Windmills still used
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March 12, 2020
Lyndell Hanson
This windmill near Burr Oak appears to be ready to water cattle again this summer. Windmills are less commonly used today, but have played an important part in the Midwest where there is an abundance of wind energy.
On a trip to Burr Oak, I noticed a windmill. The fan was not turning on a windy day.
I stopped and walked into the field to see why it wasn't turning. As near as I could tell, the brake was set so the fan could not turn to pump the water for the cattle. It didn't look like the cattle had been in that pen for a while because the weeds and grass were not trampled down. I could tell the mill was still active because of the condition of all the equipment.
After pondering about the windmill, I looked up windmill history and here's what I found.
The earliest windmills were used by the Persians, to harness the wind for grinding grain and pumping water between AD 500 to 900 and by the Chinese in AD 1200.
The first windmill manufactured in The United States was designed by Daniel Halladay in 1854 in his Connecticut machine shop.
The first practical windmills were panemone windmills using sails rotating in a horizontal plane around a vertical axis and covered in reed matting or cloth material. These mills were used to grind grain or draw water from a well or stream.
There are two main types of windmills - the horizontal and vertical axis.
There are many uses for wind energy such as turning large turbines used to produce electricity, which are seen across the country side. Once the fan type windmills were every where you looked. Today few are standing that actually work.
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