Windmill

“ Through the confused tracery of many thousands of naked poplars, the smoke of so many houses, and the evening steam ascending from the fields, the sails of a windmill on a gentle eminence moved very conspicuously, like a donkey’s ears. ”

“ The modern windmill, acting on precisely the same principle, is a comparatively small affair, comprising many vanes of metal, and constituting a far more practical machine. The great defect of all windmills, however, is found in the fact that of necessity they furnish such variable power, since the force of the wind is incessantly changing. Worst of all, there may be protracted periods of atmospheric calm, during which, of course, the windmill ceases to have any utility whatever. ”

“ A south-west wind is blowing over the plains. It drives the “messengers” over the sky, and the sails of the windmill, and makes the dead leaves dance upon the graves. It does much to dispel the evil effects of the foul smells and noxious gases, which are commoner yet in the little village than one might suppose. (But it is a long time, you see, since the fever was here.) It shows the silver lining of the willow leaves by the little river, and bends the flowers which grow in one glowing mass—like some gorgeous Eastern carpet—on Master Swift’s grave. ”

“ Here I am living hundreds of kilometres from the fogs of Paris, on a radiantly beautiful hillside, in the land of the tambourine and Muscat wine. Around my windmill, everything is sunshine and music; I have wind orchestras of wheatears, bands of blue-tits, and choirs of curlews from morning to midday. And the cicadas, and the shepherds playing their fifes, and the dark haired young beauties laughing amongst the vines.... ”

“ It was on this enchanted island that I used to fulfil my need for the open air and solitude before I found my windmill.
What did I do with myself?
Very much what I do here, or perhaps even less. When the mistral or tramontana didn't blow too hard, I used to settle down between two rocks, down by the sea amongst the gulls, blackbirds, and swallows, and stayed there nearly all day in that state between stupor and despondency which comes from contemplating the sea. Have you ever experienced that sweet intoxication of the soul? You don't think; you don't even dream ”

“ In the first, "The Windmill," which is illustrated, the motion of the wind and of the world it blows is dazzling. The field of, golden grain, bright in the glow of the sun that has just broken through the rain clouds, is quivering with graceful undulations. ”

“ The nearest mountains, the Alpilles, are far away, their grand silhouettes pressing against the sky.... There was hardly a sound to be heard; a fading fife, a curlew calling amongst the lavender, and a tinkle of mules' bells from somewhere along the track. The Provencal light really brings this beautiful landscape to life.
Don't you wonder, right now, if I am missing your black and bustling Paris? Actually, I'm very contented in my windmill; it is just the sort of warm, sweet-smelling spot I was looking for, a long, long way from newspapers, hansom cabs, and all that fog!... ”

“ No one can stand very near the crashing sweeps of a windmill in half a gale without a tightening of the heart—a feeling comparable to that which comes from watching the waves break over a wall in a storm. ”

“ The power of the wind applied to a windmill is much used for driving pumps. It is a long step forward from the ancient and picturesque Dutch form of windmill, consisting of only four arms with cloth sails, to the modern improved forms of wheels constructed in wood and in iron, with a large number of impulse blades, and provided with devices regulating the speed, turning the wheel out of the wind during a gale, and stopping it automatically when the storage tank is filled. ”

“ The fixed windmill, which requires no swivel mechanism and no vane to keep it up to the wind, is the cheapest and may be made the most substantial of all the forms of wind-motor. In its rudimentary shape this very elementary windmill resembles a four-bladed screw steam-ship propeller. The wheel may be constructed by simply erecting a high windlass with arms bolted to the barrel at each end, making the shape of a rectangular cross. But those at one end are fixed in such positions that when viewed from the side they bisect the angles made by those at the other side. ”

“ Thus it had stood, known as "The Windmill," the friend of every stockman, homesteader, land owner or wandering Indian that chanced its way since the day, many years ago, a progressive sheep man, seeing the value to his herds of this extensive grazing ground, had caused to be hauled for many miles, across mountain, stream and plain, the machinery for its erection, for the establishment of this oasis in the desert. ”

“ Our own country is probably the only one in which the use of windmills is increasing. The modern American windmill, with its disklike assemblage of numerous light sails, and ingenious contrivances for veering, reefing, etc., is a much more efficient contrivance38 than the old-fashioned windmill ”

“ To the next above that the grain was drawn up from the basement in the first instance. The top story of all held the machinery connected with the turning of the sails. Ladders led from story to story, and each room had two windows on opposite sides of the mill.
Use is second nature, and all the sounds which haunt a windmill were soon as familiar and as pleasant to the little Jan as if he had been born a windmiller’s son. Through many a windy night he slept as soundly as a sailor in a breeze which might disturb the nerves of a land-lubber. ”

“ The identity of the man or men who invented the windmill is also lost in the mists of antiquity—or at least of the Middle Ages. The earliest authenticated reference to a windmill in western Europe refers to one that stood in France about the year 1180. ”

“ Away we go,
Windmills go both fast and slow.
It takes two children to make a windmill in this Windmill Game. If Jan and Hilda and Kassie and Karl and Bram and Katrina all play, how many windmills do they make? ”

“ "If the windmill should prove too formidable," said he, from the threshold, "I may see what can be done with the wind. ”

“ This, however paradoxical it may appear, is evident enough in similar instances on shore, since it is well known that the sails of a windmill often move faster than the wind; and one great superiority of common windmills over all others that ever were, or ever will be, contrived {314} to move with an horizontal motion, is analogous to the case we have mentioned of a vessel upon a wind and before the wind: for the sails of an horizontal windmill, the faster they move the more they detract from the impulse of the wind upon them ”

“ If water were plentiful, you might make it pump up a quantity when the wind served, to be used as a motive power when you chose."
This reference alludes to a windmill which I erected on the top of my workshop, to drive the apparatus below. It was the mirror of a reflecting telescope which was in progress. The windmill went on night and day, and polished the speculum while I slept. In the small hours of the morning I keeked through the corner of the window blinds and saw it hard at work. I prefer, however, a small steam-engine, which works much more regularly. ”

“ The windmill has been developed in the United States, along different lines, and American windmills are very superior to the older forms. The American windmill consists of a wheel with a great number of narrow, radial, inclined arms of wood or metal, the axis of the wheel being horizontal, and the direction of the wheel being regulated by an arm carrying a vane. One firm in the United States is said to make nearly 20,000 windmills annually. Windmills are unsuited to driving dynamos on account of the variation in speed. ”

“ Though the windmill is one of the oldest of the appliances by which man has sought to turn to his use the powers of nature, it remained until a comparatively recent period a very crude and cumbersome machine. In the earliest form, the wheel was fixed so that it could only turn when the wind was in the right direction ”

“ Mules' kicks are not normally of such lightning speed, but she was a papal mule; and consider this; she had held it back for seven long years. There was never a better demonstration of an ecclesiastical grudge.
THE LIGHTHOUSE ON THE SANGUINAIRES It was one of those nights when I just couldn't sleep. The mistral was raging and kept me awake till morning. Everything creaked on the windmill, the whistling sails swayed heavily like ship's tackle in the wind, tiles flew wildly off the roof. The closely packed pines covering the hillside swayed and rustled far away in the darkness. ”

“ The wind has at times a velocity of over 35 feet per second; it is howling in the rigging, whistling over the ice, and the snow is drifting so badly that a man might be lost in it quite near at hand. We are sitting here listening to the howling in the chimney and in the ventilators, just as if we were sitting in a house at home in Norway. The wings of the windmill have been going round at such a rate that you could hardly distinguish them; but we have had to stop the mill this evening because the accumulators are full, and we fastened up the wings so that the wind might not destroy them. ”

“ The probable cost of dynamo and accumulator does not seem fatal to the plan, if the windmill could be had for something comparable with the prime cost of a steam-engine, capable of working at the same horse-power as the windmill when in good action. But windmills as hitherto made are very costly machines, and it does not seem probable that, without inventions not yet made, wind can be economically used to give light in any considerable class of cases, or to put energy into store for work of other kinds.
Consider, lastly, rain-power. ”

“ I know a man who takes the loss of the windmill so much to heart that he is making a windmill map. He is beginning with Sussex only and marking with a cross every place—so far as he can now ascertain—where a windmill once stood. ”

“ Then the clay wall of Stanfield's mill is as beautiful as a piece of chalk cliff, all worn into furrows by the rain, coated with mosses, and rooted to the ground by a heap of crumbled stone, embroidered with grass and creeping plants. But this is not a serviceable state for a windmill to be in. The essence of a windmill, as distinguished from all other mills, is, that it 8 should turn round, and be a spinning thing, ready always to face the wind; as light, therefore, as possible, and as vibratory; so that it is in no wise good for it to approximate itself to the nature of chalk cliffs. ”

“ The power of a windmill depends—first, on the diameter of the wheel; and second, on the velocity of wind. To increase the diameter of the wheel is to increase its power in proportion to the area of the squares. Table I gives the horse-power of several sizes of mills working in a fifteen-mile wind: if the wind velocity be increased or diminished, the power of the windmill will increase or decrease in the ratio of the squares of the velocity. ”

“ The governing is entirely automatic. If the pressure on the wind wheel, which it will be seen is set off the centre line of the mill and tower, exceeds that found desirable—and this can be regulated by means of a spring on the fantail—the windmill automatically turns on the turn-table and presents an ellipse to the wind instead of a circular face, thus decreasing the area exposed to the wind gradually until the wheel reaches its final position, or is hauled out of gear, when the edges only are opposed to the full force of the wind. ”

“ Thinking over the losses which England has had forced upon her by steam and the ingenuity of179 the engineer, one is disposed to count the decay of the windmill among the first. Perhaps in the matter of pure picturesqueness the most serious thing that ever happened to England was the discovery of galvanized iron roofing; but, after all, there was never anything but quiet and rich and comfortable beauty about red roofs, whereas the living windmill is not only beautiful but romantic too: a willing, man-serving creature, yoked to the elements, a whirling monster, often a thing of terror. ”

“ It may be proper to say here that what is related applies entirely to the old-style windmill, and in no measure whatever to the modern American type of windmill, which, while cheap, effective and useful, is nevertheless a prosaic, galvanized iron, squeaky thing, of which happily the larger proportion of the millions annually made is exported out of our country! ”

“ I slept that night in the room I used to have when I was a little boy, with the summer wind blowing in at the windows, bringing the smell of the ripe fields. I lay awake and watched the moonlight shining over the barn and the stacks and the pond, and the windmill making its old dark shadow against the blue sky. ”

“ The light steel windmills tremble throughout their frames and tug at their moorings, as they vibrate in the wind that often blows from one week's end to another across that high, active, resolute stretch of country. ”

“ Nothing less than a twelve-foot mill ought to be erected, and, to be efficient, the wind must blow at the rate of twelve to sixteen miles an hour.
Fig. 43.—Windmill and water tank.
A windmill of the best design is made entirely of steel with small angle irons for posts for the tower, and with [Pg 171] the mill itself made of galvanized iron. It requires a good foundation and must be well anchored to the masonry piers by strong bolts set well down into the masonry. ”

“ The chief advantage is that, like a ram, the windmill may work night and day, with but slight attention to lubrication, so long as the wind blows. But there are also drawbacks; it requires very large storage tanks to provide for periods of calm; the wheel must be placed sufficiently exposed to receive the full wind force, either on a tower or on a high hill, and usually this is not the best place to find water. Besides, a windmill tower, at least the modern one, is not an ornamental feature in the landscape. It is expensive when built sufficiently strong to withstand severe winter gales. ”