Herr Fedor Seidler has forwarded a link to several lengthy documents summarizing the work of Albert Betz, Ludwig Prandtl, and their colleagues at the University of Göttingen.
History of Wind Power
Included in the correspondence from Palmer Putnam to Herman Drees is a letter from Richard Heckscher who was involved in blade development on the Smith-Putnam project. (See Palmer Putnam to Herman Drees Letter Reveals Emphasis on Swept Area.) Hecksher had alerted Putnam to the work of Herman Drees in developing Drees’ Cycloturbine.
18-page scan of documents in the archives of Wally Thompson of correspondence from Palmer Putnam to Herman Drees in 1979.
Wally Thompson forwarded to me some fascinating correspondence from Palmer Putnam to Herman Drees of Pinson Cycloturbine fame.
Erik Grove-Nielsen has confirmed that the Tvindkraft wind turbine was designed to be slightly larger than the Smith-Putnam wind turbine and become the world’s largest wind turbine in 1978.
Since I posted my article on the revised rating of Smith-Putnam’s famed wind turbine of the 1940s, I’ve received several comments. (See When is a 1,250 kW Wind Turbine Only 1,000 kW? Setting the Smith-Putnam Record Straight.) One was from an old wind hand, Mark Haller. Others also noted the historical record is rife with the error.
I receive a fair amount of mail of the “What do you think of this” variety. Often it’s a quick push of the delete key and I am off about my business. Occasionally I’ve been known to go “Hmm” and forced to go a little further. A proposal by SAILWIND from the Hochschule für Technik, Wirtschaft und Gestaltung, Konstanz (the University of Applied Sciences, Constance) falls into the latter category.
French colleague Philippe Bruyerre called my attention to an error I’ve been promulgating for at least four decades. He noted that I’d described the famed 1940’s era Smith-Putnam wind turbine as rated at 1,250 kW. It was not he wrote. It was really only a 1,000 kW wind turbine.
The research for an article on the history of early wind turbines took me down one fascinating rabbit hole after another. Previously, I mentioned Dimitri Stein and his Nordwind turbine on the Island of Neuwerk in the Wattensee. Another long-forgotten wind turbine I’d never heard of before was off the west coast of England on the Isle of Man.
While working on an article on the history of early wind turbines, I tumbled down a very deep rabbit hole. How was Dimitri Stein able to work on wind energy in Berlin during the height of World War II? This was post Kristallnacht, and Stein lived and worked right under the nose of the Third Reich.
