Windpumps
Windpumps are used extensively on farms and ranches in the central plains and South West of the United States and in Southern Africa and Australia. These mills feature a large number of blades so that they turn slowly with considerable torque in low winds and are self-regulating in high winds. A tower-top gearbox and crankshaft convert the rotary motion into reciprocating strokes carried downward through a rod to the pump cylinder below. The farm wind pump was invented by Daniel Halladay in 1854. In early California and some other states the windmill was part of a self-contained domestic water system including a hand-dug well and a redwood water tower supporting a redwood tank and enclosed by redwood siding (tankhouse). Eventually steel blades and steel towers replaced wooden construction, and at their peak in 1930, an estimated 600,000 units were in use. The multi-bladed wind turbine atop a lattice tower made of wood or steel hence became, for many years, a fixture of the landscape throughout rural America. Firms such as Star, Eclipse, Fairbanks-Morse and Aermotor became famed suppliers in North and South America.
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