From logos to T-shirts, Dutch windmills have become iconic. They have had a long time to become iconic since the earliest windmills date from the 15th Century. We got an extensive tour of one of these working windmills that was being used as a sawmill. Other windmills were and are being used to grind grain, pump water, and as an industrial power source. Here is a short quote about the uses of windmills from the dutchnews.nl article entitled "It’s windmill weekend: 10 things you should know about Dutch windmills."
The energy generated by wind and watermills was used to turn any raw material that needed pounding, mauling, shredding, hacking or mixing into a tradeable product. The Zaanstreek paper mills, for instance, were renowned throughout the world for their good quality paper. In fact, the American Declaration of Independence was printed on sheets produced there.
There were mustard mills, hemp mills, grain mills, snuff mills, cocoa mills, oil mills, chalk mills, paint mills and saw mills. Because of their ability to turn trees into planks (for shipbuilding) much more quickly, the latter were instrumental in making the Netherlands a powerful and very rich sea-faring nation. In fact, some say the first industrial estate in the world was a complex of 23 saw mills on the Kostenverlorenkade in Amsterdam. One, the Otter, still remains.
Read more at DutchNews.nl:Around the world we a seeing many Windmills for the generation of electricity.
No comments:
Post a Comment