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Windmills

The Kinderdijk, just outside of Rotterdam in the crossing of the rivers Lek and Noord, is one of the best places to look at windmills. The windmills here has been used in the struggle against water for many years. Windmills have been used as pumping stations to keep the land dry since the 1200’s. The first version of the mill, called a post mill, was just a solid wooden trunk. The entire top of the mill could be turned to face the wind and inside the shaft of the sail were linked directly to a grinding stone, they were used to make flour. The first mills of the hollow post kind were built somewhere around the 14th century and they were a great invention of their time. They looked like the old post mills but had a major sensation on the inside. They had the traditional shape and sails, but the rotating top of the mill was mounted on a hollow central core and therefore a drive shaft could be connected to the sails. Through a series of gears, this could be used for a numbers of activities, including pumping water. Hundreds of these mills were built on the dikes of Holland and the mass drainage of land begun.
The rotating cap mill came in the 16th century and made it possible to turn only the tip of the mill and the hub that contained the sails to face the wind. Now the need of turning the whole body of the mill disappeared and the mills could be operated by just one person.