the.com/windmill
a giant pinwheel that turned wind into bread long before it turned it into power
means A machine that uses sails or blades turned by the wind to power work like grinding grain, pumping water, or generating electricity.
from A plain English compound of "wind" and "mill," both old Germanic words — "mill" traces back through Old English "mylen" to Latin "molina," from "molere," to grind. The word names exactly what the thing first did: a mill driven by wind, built across medieval Europe to spare human and animal muscle from the endless turning of the grindstone.
- origin
- Persians built the first ones around 700 AD
- don quixote
- a fictional knight charged them mistaking them for giants
- dutch fleet
- the Netherlands once ran over 10,000 of them
- sail design
- blades catch wind like a ship catches sea
- grind work
- originally milled grain, hence the name
kinderdijk windmills — 19 dutch windmills built in the 1700s in netherlands, unesco world heritage site
don quixote's windmills — fictional windmills in la mancha, spain that inspired cervantes' 1605 novel
schermerhorn windmill — oldest windmill in netherlands, built 1629 in north holland