Mike Moeller works on the tail portion of an Aermotor windmill.
THE WINDMILL MAN BY MICHAEL ZIMNY
Mike Moeller has a unique skill set. Those iconic Aermotor windmills that populate the Plains, often in dilapidated, unworking condition? He can fix them. He can take them apart, repair broken parts or fabricate new ones, and make them spin again. For centuries, wind has been used to power various operations. In Europe, wind was historically harnessed by grain mills. That tradition continued in America, though the need for water is what drove the proliferation of windmills across the American prairie. According to T. Lindsay Baker’s “A Field Guide to American Windmills,” the first commercially successful American windmill was invented by Daniel Halladay of Marlboro, Vermont in 1854.
In 1863, the Halladay Wind Mill Company was bought out and manufacturing operations were moved to Batavia, Illinois. The market was in the Midwest, where fewer farms had access to water. Railroads, which used wind power to pump water for their steam locomotives, were another major customer. The early commercial windmills were made with wooden blades, at first featuring larger, paddleshaped blades, but designs quickly trended toward more numerous, thinner, rim-fixed blades. (Some farmers constructed their own windmills by hand, often utilizing designs much different than those commercially available.) Continued on the next page.
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