static exhibits when the
antique machinery is too fragile to put
in motion, and in other cases as fully
working mills. Around 50 working mills
are in operation in Britain as of 2009.
[24]

Of the 10,000 windmills in use in the Netherlands around 1850,
[25]
about 1000 are
still standing. Most of these are being run by volunteers, though some grist mills are
still operating commercially. Many of the drainage mills have been appointed as
backup to the modern pumping stations. The Zaan district has been said to have
been the first industrialized region of the world with around 600 operating wind-


powered industries by the end of the 18th century.
[25]
Economic fluctuations and the
industrial revolution had a much greater impact on these industries than on grain and
drainage mills so only very few are left.
Construction of mills spread to the Cape Colony in the 17th century. The early tower
mills did not survive the gales of the Cape Peninsula, so in 1717, the Heeren
XVII sent carpenters, masons, and materials to construct a durable mill. The mill,
completed in 1718, became known as the Oude Molen and was located between
Pinelands Station and the Black River. Long since demolished, its name lives on as
that of a Technical school in Pinelands. By 1863, Cape Town could boast 11 mills
stretching from Paarden Eiland.


















Windpumps


Windpump in South Dakota, USA
Main article: Windpump
Windpumps are used extensively on farms and ranches in the central plains and
southwestern United States and in Southern Africa andAustralia. These mills feature
a large number of blades, so they turn slowly with considerable torque in low winds
and are self-regulating in high winds. A tower-top gearbox and crankshaft convert
the rotary motion into reciprocating strokes carried downward through a rod to the
pump cylinder below. The farm windpump was invented by Daniel Halladay in
1854.
[27][28]
In early California and some other states, the windmill was part of a self-
contained domestic water system including a hand-dug well and a redwood water
tower supporting a redwood tank and enclosed by redwood siding (tankhouse).
Eventually, steel blades and steel towers replaced wooden construction, and at their
peak in 1930, an estimated 600,000 units were in use.
[29]
The multiple-bladed
wind turbine atop a lattice tower made of wood or steel hence became, for many
years, a fixture of the landscape throughout rural America. Firms such as
Star, Eclipse, Fairbanks-Morse and Aermotorbecame famed suppliers in North and
South America.







Wind turbine
Main article: Wind power
A wind turbine is a windmill-like structure specifically developed to generate
electricity. They can be seen as the next step in the developments of the windmill.
The first wind turbines were built by the end of the 19th century by Prof James
Blyth in Scotland (1887),
[30][31]
Charles F. Brush in Cleveland, Ohio (1887
1888)
[32][33][34]
and Poul la Cour in Denmark (1890s). La Cour's mill from 1896 later
became the local powerplant of the village Askov. By 1908, 72 wind-driven electric
generators were in Denmark, ranging from 5 to 25 kW. By the 1930s, windmills were
widely used to generate electricity on farms in the United States where distribution
systems had not yet been installed, built by companies such as Jacobs Wind,
Wincharger, Miller Airlite, Universal Aeroelectric, Paris-Dunn, Airline, and Winpower,
and by the Dunlite Corporation for similar locations in Australia.




















Rnland Windpark in Denmark
Forerunners of modern horizontal-axis utility-scale wind generators were the WIME-3D in service
in Balaklava USSR from 1931 until 1942, a 100-kW generator on a 30-m (100-ft)
tower,
[35]
the Smith-Putnam wind turbine built in 1941 on the mountain known as
Grandpa's Knob in Castleton, Vermont, USA of 1.25 MW
[36]
and the NASA wind
turbines developed from 1974 through the mid-1980s. The development of these 13
experimental wind turbines pioneered many of the wind turbine design technologies
in use today, including: steel tube towers, variable-speed generators, composite
blade materials, and partial-span pitch control, as well as aerodynamic, structural,
and acoustic engineering design capabilities. The modern wind power
industry began in 1979 with the serial production of wind turbines by Danish
manufacturers Kuriant, Vestas, Nordtank, and Bonus. These early turbines were
small by today's standards, with capacities of 2030 kW each. Since then, they have
increased greatly in size, with the Enercon E-126 capable of delivering up to 7 MW,
while wind turbine production has expanded to many countries.
As the 21st century began, rising concerns over energy security, global warming,
and eventual fossil fuel depletion led to an expansion of interest in all available forms
of renewable energy. Worldwide, many thousands of wind turbines are now
operating, with a total nameplate capacity of 194,400 MW.
[37]
Europe accounted for
48% of the total in 2009.









List of windmills


Israel
Location
Name of mill
and coordinates
Type Built Notes Photograph
Jerusalem
Montefiore Mill
Jaffa Gate Mill
Tower 1857


[edit]Japan
Location
Name of mill
and
coordinates
Type Built Notes Photograph
Gunma
Prefecture

Smock


Kamiybetsu

Smock


Kita

Smock


Sakura De Liefde Tower 1994


Shodoshima

Tower

The windmill is presented to
Shdo Island
from Milos, Greece.

[edit]Syria
Location
Name of mill
and
coordinates
Type Built Notes Photograph
Homs
Krak des
Chevaliers
Tower

One of the towers had a
windmill (far right in picture).
[1]


Quneitra

Trestle

Pumping mill (Photo)

Tartus

Smock

Photo dated 2007

[edit]Taiwan
Location
Name of mill
and coordinates
Type Built Notes Photograph
Dongshih

Tower


[edit]Thailand
Location
Name of mill
and coordinates
Type Built Notes Photograph
Chiangmai

Hollow post


[edit]Australia
[edit]Australia
See List of windmills in Australia
[edit]New Zealand
Location
Name of mill
and coordinates
Type Built Notes Photograph
Foxton De Molen Smock 2003 De Molen

[edit]Europe
[edit]Austria
Location
Name of mill
and coordinates
Type Built Notes Photograph
Podersdorf am See

Tower


Retz

Tower


Retz (second mill) Tower


[edit]Belarus
Location
Name of mill
and coordinates
Type Built Notes Photograph
Minsk
State Museum of Folk
Architecture and Life
Post

Moved
from Damatkanavichy

Minsk
State Museum of Folk
Architecture and Life
Post

Moved
from Yanushowka

Minsk

Smock


Stroczycy

Post


[edit]Belgium
See List of windmills in Belgium
[edit]Bulgaria
Location
Name of mill
and coordinates
Type Built Notes Photograph
Nesebar

Post


Nesebar

Tower


Nesebar

Tower


Pravda

Post

Sozopol

Post


[edit]Czech Republic
Windmill Ruprechtov, Brno
See List of windmills in the Czech Republic
[edit]Denmark
See List of windmills in Denmark
[edit]Estonia
See List of windmills in Estonia
[edit]Finland
Location
Name of mill
and coordinates
Type Built Notes Photograph
land Islands

Post


land Islands

Post


Jrvenp

Post


Konnevesi Konnevesi Museum Post


Korpostrm, Korpo Hembygdsmuseum Post


Loviisa

Smock


Pudasjrvi

Post


Samppalinna, Turku

Tower 1860


Seurasaari Seurasaari Open Air Museum Post


Sideby

Post


Vaala

Post


stra Simskla, Vrd

Post


Vuonna

Smock


[edit]France
See List of windmills in France
[edit]Germany
See List of windmills in Germany
[edit]Greece
See List of windmills in Greece
[edit]Hungary
Location
Name of mill
and coordinates
Type Built Notes Photograph
Kengyel

Tower


Szegvr

Tower


Szentendre

Tower


Szentes Dnt

Tower Late C19th


Ts

Tower


[edit]Ireland
See List of windmills in Ireland
[edit]Italy
Location
Name of mill
and
coordinates
Type Built Notes Photograph
Margherita di
Savoia

Titt wind
engine

Marsala (two mills) Tower

Pumping mills for
salt works

Mozia

Tower

Pumping mill for salt
works

Orbetello

Tower


[edit]Latvia
Location
Name of mill
and coordinates
Type Built Notes Photograph
Csis

Tower


[edit]Lithuania
Location
Name of mill
and coordinates
Type Built Notes Photograph
Baltoji

Tower


Darbnai

Smock


Obeliai

Tower


eduva Velnio malnas Tower


iauliai aliki malnas Smock 1875-1880


Stainai

Smock


Stultikiai

Smock


Teliai

Smock















Machinery
Main article: Mill machinery

Gears inside a windmill convey power from the rotary motion of the sails to a
mechanical device. The sails are carried on the horizontal windshaft. Windshafts can
be wholly made of wood, or wood with a cast iron poll end (where the sails are
mounted) or entirely of cast iron. The brake wheel is fitted onto the windshaft
between the front and rear bearing. It has the brake around the outside of the rim
and teeth in the side of the rim which drive the horizontal gearwheel called wallower
on the top end of the vertical upright shaft. In grist mills, the great spur wheel, lower
down the upright shaft, drives one or more stone nuts on the shafts driving each
millstone. Post mills sometimes have a head and/or tail wheel driving the stone nuts
directly, instead of the spur gear arrangement. Additional gear wheels drive a sack
hoist or other machinery. The machinery differs if the windmill is used for other
applications than milling grain. A drainage mill uses another set of gear wheels on
the bottom end of the upright shaft to drive a scoop wheel or Archimedes'
screw. Sawmills use a crankshaft to provide a reciprocating motion to the saws.
Windmills have been used to power many other industrial processes,
including papermills, threshing mills, and to process oil seeds, wool, paints and stone
products.

An isometric drawing of the machinery of theBeebe Windmill

Diagram of the smock millat Meopham, Kent

Cross section of a post mill

Windshaft, brake wheel, and brake blocks in smock mill d'Admiraal inAmsterdam

Interior view, Pantigo windmill, East Hampton, New York Historic American Buildings Survey

Technical drawing of a 1793 Dutch tower mill for land drainage



Spread and decline


Oilmill De Zoeker, paintmill De Kat and paltrok sawmill De Gekroonde Poelenburg at the Zaanse Schans

The total number of wind-powered mills in Europe is estimated to have been around
200,000 at its peak, compared to some 500,000 waterwheels.
[22]
With the coming of
the industrial revolution, the importance of wind and water as primary industrial
energy sources declined and were eventually replaced by steam (in steam mills)
and internal combustion engines, although windmills continued to be built in large
numbers until late in the 19th century. More recently, windmills have been preserved
for their historic value, in some cases as static exhibits when the antique machinery
is too fragile to put in motion, and in other cases as fully working mills. Around 50
working mills are in operation in Britain as of 2009.




Of the 10,000 windmills in use in the Netherlands around 1850,
[25]
about 1000 are
still standing. Most of these are being run by volunteers, though some grist mills are
still operating commercially. Many of the drainage mills have been appointed as
backup to the modern pumping stations. The Zaan district has been said to have
been the first industrialized region of the world with around 600 operating wind-
powered industries by the end of the 18th century. Economic fluctuations and the
industrial revolution had a much greater impact on these industries than on grain and
drainage mills so only very few are left.

Construction of mills spread to the Cape Colony in the 17th century. The early tower
mills did not survive the gales of the Cape Peninsula, so in 1717, theHeeren
XVII sent carpenters, masons, and materials to construct a durable mill. The mill,
completed in 1718, became known as the Oude Molen and was located between
Pinelands Station and the Black River. Long since demolished, its name lives on as
that of a Technical school in Pinelands. By 1863, Cape Town could boast 11 mills
stretching from Paarden Eiland to Mowbray.












Windpumps


Windpump in South Dakota, USA
Main article: Windpump

Windpumps are used extensively on farms and ranches in the central plains and
southwestern United States and in Southern Africa and Australia. These mills feature
a large number of blades, so they turn slowly with considerable torque in low winds
and are self-regulating in high winds. A tower-top gearboxand crankshaft convert the
rotary motion into reciprocating strokes carried downward through a rod to the pump
cylinder below. The farm windpump was invented by Daniel Halladay in
1854.
[27][28]
In early California and some other states, the windmill was part of a self-
contained domestic water system including a hand-dug well and a redwood water
tower supporting a redwood tank and enclosed by redwood siding (tankhouse).
Eventually, steel blades and steel towers replaced wooden construction, and at their
peak in 1930, an estimated 600,000 units were in use.
[29]
The multiple-bladed
wind turbine atop a lattice tower made of wood or steel hence became, for many
years, a fixture of the landscape throughout rural America. Firms such as
Star, Eclipse,Fairbanks-Morse and Aermotor became famed suppliers in North and
South America.




Wind turbine
Main article: Wind power
A wind turbine is a windmill-like structure specifically developed to generate
electricity. They can be seen as the next step in the developments of the windmill.
The first wind turbines were built by the end of the 19th century by Prof James
Blyth in Scotland (1887), Charles F. Brush in Cleveland, Ohio (1887
1888)
[32][33][34]
and Poul la Cour in Denmark (1890s). La Cour's mill from 1896 later
became the local powerplant of the village Askov. By 1908, 72 wind-driven electric
generators were in Denmark, ranging from 5 to 25 kW. By the 1930s, windmills were
widely used to generate electricity on farms in the United States where distribution
systems had not yet been installed, built by companies such as Jacobs Wind,
Wincharger, Miller Airlite, Universal Aeroelectric, Paris-Dunn, Airline, and Winpower,
and by the Dunlite Corporation for similar locations in Australia.













Rnland Windpark in Denmark
Forerunners of modern horizontal-axis utility-scale wind generators were the WIME-
3D in service in Balaklava USSR from 1931 until 1942, a 100-kW generator on a 30-
m (100-ft) tower,
[35]
the Smith-Putnam wind turbine built in 1941 on the mountain
known as Grandpa's Knob in Castleton, Vermont, USA of 1.25 MW
[36]
and the NASA
wind turbines developed from 1974 through the mid-1980s. The development of
these 13 experimental wind turbines pioneered many of the wind turbine
design technologies in use today, including: steel tube towers, variable-speed
generators, composite blade materials, and partial-span pitch control, as well as
aerodynamic, structural, and acoustic engineering design capabilities. The
modern wind power industry began in 1979 with the serial production of wind
turbines by Danish manufacturers Kuriant, Vestas, Nordtank, and Bonus. These
early turbines were small by today's standards, with capacities of 2030 kW each.
Since then, they have increased greatly in size, with the Enercon E-126 capable of
delivering up to 7 MW, while wind turbine production has expanded to many
countries.
As the 21st century began, rising concerns over energy security, global warming,
and eventual fossil fuel depletion led to an expansion of interest in all available forms
of renewable energy. Worldwide, many thousands of wind turbines are now
operating, with a total nameplate capacity of 194,400 MW. Europe accounted for
48% of the total in 2009.