20160205 - windmills - 2

The types of windmills

Anyone reading, speaking, or writing about windmills is almost sure to think of the famous story of the Knight of the Rueful Countenance, Don Quixote de la Mancha, on his Rozinante. The sedate country squire who, having lost his head after reading a great many romances of chivalry, proclaims himself a knight errant and induces a poor peasant, Sancho Panza, to leave his wife and children and, seated on a donkey, accompany the knight as his shield-bearer on his odd expeditions.
They set out together and in the plain find a large number of windmills, which our knight takes for uncouth giants and accordingly has to fight. Lance in rest, he rushes at them, with the consequence that the turning sails cause him and his jade to roll over the plain. These mills had a cylindrical stone body, covered with a conical roof; they had four wooden stocks with frames on both sides.
The windmills of the type still to be found to-day in the regions of the Mediterranean, with five, six, or more primitive sails consisting of bars rigged with jib sails, in comparison with the Dutch windmills are also only humble wind machines.
But we will confine ourselves to the Dutch windmills, which are characteristic of the country and whose perfection and gracefulness are not surpassed by any other type, in any part of the world.
During our excursions through Holland, by train, by car, by bicycle, on foot, or - better still - in a wherry or a sailing-boat (for Holland is still most beautiful of all when seen from the water!), we shall see windmills, and in some places even very many of them together. They still exist indeed. It is true that they are no longer as numerous as they used to be, but close on one thousand of them are left. That the mills are still there is largely due to those who about 1920 took the initiative in fighting against the neglect of the windmills and the rage for demolition which assailed them from every side at that time. Owners who did not replace their windmills by mechanical pumping stations were considered old-fashioned, those who spoke in favour of windmills were called idealists not amenable to reason; neither the importance nor the value of the windmills in their technical, cultural, or artistic aspects were recognized any longer.
In 1926, under the leadership of Dr. P.G. van Tienhoven, a Dutchman of stature, the champions of the preservation of windmills in Holland published a pamphlet by which they opened the eyes of many people and solicited their membership of De Hollandsche Molen (Dutch Windmill Society), set up in 1923.


 http://www.let.rug.nl/polders/boekje/types.htm