Nature Bulletin No. 558-A   March 15, 1975
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
George W. Dunne, President
Roland F. Eisenbeis, Supt. of Conservation

****:WINDMILLS

Two products of Yankee ingenuity -- barbed wire and the windmill -- 
played leading parts in the taming of the Wild West. Windmills made it 
possible to build the railroads and establish the ranches and farms 
which now occupy the Great Plains from Canada to Mexico. In that vast 
territory, once known as "The Great American Desert, " the annual 
rainfall is less than 20 inches -- frequently much less. Unless you have 
lived there, you cannot realize how terribly hot and dry that country 
becomes, nor how hard the winds may blow incessantly for days, weeks 
or even months. Windmills made it possible to pump, from veins far 
underground, water that was more precious than gold.

Windmills had been used in Europe since the 12th century, especially in 
the Netherlands and Germany, but they were huge cumbersome 
structures built to furnish great power for pumping large volumes of 
water or grinding grain. Their sail wheels, 60 or more feet in diameter 
and mounted on an enclosed tower, had from 4 to 6 radial arms that 
almost touched the ground as they revolved. On each arm were 
transverse slats over which a canvas sail had to be unfurled and 
stretched each time the mill was operated.

In the German type, the entire tower was rotated around a central post, 
by hand, to keep the wheel facing the wind. On the Dutch type only the 
top or turret revolved and one of these was preserved in Mt. Emblem 
Cemetery on Grand Ave. just west of the new Tri-State Tollroad. It was 
built in 1847 and, until 1916, was used to grind grain into flour and 
livestock feed.

In 1854, Daniel Halliday, a young mechanic in Ellington, Connecticut, 
perfected a windmill that was not only much smaller and less expensive 
than the European types but was portable and had two great 
improvements. Its wheel was sectional, with wooden "sails," and was 
automatically shifted into the wind by wind pressure on a vertical vane 
or tail behind it. Further, there was a weight which acted like the 
governor on a steam engine. When the wind's velocity caused the wheel 
to spin too fast, the weight rose slowly and reduced the "pitch" of the 
sails -- the area presented to the wind. Mounted on a tower or a barn, 
the power was applied through a transmission device to a pump rod or 
the shaft of a mill. The availability of water, because of this invention, 
attracted ranchers and homesteaders. Soon the prairies were dotted with 
windmills, mounted on crude wooden towers, looming above the stock 
tanks and every railroad water tank. Halliday's shop was expanded into 
the United States Wind Engine and Pump Company and relocated on 
the Fox River at Batavia, Illinois.  At the Philadelphia Centennial in 
1876, the best windmill was the Eclipse, invented by a missionary to the 
Ojibway Indians and later made by the Fairbanks-Morse Co.  At one 
time there were 30 to 40 such manufacturers. Gradually, the wooden 
ones gave way to all-steel windmills with curved blades, such as Elgin's 
Wonder (made in Elgin, I11. ), Woodmanse (Freeport, Ill. ), Baker 
(Evansville, Wis. ) and Aermotor, manufactured in Chicago since 1888 
and one of the few still made.

Almost every windmill you see in Illinois now is an Aermotor with its 
patented self-oiling gear case. One huge ranch in Texas has more than 
100 of them, serviced by a cowhand who travels in a jeep!