To further illustrate the role of Carl Wilcox in the Smith-Putnam project, I searched the name index and pulled together … Read more
History of Wind Power
In the 1970s Carl Wilcox gave me a box of archive materials on the Smith-Putnam wind turbine project. I had … Read more
The historical saga begun by Erik Möllerström and myself finally reaches its conclusion with the publication of Part 2 in … Read more
The Zaanstreek or the district on the Zaan river in the Dutch province of Noord Holland once contained the largest … Read more
In trying to find the original sources for my table on the number of traditional European windmills I’ve come across … Read more
While cleaning off my desk top, closing folders, and deleting files from our long project on the history of modern … Read more
As part of our research into the history of wind turbines, Erik Möllerström and I came across the story of Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen and his expedition on the Fram.
The first installment of an overview of the history of conventional wind turbines was published by Swedish academic Erik Möllerström and myself 15 August. Part 1 appears in Wind Engineering, an imprint of Sage Journals. The second part will appear later this year.
Nearly a century before anyone thought seriously about wind-powered electricity, a Scotsman named James Blyth built the world’s first wind turbine in his front yard. “When a good breeze was blowing, I stored as much in half a day as gave me light for four evenings,” he wrote.
Arne Jaeger reports that the Deutsches Windkraftmuseum (the German Wind Power Museum) has obtained one of the two blades used on the Voith 520 wind turbine developed in Germany during the late 1970s and tested in the early 1980s.
