History of Danish Wind Power - Wind Power for the World: The Rise of Modern Wind Energy - page 34

An even more important efect was that Danish farmers
were now allowed to have their own windmill and during the
next decades, thousands of small “farm windmills” were installed.
Usually they had four blades with wooden structure, equipped
with canvas sails. The windmills were placed on the top of the barn
roof and were turned by hand according to wind direction. The
wind power was used for fodder grain grinders and other kinds
of farm machinery. Most of these farm windmills were built by the
same local millwrights as the big commercial windmills.

3.1 Industrial Windmill Production: 1876-1900

The earliest development of Danish industrially manufactured
windmills was inspired by the American multi-bladed “pumping
windmills”, introduced in the second half of the 19th century by
Daniel Halladay and others.

Figure 3.1 The front page of a price list (ca. 1886) shows the place for

the first Danish industrial windmill production. A big Halladay-
type windmill, based on N. J. Poulsen's 1883 patent, is being
assembled and a similar windmill is mounted on the roof of the
factory (Photo: Esbjerg Town Historical Archives).

In 1876, a young Danish blacksmith and millwright, N. J.
Poulsen, left his father's workshop on the island of Samsø, and
arrived to Esbjerg in the southwestern coast of Jutland. Here,