It
is certain that the wind mill can elevate the water to a container
placed in the slope of a hill and from it to a hydraulic turbine
connected to a dynamo; but the cost of construction of this deposit
was too expensive for the usual tasks. Some engineers had projected
in those years a compressed air installation moved by a wind mill.
In this case, the compressed air in the tank was used to move the
machinery when it lacked the wind or it was calm. Nevertheless,
the mechanism only elevated the cost of the heavy and powerful compressing
installation ; so it turned out economic and less dangerous to buy
a gas or petroleum motor. The fact is that the invention of the
gas motors and those ones that used oils derived from the soft coal
or petroleum had lowered the price of the production of power in
many countries, and whereupon the wind motors had more competitors
to fight to in the times when they only had the steam engine as
the only rival.
A mill working in
Trapani (Italy)
The captain Robert Falcon Scott installed
a wind mill in the ship Discovery when he made his first trip to
the Antarctic regions. The wind motor was assembled so that it moved
an electrical equipment, with the object to save the small amount
of fuel that the ship loaded . Unfortunately, the mill was destroyed
by a gust of wind in a strong weather.
A TEST OF LIGHTING SYSTEM TAKING
ADVANTAGE OF THE WIND FORCE.
The windmill and dynamo connected to it , to conserve the electrical
current that illuminated the steamer Discovery, of Scott's First
Antarctic Expedition (1901 - 1904 ) , for the exploration to the
South Pole.
Naturally, the windmill of the XII
century was not the first apparatus that the man has used to take
advantage of the wind force. In the years of the sail navigation
, it existed boats constructed of steel and covered by thousands
of meters of canvas in their sails, suspended in five masts also
made of steel that crossed the seas at an average speed of 11 knots
per hour, from the New World one to the Old one. Without any doubt
it was some genius of the Stone Age , who lived in the borders of
the Mediterranean, who first hoisted a sail in a wood of his small
boat to avoid the work of rowing when following the course of a
river or to cross a bay. The Egyptians, eight thousand years ago,
had boats with a sail, that gradually were transforming into sailboats,
and is very probable that the first kings of the sea, in Crete,
were still more advanced or were more practitioners than the Egyptians
in the seacraft taking advantage of the wind force. |
Antique
windmills
Typical
mill in Malta .
Greek
mill in Cerigo Island .
Use
of the force of the wind in Siberia early last century
A
350 years old of existence mill in Europe .
Wind
mill to elevate water: The "simplex", one of most advanced
wind motors the English people used in the United Kingdom towards
beginnings of XX century. |
