USE OF THE WIND FORCE: The wind used as driving force for the impulsion of sailboats and the generation of energy from the old times.

The Old Times - Los Viejos Tiempos |Español :El viento usado como fuerza motriz| 1-2-3 -Next >>

In the beginnings of XX century , on the engine room of the Husum state shipyard (Schleswig Holstein) had been settled a wind mill of the old type, to take advantage of one the forms of natural energy most widely available and also used in the fluvial transport impulsion by the oceans and rivers from the beginnings of human history. It worked to produce an impulse at the slightest breeze, than could not move an ordinary windmill. With this slow movement of the air it even could drive a winch of 3.65 meters, a stone sharpener , a ventilator for the forges and a 20 inches of diameter saw. All these machines worked at the same time and at full speed, having as a motor the mill of four vanes, similar to the old ones. It is undoubtless that, in spite of its old fashioned form, the wind motor is the last improvement of a mechanism studied for a long time which combines a series of inventions and ingenious devices. In those times, for seventeen years, the Danish Government subsidized and provided all class of facilities to professor Poul la Cour , from Askov, Denmark who later laid the foundations for the modern aerodynamics of wind turbines , so that he could perform scientific investigations and tests with the wind motors; and from 1891 to his death, in 1908, he dedicated all his talent and energies to study how to construct this so important elementary motor.

The wind is, naturally, the most economic source of driving force. Today , the coalmines are few in number and a great capital is needed to be able to acquire and to operate them. The oil wells are still scarcer , and the hydraulic energy is only available in those regions in which a humid climate with an extensive water current of great slope or a high altitude jump is combined. Because waterfalls like Niagara, Iguazú and Victoria Falls are not very frequent, neither are countries with the hydraulic availabilities as Sweden and Norway . The energy generated from solar rays , if it is judged by the results obtained with the motor that devised Shuman in Egypt in 1912, that used the sun to generate a 60 horsepower (1 horsepower = 745.699872 Watts) engine for a irrigation project building a 220 foot long parabolic through collector, had only a general value and was practice solely in tropical countries and with cloudless sky . In the tempered zones, the powerful airflows that cross the seas and continents can be used as a common source and free of inexhaustible energy. They do not freeze in winter, as it occurs to the rivers and dams that provide hydraulics energy in Norway; they do not exhaust, like the oil well or coalmines; they are free, universal and eternal.

Sailboats in the port of Hamburg.

The Preussen giant with all its unfolded sails .

A landscape and typical windmill near Amsterdam, in the land rescued from the sea.

The man does not yet take position completely of the enormous force that can produce the wind and that is wasted before him. If he is an inhabitant of the great cities, he passes most of his life locked up between walls, and in his short daily strolls he is always surrounded by the high buildings. In the field, the houses are constructed in the lower parts of the land, not in the heights, and in addition, orchards and gardens protect the fields with rows of trees or walls against the wind strength and the storms. Thus, the conditions in which we live tend to subtract us from the natural force of the air in movement. We notice it when it reaches the speed of an express train; but we do not take advice of the subtle and constant airflow that we hardly perceive and is able to be used as a driving force six thousands one hundred eighty seven hours out of eight thousands seven hundred and sixty hours of the year . During a long period of time it can calculated that 65 to 70 percent of the days the wind moves on us at the rate of 16 kilometers per hour. This was time ago the smallest speed able to move a mill of vanes; but with the studies made later, the force produced by the wind can be transformed into light or do any mechanical work installing a generator impelled by the wind.

Two hundred years ago, the driving force that used the agriculture anywhere in the world was produced by the water and the wind and while abounded the water, it was used mainly in grinding the grain, sawing wood and to elevate water without hardly using the wind mills . But in the United Kingdom , where it can be said that no hydraulic force of importance exists, all this work of milling, was carried out taking advantage of the wind force.

It is truly worthy to be mentioned the extraordinary way that the Dutch people had to use so wisely the wind force. By means of perfected mills they managed that a part of the country be free of the invasions of the sea water. All the west territory of Holland has a lower sea level , that was gained laboriously and conserved with great success establishing numerous pumps moved by picturesque wind mills.

In 1750 a great improvement was introduced in the old Dutch mills by the Scottish Andrew Meikle (1719 -1811) who devised a small auxiliary mill, placed in right angle with the vanes ready so that they could turn with their sails automatically. This way, when the wind changed of direction it was not any more necessary to move the roof of the mill with a handle, as it was done in those times , because the auxiliary mill conducted this operation automatically. Exposing its surface to the wind, it turned around, and, when it moved, the cover was displaced with it. It stopped when it located with the edge against the action of the air, and in this position the great vanes received completely the motor action of the wind.

In 1807, Sir William Cubitt (1785 - 1841) also introduced a special device to reduce or self-regulate windmill sails for automatic operation of the mill regardless of wind speed . This was obtained constructing the mill vanes of wood strips tied with cords in similar form to the blinds. When strong bursts appeared, the wood strips were placed with their edges against to the wind, reducing the speed and avoiding the failures that the excess of air current could produce.

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