Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Windmills

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why windmills are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5Apologies for a brief issue with Alex's mic. You'll hear his backup audio until around nine minutes in, and then the whole rest of the show is his regular mic.

I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. I'm the next bullseye for MaximumFun.org and NPR.

Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace,

because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Hey folks, one heads up about the audio of this episode. It is all totally listenable. It all sounds good. The very beginning of the episode, you will hear the backup version of my audio instead of the main microphone. There was just an early issue with it, and then I spotted it pretty quickly. So there'll just be a transition a few minutes in where it goes to my regular microphone. Most people don't even notice that

kind of thing, but there are people who do, and I want you to know that's what's going on. It's not your system or whatever. Anyway, that's the show. It's a great one. Please enjoy. That's the show. It's a great one. Please enjoy. Windmills. Known for being windy. Famous for being spinny. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why windmills are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion of windmills? Intimate. It's an intimate relationship. No, I like windmills. I don't know too much about them except that they are powered by wind and that they mill, usually grain.

And I know the Don Quixote sort of connection there. I read Don Quixote in high school. It's a tough read for a high schooler. At least it was for me. But I like them. Aesthetically, there's something about them that makes me happy, uh, from the little ones to the huge ones. Like the, the little kind of like cute windmills, uh, inspires some, you know, sense of like coziness, like, Hey, I'm in the countryside

and it makes me feel good. And the really huge, like modern ones, I just think are awesome. Like there's something about a big moving thing that both, it's like it scares me in a good way. It's like a roller coaster scary where it's like I'm scared of this huge moving thing, but I also like it. It is one of the most monumental and almost modern old buildings, right? Yeah. Like a medieval windmill or a Dutch windmill or a Man of La Mancha windmill or something. It's one of the only medieval things that looks like it's part of a carnival or an amusement park. It's cool. Yeah, it's really neat. And when you drive in California, there's a bunch of, I mean,

I'm sure this is true of other parts of the country as well, but like you're doing a road trip and there's like a ton of windmills that you pass by and they're just, they're so big and tall. The wind farms. Yeah. I don't dislike them in the way a lot of people do where they think they look aesthetically unpleasing. I actually really like them. I saw some in Copenhagen as well. And like when you're looking, cause I was on a really tall hostel staying in a tall hostel. So we got a great view of the city and it was kind of like foggy and overcast as is the weather all the time there. You look into like this sort of like misty fog and you see like these windmills off in the distance. And there's something like, again, it's like a little bit creepy and how huge they are, but they're moving. And there's like a

megalophobia kind of thing where people have this fear response to like really huge things. I get that, but it's like fun, like in a kind of like pleasant way. I feel exactly the same. There's so many people who claim that the modern wind farm type giant's wind turbine is an eyesore. And I think it's kind of science fiction and rad. Yeah, I like them. I don't live near any. Maybe if I was around it all the time, it would bug me. Yeah. I love that word megalophobia. What a good word. I feel the opposite about these wind farms. Yeah. I mean, so like solar farms, even though I'm completely in favor of them because I don't want, you know,

there to be mass extinctions on earth. To me, a solar farm is like kind of doesn't bother me that much, but it's not aesthetically pleasing to me in the way that modern windmills are and classical windmills. Who doesn't love a classic windmill from like the Dutch ones to the like Courage the Cowardly Dog style little farmhouse windmill? I love all of them. I love all windmills. I'm so glad you framed it that way because that is the topic today. It's basically three things. The first half of the main show is about agricultural windmills and water lifting wind pumps. And then the second half and the bonus show are about windmills that generate electricity, like wind

powered turbines, because those also get called windmills. And all of them are structures that use wind energy for a human purpose. So they're all the topic. And that's the order we'll go in. They are milling energy grains. Yeah. Also, by the way, it turns out milling, very dense topic. We will not cover it.

It could be a whole separate episode. It's too controversial. We can't get into that. It's not a safe topic to cover. We will be canceled immediately if we get in on the very touchy subject of milling. Yeah. You can't crush a grain without the woke Arati coming. I didn't even want to pretend to be those dudes at a joke.

Wow, that's cool. Anyway. I also want to say thank you to Mav on the Discord for this great idea. And he had support from Karak and others in the polls because people got really excited about windmills, a bunch of like gifs of windmills and stuff. It was a nice time.

And our first fascinating thing about this topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. That's in a segment called. Whoa, the stats we share. Whoa, numbers make you care. Stats are fun. Don't pull out your hair. Whoa, math is always fair. Man, I love that. How's it going? Yeah. And that name was submitted by Zach W. Thank you so much, Zach. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make him as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit

through Discord or to civpod at gmail.com. The first number this week is about 1,000 years old. Wow. Wow. 1,000 years old. That's old. And it's such a big round number. It's great. But that is the age of the world's oldest operating windmill.

Wow. They were milling wind all the way back then. Yeah. And we think people started milling wind about 1,500 years ago. So this is just the oldest one still standing. Oh, it's still standing. Does it still work? Yeah. It's not very powerful, but it still runs and could be used for milling grain was the purpose. Wow. Yeah. That's incredible. It seems like it'd be super squeaky, super like you'd need to get some real WD-40 on there to get it running again,

which we did a whole episode about WD-40. Yeah. San Diego culture, WD-40. And this also, its location and its build are totally different from the windmills in my head. This is a set of vertical axis windmills that are built into a city wall in modern Iran at a city called Nashtifan. These are really interesting looking. Yeah. And there's pictures from National Geographic from Atlas Obscura will link that. Nashtifan is a name that means storm's sting. That's an awesome name. Yeah, I wish they just picked it for heavy metal reasons, but the location is known for frequent gusting winds from the south. And so about a thousand

years ago, they built a giant earthen wall at Nashtifan to just break the wind and then they built these windmills into the wall for power that's that's so clever it's awesome yeah and and again this is a vertical axis windmill so if you're imagining like a dutch one the axis is horizontal the axis goes uh left to right i guess you'd call it and then the the big sails, the big arms on it are vertical. Right. It turns like the hands of a clock as the wind pushes them around. But this turns more like a rotating door, like one of those sort of rotating doors you go in or like a turnstile. Exactly. Perfect visual. So yeah, they built these vertical axis version and we think that was the first human windmill was vertical axis style where it's an up and down pole. And then

the Nashafan one, it's a bunch of wooden paddles. The whole thing is made of wood and clay and straw. That's it. Amazing. Now, you really emphasized human windmills. Am I to believe that there are some kind of like monkey windmills out there? From our crows episode, I feel like they probably got up to it. They're so smart. Oh, geez. Plus, they love grain.

So, you know. Yeah, of course. Why wouldn't they? They're motivated. No, but this is really cool so it's like these almost look like trees with these wooden panels attached to them um and so where would the where would the milling part i don't really see where they would mill the grain is that sort of like underground or uh like how how did this because i see where the wind hits it and how it would turn this like tree like rod. But then

how where where is the actual milling action? Yeah, I wondered, too. It's not really in the picture. And so somewhere these are turning a millstone. OK, the extremely basic version of milling as you crush grain right into a powder, which is flour. But again, milling could be a whole nother episode. Yeah. And yeah, we can mill with human bodies doing the power, but we like to use animals, water, wind, anything we can find to do it instead. Right. And we think ancient Persia invented the first windmills in general and used them to mill food. There's one potential earlier design from a Greek inventor named Hero of Alexandria, but all we know is he might have done a diagram of a sort of wind

wheel for a musical instrument. So that's not for milling and he might not have ever built it and this could be silly stuff. The clear first windmills were ancient Persia, about 500 AD. It's for milling notes. That's interesting. But yeah, I mean, but yeah, I guess that, yeah, I wouldn't necessarily consider like a wind powered instrument of which there are many to be like a windmill. Yeah. And we think this technology spread worldwide from Persia.

Also, along the way, people invented a horizontal axis mill instead of vertical. And both are used today for various applications. Most of the ancient Persian windmills are gone. And medieval Persian windmills are gone. This Nashtafan example is a really special one. And also, they have been cared for. The governmenthtafan example is a really special one. And also they have been cared for. The government of Iran declared it a heritage site in 2002. And there's a resident of Nashtafan named Ali Muhammad Atabari, who volunteers to maintain and keep these up for no pay.

Wow. In an interview, he said, quote, if I don't look after them, the youngsters will come and spoil it and break everything. Dang kids, you get off of my windmill. Yeah, and then this whole situation, it leads to an even more fundamental concept that really expanded my mind. It's like so many SIF topics. I just never thought about it. The next number is about 5,000 years old. So around 3000 BC, around 5,000 years old is the age of the oldest

description of a boat powered by winds. Whoa. You know, like a sailboat. Yeah, of course. A lot of boats powered by wind. So that was 5,000 years old. Yeah, around 3000 BC, someone in ancient Egypt crafted a vase with art on it depicting a sailboat. And that's probably our earliest example or indicator that we still have of people using wind for power at all. That's amazing. It's always so startling to see how quickly, once civilization started rolling, how exponentially technology started to grow. It's kind of spooky. Yeah. People really started trading ideas and iterating fast. Yeah. Yeah. One key source this week,

source of that number is a book. It's called And Soon I Heard a Roaring Wind, a Natural History of Moving Air. That's by science writer and University of Alaska at Fairbanks faculty member Bill Strever. He says that the insight of wind for power happened 5,000 years ago, but we were a bit slower to use it on land than we were in boats, because on land we tended to make mills out of animal power or water power first. Yeah, that makes sense, because you can't really have an oxen row your boat for you. But on land, you can have an oxen, like, you know, turn a millstone. Oh, man. Now I'm imagining Ben- you know, turn a millstone. Oh, man. Now I'm imagining Ben-Hur, but Zootopia.

Right. Like everybody's an animal and they're rowing the trireme. What you need is to get a bunch of otters in some harnesses. Yeah. If people don't know, there's many centuries of horse mills or oxen mills or other big animal hooked to a thing walking in a circle. And then, of course, there's water wheels type stuff on rivers and other flowing bodies of water. That was just sort of easier to build early on, especially with the not great materials that were available to ancient people. that were available to ancient people.

And so windmills came along later, basically for materials and engineering reasons, but not because people didn't know you can use wind. Especially for the sort of Dutch style ones, it's like you would need that axle to function in a way that works well and in the fit of these rods to be more precise. Otherwise, it's not going to spin. Versus just like a water wheel, you put some ridges on a wheel and put it underwater, and it can turn pretty easily, I think.

Just such an easier engineering challenge. And so that's kind of how people went about it. It took until starting in 1,500 years ago for people to say, okay, it's worth bothering. Also, parts of ancient Persia are super windy. Okay, now let's do some of this. Because it's also always been a geography challenge. Are there wind patterns where it's even worth it? Right, exactly. This whole thing leads to a takeaway I love, because takeaway number one, This whole thing leads to a takeaway I love because takeaway number one. The earliest windmills were run sort of like land-based sailboats.

Hmm. What? This doesn't describe every old form of windmill, but a lot of medieval operators of windmills, especially that Dutch kind, they lived sort of like sailors. It was kind of like the worst part of being a sailor and the worst part of being a lighthouse keeper all at once. I'm so confused. How can owning a windmill be like a sailor? This feels like a riddle. Is the answer man because it has two legs and then three legs when it's got a cane. I don't like riddles. A block of ice melted or the doctor was his daughter.

I don't know. What are riddle answers? Yeah, so this, it's almost a cultural thing. It turns out that windmill operation is sort of like handling a wooden sailing ship. that windmill operation is sort of like handling a wooden sailing ship. For one thing, the technical name for those big long arm parts of a windmill, like a Dutch windmill, is sails. People call them sails.

It's often like a canvas or other material stretched over wood. It's so interesting. It's more nautical than you would think. Some nautical nonsense. So I could see them maybe having similar skills, right? Of like knowing how to tie ropes and dealing with sails. But like, how could the lifestyle be similar? There's the lighthouse keeper sense and the sailor sense. And the lighthouse keeper element is that a lot of medieval millers, especially with a bigger windmill, they had to live there. Like they had to be on hand 24-7 because they needed to monitor the sails, mainly for weather.

Like something could blow it over or cause problems. And then the sailor element is you're dealing with the weather, you're dealing with wind changing. The sailor elements is you're dealing with the weather, you're dealing with wind changing. I had never known before researching that those Dutch type windmills turn. Either the whole building turns on sort of a post, like a vertical axle post. Oh, that's really cool. Like a turret. Oh, yeah, yeah.

That's wild. So it's like, what, standing on its little windmill legs and walking somewhere else like how does it turn like is there some that seems complicated. all of the building turns or just the top part turns. And usually a windmill is built to face one way most of the time, but you might need to adjust that slightly to get more wind or to protect it in a storm. Even though you're on land, you're not a sailor. You're not going to drown. Well, storms happen on land too, I guess. But yeah, I guess like if it's too strong wind, it can break your sails, which isn't never a good thing.

And but yeah, that's so interesting. Like, I guess they have to understand they have to have the sailor skill of like licking their finger and sticking it up and understanding which way the wind is blowing and then adjusting correctly. Yeah. Yeah. Because not only can it break, apparently the other risk was fires.

Because unlike with a sail where it'll just get ripped off, if your windmill gets too much wind too powerfully, it can start spinning way too fast. Oh, maybe some friction's going on there. Yeah, and so windmills would burn down if there was too much friction and heat in all the different parts. And that fire can spread to your whole town or farm or whatever. That's also, I mean, kind of a funny visual of a windmill going so fast that it just bursts into flames. I know it's probably not a funny thing for the millers.

But yeah, there's this computer game called um balder's gate three which is pretty pretty popular uh and there is a windmill in the game and i highly suggest you play around with that windmill because there's some funny stuff that can happen with it going too fast oh incredible, incredible. No spoilers, but incredible. No spoilers. Just try multiple things with that windmill, save your game, and then like do a bunch of stuff with that windmill. I mean, I think there's only like three things you can do with a windmill, but it's fun. With these regular, especially Dutch windmills, there's a few other kind of nautical elements. And one of them is using the sails, the sort of arm-shaped things for signaling.

Almost like semaphores. This was difficult to research because there seems to be a kind of internet blog spam set of false claims about it. I found a lot of pages that lead to a dead source link or nothing claiming that you can use windmill arms to signal all sorts of messages. And the one documented version is you can position a windmill to indicate morning, sort of like putting a flag at half mast. That's interesting. So like you, you manually turn the blades to a position to say that it's morning.

Yes. Yeah. You turn them to so that the top one is tilted a little bit to the right if someone's on the ground looking at the face of it. Interesting. And you make it stop spinning. And then sometimes people will also attach a Dutch flag, if this is the Netherlands, to that top sail. So if it's stopped in that position with a flag on it, it means someone has died who's important. There's a CNN story about Dutch civilians being killed in a Russian

missile attack on an airliner in 2014. Many Dutch windmills were put in mourning position. There's also a photo of a mourning windmill for the passing of the Dutch queen in 1962. And this Dutch practice is famous enough that a few other countries have copied it recently. When Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022 in England, there's a 1700s windmill in Yorkshire where they put it to a mourning position for the Queen of England.

I mean, nowadays, I think there's like no cost to doing that because I can't imagine a lot of these windmills are actually actively being used to mill grain unless they are. But like back in the day, it's back in the day, like if you are mourning for someone like you're losing a day of grain because I assume you have to lock the blades into place to keep it in that position. because I assume you have to lock the blades into place to keep it in that position. That's right. And there's some chance this is a modern practice that people are just claiming is an old tradition. They might have needed to keep the mill running for food in the past. This is very overstated online, but the modern grieving thing is real, for sure. I like how there's a whole ecosystem of windmill misinformation online yeah like there's people claiming it was used to announce births and and stuff but it doesn't seem

to be true there's no actual evidence of that just like each each uh sale on the windmill it's a boy slash girl girl oh man windmill gender reveal what's it gonna be is great somehow it explodes still like the bad ones of course it would yeah no no of course it would blades go too fast yeah and with the dutch there's another interesting phenomenon. Next number about that is 19, because there's a set of 19 windmills in the village of Kinderdijk, which are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. They're considered the iconic example of Dutch windmills for flood control. This is a water pumping windmill. They aren't able to lift it very far.

Apparently, medieval ones only lifted water about five feet. And so if Dutch people wanted to bring water a large distance up and a long distance away, they needed to do an interlocking set of windmills, which is called a molengang. So Kinderdijk, they have 19 windmills, basically being one molengang to remove a lot of water and make the land available to people. So like, how would that, how would you pump water with a windmill? It's hard to describe Anveris, so we probably shouldn't linger on it, but it's, it's basically

a series of paddles and pushing water up and up and up. I see. Okay. Paddles pushing water up. I can, I can see that. Sort of like those things where like, you know, those like marble machines where they have the little paddles where you like marble rolls down and the paddles like bring the marbles up. If the marbles is water in this scenario, I can see that. Exactly. Yeah. And that's why one mill can only lift it about

five feet maximum because that's not an amazing system. But so you just need a bunch of windmills all in a row. What about a bunch of spoons on a wheel? Did they ever come up with that one? So you can get the water out of there spoon by spoon. That's my patented cereal machine. I'll never give them the secrets. Sorry, Dutch.

My wind-powered cereal machine. Never lift a spoon again. Yeah, and this whole water pumping situation is one of the other primary jobs of old windmills. And it leads us to like a mini takeaway number two. to like a mini takeaway number two. There's two kinds of Dutch windmills and building one type led to building more of the other in a cycle. Because they have the green milling one and this water pumping one.

And the story of the Netherlands, I think people know the gist, but it's basically drying out more and more land that was below sea level through dikes and then these water pumping windmills. That becomes cropland. So then you need grain milling windmills, which feeds more people. So then you need more land. So then you need water pumping windmills. The whole country is just an escalating series of windmills. It's a cycle of windmills, like some kind of windmill. Oh, wow. It's a perfect

metaphor for itself. Yeah. And even this practice really lasted into like the late 1800s, partly because the Netherlands does not really have much coal. We did a coal episode recently. Fun. Yeah, we did. And it's not like thickly forested and it's just not that big. So like wind is one of the most available fuels there in a way that other countries kind of didn't bother with as much. And it's a pretty windy country, right? Yeah. It turns out a lot of especially coastal places will have big winds and breezes from the ocean and a lot of ability to build windmills. And most of the like new giant wind power systems are being built offshore for energy windmills because you can just grab ocean breezes and it's not on top of somebody's house.

That's what I saw in Copenhagen is these like windmills sort of like off offshore windmills, like giant leviathans spinning and spinning. Yeah, they're so the movie arrival in a good way. I just like seeing it loom. In a good way. And I'm weird, but it's great. I like seeing things loom when I don't feel personally threatened. Looming is great as long as I don't think I'm about to be eaten or crushed. It's just up there being my electricity friend. Great. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. The Netherlands, a fun number here is about one quarter. That's about how much of their land is

below sea level. Dykes hold the water back and then water pumping windmills lift water up and away from a location to eventually be directed to a river or coast where it dumps and drains. Do they still use wind power to do this or was this exclusively back in the day? Like obviously they're not going to use the same windmills now, but do they ever use wind power in order to prevent flooding? Not that much. And they've mostly switched to electric pumping stations, but it really took until the early 1900s. Mental Floss cites a windmill preservationist named Frederick Stockhäusen. Yeah, that's his name.

Yeah. Right. He just qualified by's his name. mainly because we've finally mechanized and used other fuel sources for most of those processes. Like wind still works, but very, very old windmill is not as efficient as just building a new facility that works differently. Right. It's powered by electricity, but some of that electricity is still coming from windmills. So in a roundabout way, still wind powered. The Dutch are one of many countries building these huge offshore electric wind systems. So it's still kind of windmills. Yeah. And the other side reason there are less Dutch windmills is the two world wars. Some of them just got blown up or damaged or not cared for in the fracas of world wars one and two.

Were they just like, oh, my God, a German. And then they blew it up and it's like, oh, that was a windmill. Right, like a Mr. Bean Don Quixote of the 1940s. Yeah. A German waving all four of his arms. The German waving all four of his arms. No, I'm going to guess that they were maybe intentionally targeted to, like, destroy infrastructure or something. Yeah, it seems to be not that much of a German focus.

Just they blew up so much of the Netherlands so often. Right. Yeah. And speaking of Don Quixote, the Dutch also influenced that. What? Atlas Obscura says that there are 12 mills called the Consuegra windmills in Castilla-La Mancha. They're grain windmills, they're modeled on that Dutch design. And within decades of their construction in the 1500s, author Miguel de Cervantes published the first book of Don Quixote and seems to have been inspired directly by those specific windmills that are on a big, wide plain in Spain with a lot of wind. Don Quixote thought the windmills were giants with long arms.

Cool. And that's really cool because, like, I wonder if the author had that, Cervantes had that same kind of, like, feeling of, like, looking at a windmill and it's just like, this looks like a giant creature because it's, like, huge structure. Even the classic windmills were still pretty big, but it's moving. And there's something about a moving thing, right, that makes it feel kind of alive. I really think so. Yeah. Yeah. It's different from basically every other building before now where there's moving parts and it's got life to it. Yeah. I think people are just drawn to come and see these. Like I don't think I said at the top, my main windmill experience in my head is that I got to see a Dutch one, but it's in a town called Holland, Michigan. It's in Michigan, but it's a town named Holland. And they, in World War II, the Germans had damaged a bunch of windmills and Holland, Michigan adopted one. They had a Dutch

windmill, like disassembled, shipped, reassembled and fixed up in Michigan. Wow. And now it's like a centerpiece of the town. That's adorable. Because people love these things. They just like to come and see them, even if it's not a stunt Dutch thing in Western Michigan. I remember there was a windmill next to like a Costco in San Diego. Right. And it's like, hey, look. I think there was like also a tulip field near there.

It's just a strange it was a strange place to try to kind of put a little Holland. Like, well, we're going to create a small Holland here and it's going to be next to a Costco. Dutch Simulator. And then it's like building dikes to keep back the flood of Costco Kirkland water, I guess. To keep back the flood of great deals. A little boy who hates deals with his finger in the... Yeah, and one last thing about these water pumping windmills. It turns out this windmill cultural exchange between the U.S. and the Dutch goes both ways.

Because takeaway number three... Takeaway number three... The United States developed pretty much the robot equivalent of a windmill. And it became so popular, the Dutch copied it. The robot equivalent of a windmill. What is that? If anybody's seen, and I think The Courage the Cowardly Dog one is like this. It's like a very skeletal metal little windmill that you'd see on like a rural Western U.S. farm or I associate it with agriculture, but that like steel skeletal windmill. Much taller and skinnier. And it's kind of this like metal rod structure.

Yeah. Two American inventors collaborated to develop that in the 1850s, and it went worldwide from there. And it's designed for pumping water, not for milling grain, but it's for pumping water for irrigation and for drinking. The killer insight and usefulness of the technology is that you don't need a person to operate it. I see. Interesting. It's built with like a big fan on the back where it just turns to face the wind no matters what's happening. And so like a small farmer with no help can say, I'll just set up a windmill and that

takes care of itself. Almost like a robot. Great. Perfect. Wow. It's like a wind powered robot. Yeah. And for water, the thing we all need. It's awesome.

Yeah. Most of us need water. 99% of all people need water, 100%. Yeah. And this was a huge hit. Also, the guys who invented it were in the northeastern U.S., where there are plenty of streams and a lot of fresh water. And so they moved their business to Chicago to sell to the developing, colonizing U.S. West. People built more than a million of these out there. They were also built by railways for cooling stations.

And these were a particularly big hit in Australia as well because it's so dry. That little kind of thing, like I think I almost thought it was a weather vane or something when I've seen pictures, but it's a windmill for pumping water for a Dutch-style use, basically. That's really interesting. There's a really weird little phenomenon where around the 1920s, the Dutch are finally starting to switch to electric pumping stations for water and a non-old windmill system. But in that in-between transition, they built about 200 American-style steel self-directed windmills. But because they're Dutch, they built them at the size of Dutch windmills.

And so we'll link one example called the Hercules Windmill. Atlas Obscura has pictures. Oh, my God. It looks like a robot monster version. It's great. It's on top of this little tiny house, and it makes the house look so little and small. And I've never felt sorry for a structure before, but I feel sorry for this like tiny like shed. It's ridiculous.

Yeah. What are you guys doing over there? And in that little green Dutch countryside, too, it feels way, way out of place. Like a UFO. It's great. Feels over the top. Yeah. Yeah.

And folks, that's our favorite stuff about windmills for grain and for pumping water and other non-wind power uses. We're going to take a quick break and then come back with some electricity. And we are back with the second half of this windmills show. And it turns out the electricity ones, very stats and numbers heavy. So we're going to do another segment called. Whoa. Statistics, my friend, are blowing in the wind. And the name was submitted by me.

I realized late in the game I needed another song. That's a very good Bob Dylan impression. I'm impressed. It's very nice of you. I mean late in the game I needed another song. That's a very good Bob Dylan impression. I'm impressed. It's very nice of you. I mean, it's not. It's not nice of me to say you sound like Bob Dylan. I'm mean. I like Bob Dylan.

But everyone loves this voice. Tons of numbers here. The first wind power number is 10 million homes. This is current politics and energy stuff. Early in the Joe Biden administration, he announced the goal of powering 10 million U.S. homes with new offshore wind power stations by the year 2030. So kind of in this decade, Kennedy saying that about space, but it's Joe Biden saying that about wind power. He's way into it. Listen, Jack, in 10 years, your house is going to be all powered by wind, by solar, by little men running in hamster wheels. Yeah, but I mean, that's good. If we if we make it,

I think it's a I have a lot of climate anxiety anxiety given that the climate's, you know, it's a changing in a bad way. And so, yeah, more wind power is good, I think, in terms of, you know, it seems like a lot of things like wind and solar are becoming cheaper than things like coal as well. They are actually becoming more efficient and more appealing than the fossil fuels. It seems that way. And yeah, this number is news you can use, especially if there's another Democratic administration and they keep pushing it. Because in electricity terms, they wanted to produce 30 gigawatts by 2030. It would power those 10 million homes.

The negative side of this story is we may not get there. Oops. In November 2023, a set of major wind farm projects near New Jersey and Massachusetts and Connecticut all got canceled all in a row. No, why? And that indicates we might not get there. Why'd they get canceled? They blamed supply chains.

They blamed tax credits not coming through. They also blamed rising U.S. interest rates. You can't just get a loan for 0% anymore to build a wind farm. But the good news is they don't blame the basic technology. It works and is still feasible. And then another number here is 2017. 2017 is when a community called Block Island became the first community totally powered by offshore wind stations. And Block Island, it's fun.

It's an actual island that is part of and off the coast of Rhode Island, which is not an island. It's a state connected to other states by land. But Block Island is an island that's part of Rhode Island. And in 2017, they switched from diesel generators to an offshore wind farm. And they're part of why this Biden proposal happened at all. They said, that works. Let's do it all over the Atlantic. Right. I also imagine that on Block Island, they have a much better experience on social media because they are just blocking everyone, which is the slightest bit annoying. Follow me back, Block Island. Follow me back. So what's the population of block island like how big are they small it's almost like we had a prototype island for trying this at a very small scale it's a

little more than a thousand people and it's a little new englandy rhode islandy kind of community so it's not like we're powering new york city or something but it's it's a way of doing it. But still, like they're getting all their power from this wind farm? They are. And I know I just kind of grabbed New York City, but if we did this Biden goal of powering 10 million homes, that's New York City and then some. Right. Yeah. So this kind of system is a way we could go. Yeah. I mean, it's cumulative too, right? And somewhat fungible because if you're able to power a bunch of places where you do have access to solar and wind in places where it's like you

have a higher energy load or you don't have, it's not as easy to get solar and wind power set up nearby. You're still like, you're reducing the total amount of fossil fuels used. And that's good. Yeah, exactly. And there's one last number here about wind power in the main show. It is 1888, the year 1888. That's when people built a wind power station in Cleveland, Ohio. That's when people built a wind power station in Cleveland, Ohio. Whoa, that feels early. Super early. And that is its own takeaway number four.

Wind power windmills are not particularly new energy technology. Like we think of them as extreme science fiction future stuff looming. Right. But the tech is older than most of the people listening to this as grandparents, if not great grandparents. Wow. It got prototyped and rolled out to homes from there in 1888. That's amazing. I mean, that kind of reminds me of the story of like the electric. A version of an electric powered car was developed in like the late 1800s, turn of the century.

Yeah. But yeah, a lot of these things that seem really modern, like we had the early technology very early and just kind of abandoned it for a while. Exactly right. Yeah. And I had no idea. And it was surprisingly effective for what it was because it used a few of the latest technologies that had been invented in 1888 and just put them together. This was an inventor named Charles F. Brush in Cleveland, Ohio.

Yeah, that was his name. Charles Brush. Man, I love names. Yeah. Send us your favorite windmill guy names, folks, because they're fun. And he built this at his house. What he did is he used the exact framework and design of one of the metal self-directing American windmills that had been invented a few decades before. That exact structure, he builds a six-story tall one at his house and then connects it to 408 batteries in his basement.

And then that turns on 350 light bulbs and two electric motors. Basically, it's an elaborate proof of concept. He didn't need that much lighting for his house. Well, you don't know. I mean, maybe he really wants to see the pile of his carpet. Yeah. Oh, man. And the 1800s feel so dirty in my head. Like, oh, I've seen too much. I've seen too much. Turn it off. This was a mistake. I'm breaking my glasses. Yeah. But that's I mean, that's incredible that it was this happened so long ago and in some guy's basement. Right.

It wasn't even hard to build. He didn't need help, really. And all he was doing was putting together modern batteries, which had been around for decades at that point. We have a whole batteries episode about them starting in the early 1800s. He combined batteries with the self-sufficient U.S. windmill design and the very new idea of water turbines, like not just a water wheel for milling grain or sawing wood, but for generating electricity. That had started about eight years beforehand. The first ones were built in Grand Rapids, Michigan and in the town of Niagara Falls, New York.

Makes sense. In 1880 and 1881. Yeah, they do have a little bit of water there. Yeah. Yeah, it's really incredible, but it also makes me kind of sad, because if we had continued on investing time and energy and money and brains into that technology, we would have probably been in a much better position now, both in terms of the environment, but also in terms of establishing energy that does not rely on a depletable resource.

Yeah. The weird thing happens from here where this first wind power is basically a copy of the first water power. It's just the same principle. And it's almost like the people who came up with windmills after water mills for milling grain. Like it's this process all over again. Right. From there, hydroelectric technology gets put up everywhere. We've built stuff like the Hoover Dam within 50

years in the 1930s. Right. So why didn't wind get the same treatment? Yeah. So wind, it starts happening a lot in the late 1800s in a few windy places, in particular, central Texas. Bill Strever's book says that the town of Midland, Texas, gets nicknamed Windmill Town because so many homeowners and farmers have put up little wind power setups for themselves. That's cute. There's Americans just saying, oh, yeah, this weird skeletal metal windmill that I can basically buy out of a catalog. I'll just make an electrical version. Great.

I'll sell. It wasn't that hard to do. Yeah. And then from there, the government does not get that interested in it. And unfortunately, one program in the New Deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Great Depression recovery in the 1930s, the New Deal, one program there accidentally kills people's motivation to build this. Oh, no. FDR. And it was well-intentioned. They just kind of messed up. Uh-oh. What happens is he puts together a program called the Rural Electrification

Administration. It's one of the sort of three-letter acronym programs people called the alphabet soup. And this was a good thing. They wanted to set up utility companies to string power lines all over rural America and bring electricity to people's homes. Unfortunately, between the language of the laws and how the programs were run and how the utility companies were set up, the utility companies said, hey, any home that has its own windmill wind power, we don't have to help them. They've already got electricity. By the letter of this thing, they don't need our service. We're here to provide the first electricity service to a home. So if you want powerful electricity from this company and to be part of that grid, you'd tear down your windmill. Exactly.

You can get a much better system by no longer being self-sufficient by wind. Right. And there weren't that many people doing it in the first place. And so the ones who were either stopped or became weird oddities. And, uh, and from there, we didn't really get interested in wind power again until the 1980s. Man, such a missed opportunity to do more wind powered stuff. I mean, hydroelectric is, is great. Um, but yeah, it's just, uh, it's just so, so frustrating, such a near miss and it would have resulted in, you know, probably a better time, but who knows? We can't know. Maybe when When there would have been Windmill War 3. How do I purchase that Command & Conquer style computer game right now?

I would like it, please. Hey folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the earliest windmills were run sort of like land-based sailboats. Takeaway number two, there's two kinds of Dutch windmills, for water and for food, and building one type led to building more of the other type in an amazing cycle. Takeaway number three, the United States developed the robot equivalent of a water pump windmill, and that got so popular, the Dutch copied it. Takeaway number four, wind power windmills are not particularly new energy technology.

And then so many stats and numbers this week, there were two whole segments for them. Thank you for letting me moonlight and do a little song inventing for the second one. a little song inventing for the second one. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists. So members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the weirdest and most common concerns about health and animal welfare and other results of wind power stations. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 14 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows. It is special audio.

It's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation, keeping us going in 2024. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include the book And Soon I Heard a Roaring Wind,

A Natural History of Moving Air. That's by science writer and University of Alaska at Fairbanks faculty member Bill Strever. Also a pretty enormous amount of material from National Geographic and from Atlas Obscura in particular. A lot of amazing pictures over at Atlas Obscura if you want to see those. A lot of UNESCO World Heritage site information, in particular about the Kinderdijk windmills in the Netherlands. And shout out to resources from Holland, Michigan, about their Dutch windmill transplanted after World War II. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skadigok people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy. By the way, that Holland,

Michigan windmill is on the traditional land of the Peoria, Odawa, and Pottawatomie people. And I want to acknowledge that in my location, in that windmill's location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator.

This week's pick is episode 157. That's about the topic of bras. Fun fact, one American socialite invented the modern bra, and that might be the least interesting elements of her astounding life. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals and science and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating.

So how about that? Talk to you then. maximum fun a worker-owned network of artists own shows supported directly by you