page_title: History of wind power
section_title: Late Middle Ages
hierarchical_section_title: History of wind power / Late Middle Ages
caption_attribution_description: Español: Conjunto de molinos de viento en Campo de Criptana, (La Mancha, España). Français&#160;: Ensemble de moulins à vent dans la commune de Campo de Criptana en Castille-La Manche (Espagne). English: Group of windmills at Campo de Criptana in La Mancha. Türkçe: Kastilya-La Mancha'da bulunan ve aynı zamanda Cervantes'in Don Kişot romanına da esin kaynağı olan, bölgeye özgü yel değirmenleri.
context_page_description: Wind power has been used as long as humans have put sails into the wind. For more than two millennia wind-powered machines have ground grain and pumped water. Wind power was widely available and not confined to the banks of fast-flowing streams, or later, requiring sources of fuel. Wind-powered pumps drained the polders of the Netherlands, and in arid regions such as the American mid-west or the Australian outback, wind pumps provided water for livestock and steam engines.
  With the development of electric power, wind power found new applications in lighting buildings remote from centrally-generated power. Throughout the 20th century parallel paths developed small wind plants suitable for farms or residences, and larger utility-scale wind generators that could be connected to electricity grids for remote use of power. Today wind-powered generators operate in every size range between tiny plants for battery charging at isolated residences, up to near-gigawatt sized offshore wind farms that provide electricity to national electrical networks.
  By 2014, over 240,000 commercial-sized wind turbines were operating in the world, producing 4% of the world's electricity.
context_section_description: The first windmills in Europe appear in sources dating to the twelfth century. These early European windmills were  sunk post mills. The earliest certain reference to a windmill dates from 1185, in Weedley, Yorkshire, although a number of earlier but less certainly dated twelfth-century European sources referring to windmills have also been adduced. While it is sometimes argued that crusaders may have been inspired by windmills in the Middle East, this is unlikely since the European vertical windmills were of significantly different design than the horizontal windmills of Afghanistan. Lynn White Jr., a specialist in medieval European technology, asserts that the European windmill was an "independent invention;" he argues that it is unlikely that the Afghanistan-style horizontal windmill had spread as far west as the Levant during the Crusader period.  In medieval England rights to waterpower sites were often confined to nobility and clergy, so wind power was an important resource to a new middle class. In addition, windmills, unlike water mills, were not rendered inoperable by the freezing of water in the winter.
  By the 14th century Dutch windmills were in use to drain areas of the Rhine River delta.
caption: The vertical windmills of Campo de Criptana were immortalized in chapter VIII of Don Quixote.
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