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Concept
Windmill
Summary
A windmill is a structure that converts wind power into rotational energy using vanes called sails or blades, by tradition specifically to mill grain (gristmills), but in some parts of the English-speaking world the term has also been extended to encompass windpumps, wind turbines, and other applications. The term wind engine is also sometimes used to describe such devices.
Windmills were used throughout the high medieval and early modern periods; the horizontal or panemone windmill first appeared in Persia during the 9th century, and the vertical windmill first appeared in northwestern Europe in the 12th century. Regarded as an icon of Dutch culture, there are approximately 1,000 windmills in the Netherlands today.
Wind-powered machines may have been known earlier, but there is no clear evidence of windmills before the 9th century. Hero of Alexandria (Heron) in first-century Roman Egypt described what appears to be a wind-driven wheel to power a machine. His description of a wind-powered organ is not a practical windmill but was either an early wind-powered toy or a design concept for a wind-powered machine that may or may not have been a working device, as there is ambiguity in the text and issues with the design. Another early example of a wind-driven wheel was the prayer wheel, which is believed to have been first used in Tibet and China, though there is uncertainty over the date of its first appearance, which could have been either 400, the 7th century, or after the 9th century.
One of the earliest recorded working windmill designs found was invented sometime around 700–900 AD in Persia. This design was the panemone, with vertical lightweight wooden sails attached by horizontal struts to a central vertical shaft. It was first built to pump water, and subsequently modified to grind grain as well.
Panemone windmill
The first practical windmills were panemone windmills, using sails that rotated in a horizontal plane, around a vertical axis.
Made of six to 12 sails covered in reed matting or cloth material, these windmills were used to grind grain or draw up water.
Official source
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