History of Wind Power

The history of wind power cannot be traced in detail. However, it is a fact that wind power has been in used for a long time now. In movies about pirates, you will see that the pirates used wind power to propel ships and sailboats.

Winds power has been used for around 5,500 years now, but there has been so little realization about it. In fact, it was only in the later ancient times that wind power has been used to provide power to machines.

The following are some of the facts that were traced when determining the history of wind power.
• Hammurabi, the Babylonian emperor, planned to use it in the 17th century BC for his irrigation project, which for the time seemed to be ambitious.
• One of the first uses for a simple windmill was to provide power to an organ during the 1st century AD.
• It was in 7th century, in Sistan, Afghanistan, when practical windmills were built. These were the first practical windmills that had a long vertical driveshaft and were designed as vertical-axel windmills. These are made with a dozen or so sails and were covered with reed matting or cloth. These windmills were designed to gather up water, and grind corn. These were used in sugarcane industries and grist-milling companies.
• In the beginning of 1180s, horizontal axel windmills were designed and used in Northwestern Europe. These were use to grind flour.
• It was the water-pumping windmills that allowed farmers and ranchers in North America to be able to have access to water all the time. It was in North America where there used to be a problem with access to water, which was a huge problem to farmers and ranchers. Windmills were used to pump water from wells to supply the steam locomotives with enough water.

Charles F. Bush is an American who is usually credited as the first person to have produced electricity with the use of a machine powered by wind. He first used it in the winter of 1887. In that same year, in the month of July, James Blyth was also already doing research and similar experiments. His experiments culminated in 1891 in a United Kingdom patent.

Blyth’s design was a 33 feet high wind turbine in cloth sails. His wind turbine was used to provide power to light the cottage by charging the accumulators that were developed by Camille Alphonse Faure. His cottage is the first house all over the world to have its electricity using wind power.

Blyth offered to the people of Marykirk the extra supply of electricity by lighting the main street. His offer was however turned down, as the product of his wind turbine, electricity, was then regarded as a “work of the devil”. However, this invention was not used as at that time, technology was seen as not economically viable.
• It was in the 1890s when Poul la Cour, a Dane, constructed a wind turbine that can generate electricity. This invention was later used to produce hydrogen.

As the history of wind power was being traced, it was discovered that the first modern turbines were designed and built in the early years of 1980s. Up to this time, more advanced designs are still being studied and developed.