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History of Wind Power
The wind has played an important role to mankind for a long time. The first known usage dates back 5,000 years to the ancient Egypt's, using sailboats to travel at sea. From the ancient Egypt's sailing boats to the modern high-tech wind turbines, humans have been using wind power for thousands of years.
It wasn't until after several thousands of years from when wind was first utilized, to when the windmill was constructed. The earliest ever built was constructed in Persia in the area of 500-900 A.D., some of the tasks performed with these constructions are water pumping and grain-grinding. Worth to note about these early types of mills is the vertical axis design, as opposed to the horizontal axis design. The latter was used to construct the first windmills in the western world about 1300 - 1900 A.D. Why this design was preferred over the other is not clear, but may have something to do with the fact that European water wheels were constructed with a horizontal axis design. Anther reason of more technical nature exists, the fact that vertical machines could lose up to half of their rotor collection area, due to shielding requirements, has very likely been taken into consideration when making design decisions.
The Brush machine was the first large electricity generating windmill ever built, it was a post-mill, the characteristic of such a machine is that the whole body of the mill is mounted on a single post, on which can be turned to bring the sails into the wind. The year was 1888 and the constructor was a man named Charles F. Brush, hence the name of the mill. The rotor of this monster machine was 17 meters in diameter.
In the 1980's the modern wind epoch started. Around 15,000 wind turbines were installed between 1981 and 1986 in San Francisco. Together they provided every household with sufficient power. To promote wind electric systems, the state provided tax incentives and subsidies. The dangers related to nuclear power and the high cost of fossil fuel derivate energy, resulted in this strong stately support. After the tax incentives was terminated in 1985, growth has continued although more slowly. In the early 1990's, the industry experienced big technology improvements. Lower production cost and increased turbine reliability, elevated the development.
The wind power timeline ranges from all the way back to the ancient Egypt's to the 21'Th century and will probably be one of our most important energy resources. The technology developments achieved in renewable energy history is of course very important now in our days of climate change.