A tower mill is a type of vertical windmill consisting of a brick or stone tower, on which sits a wooden 'cap' or roof, which can rotate to bring the sails into the wind.
This rotating cap on a firm masonry base gave tower mills great advantages over earlier post mills, as they could stand much higher, bear larger sails, and thus afford greater reach into the wind. Windmills in general had been known to civilization for centuries, but the tower mill represented an improvement on traditional western-style windmills. The tower mill was an important source of power for Europe and the Mediterranean for nearly 600 years from 1300–1900, contributing to 25 percent of the industrial power of all wind machines before the advent of the steam engine and coal power. It represented a modification or a demonstration of improving and adapting technology that had been known by humans for ages. Although these types of mills were effective, owing to their complexity, some argue that they would have initially been built mainly by the most wealthy individuals.
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Famous quotes containing the words tower and/or mill:
“So was produced this tragedy
In a far tower of ivory
Where, O young men, late in the night
All you who drink light and stroke the air
Come back, seeking the night, and cry
To strict Rapunzel to let down her hair.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.... A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice—is often the means of their regeneration.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)