Old Wind Mill Traditional Geocache
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(micro)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
you don't see to many of these any more CONGRATULATIONS SeekDaCache
FTF!!!
Brief History of Windmills in the New World By T. Lindsay Baker,
Daniel Halladay in 1854 is credited with having designed the first
commercially successful new windmill in the New World. His windmill
had a self-governing design. This means that it automatically
turned to face changing wind directions and that it automatically
controlled its own speed of operation. Halladay's initial wind
machine had four wooden blades which swiveled to provide varying
pitch in order to regulate operating speed. Later he devised wheels
comprised of "sections" of thin wooden blades which could pivot in
order to control surface exposed to the wind and thus regulate
wheel speed. Windmills of this design were called sectional wheel
windmills. Halladay invented his first successful self-governing
windmill in Connecticut, U.S.A., and his company manufactured them
there from 1854 to 1863. Delays in production and shipping, some
caused by the American Civil War, prompted him to relocate the
factory to Batavia, Illinois. There, in the Fox River Valley just
west of Chicago in the American Midwest, his company thrived. It
sold its Halladay Standard windmills by the thousands to farmers
and ranchers on the plains and prairies of North America as well as
farther afield. The earliest major competitor for Daniel Halladay's
pioneer windmills were the Eclipse windmills invented by 1867 by
the Reverend Leonard H. Wheeler. A missionary among the Ojibway
Indians of Wisconsin, Wheeler and his son devised a windmill for
use at their mission station. Instead of having a wheel comprised
of pivoting sections, their wind machine had a "solid" wheel in
which the wheel components were rigidly fastened together. The
Wheelers attached their wheel to a hinged vane (or tail), which
like a weather vane kept the wheel pointed into the wind when it
was operating. Their mill had a second, smaller vane attached
parallel with the wheel. This side or governor vane pushed the
wheel out of increasing wind velocities to regulate its speed of
operation. Other contemporary mills achieved the same end by
placing their wind wheel just off center. The Wheelers used a
weight on the end of a lever connected with the vane to "pull" the
wheel back to face the wind when its velocity subsided. All mills
of this design were called solid wheel windmills. Up to this time,
all windmills in North America were built from wood, with some iron
and steel parts holding the wooden components together. As early as
the 1870s, however, all-metal windmills were introduced, but at
first they were not especially popular. People believed that they
were easily broken and difficult to repair. In time, however, the
use of steel and iron for windmills increased so that by the
beginning of the twentieth century the majority of windmills built
were made from metal.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
onfr bs G-cbyr