The York County History Center’s Virtual Exhibition of the Smith-Putnam wind turbine has gone live. Opening with a stunning photo of five men standing on one of the two blades after the giant turbine was installed in Vermont in 1941. The exhibition celebrates the 80th anniversary of the 175-foot (53-meter) diameter wind turbine feeding electricity into the grid—a first in North America.
19 October marks 80 years since testing began of the 1.25 MW Smith-Putnam turbine on Grandpas’ Knob near Rutland, Vermont in 1941. To mark the occasion, the York County History Center in York, Pennsylvania is opening its digital exposition Tuesday, 19 October. The S. Morgan Smith Company, of Smith-Putnam fame, manufactured hydroelectric turbines in York, Pennsylvania before it ventured into wind energy.
La Puissance du Vent: Des moulins á vent aux éoliennes modernes by Philippe Bruyerre is a major work on the history of wind energy particularly in France, but also elsewhere. His book earns a place in French analogous to Matthias Heymann’s masterwork on German wind energy or Rinie van Est’s Winds of Change.
The following are the bibliographic entries I’ve been able to uncover for Dimitri Stein, a German-American engineer who studied wind energy in the mid 1940s. He and the company he started with others designed and built a 15-meter diameter wind turbine for a remote island in 1949.
While traveling in Belgium the day after hearing about Wobben’s death, his direct-drive Enercon turbine heritage was prominently visible along the way. The turbines’ characteristic egg-shaped nacelles makes them easily recognisable, together with the unusual high-performance blade design featuring tip winglets and a widening spoiler towards the aerodynamically optimised spinner.
Another visual characteristic is the slender prefab coning of the often concrete-steel hybrid towers with their patented colour scheme in different shades from dark green to lighter colours towards the white-grey upper structure.
I’ve just learned that an open-air museum of wind turbines in Germany has expanded its collection to include two US-built machines. I hope to get there some day–once Covid-19 has lifted. Nothing like kicking iron if you’re into windmills.
In response to my article Who Built the World’s First Wind Farm? Thomas Leitlein argues that it was the island of Rhodes off the coast of Turkey in the Aegean Sea. He makes his case below.
As interest in the Smith-Putnam project heated up, a colleague directed me to a video of the famous mill at Gedser in Denmark. It was at Gedser where the modern wind industry began.
Because of increasing historical interest in the Smith-Putnam wind turbine, I’ve added two new pages on the Project: patents for … Read more
Ok, I am a windmill geek, have been for decades now. I work with modern wind energy, but my interest in the subject has led off in many directions, including traditional or “Dutch” windmills. I have a hefty collection of books on Dutch, German, French, and, yes, on English windmills.
2023 © Wind-Works by Paul Gipe