Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> There has been much discussion about the origins of the windmill. The first definite evidence of the horizontal windmill in which the sails were mounted to a vertical axle turning the stone without gearing occurs according to Lewis in the tenth century at Sistan on the borders of modern Iran and Afghanistan. Whether this type has any direct connection with the vertical geared windmill more familiar to us in the West remains unclear.? It was traditionally believed that the idea of the windmill as a machine for grinding grain into flour was brought back from the East by the returning crusaders. In recent years however an alternative view has gained ground that the diffusion of the windmill may have been in the reverse direction and that it was first invented in western Europe probably indeed in England. Arab sources seem to imply that the windmill was unknown in the Near East before the early thirteenth century. whereas at least half a dozen authentic references dating from before 1200 have been traced from western continental Europe and a considerably greater number from England. Professor Edward Kealey claimed to have identified no less than 56 windmills in England dating from before 1200 with his earliest example at Wigston Parva in Leicestershire recorded in 1137. Not all of (LL)