Blades
in the Sky
Windmilling through the Eyes
of B.H “Tex” Burdick
T. Lindsay Baker
Published: 1992, ISBN 0-89672-294-5
Introduction by
Andrew Stone, Executive
Director, American Ground Water Trust:
Blades
in the Sky describes the
work of a team of Texas-based windmill erectors in the
first half of this (last) century. The text has been
woven around a remarkable private collection of
contemporary photographs that depict typical scenes
from windmill construction sites in the 1920s and
1930s. In the broad sweep of United States regional
economic development and the development of ground
water resources, the significance of Blades in the
Sky goes far beyond Bakers’ immediate narrative
and the Burdick photographs.
My first contact with Dr. Baker goes back to the mid
eighties when I corresponded with him concerning an
interest he had in the development of windmills in
Southern Africa. As a hydrogeologist my interests were
principally geological, and my only contribution to
his request as that time was to point out that mills
milled and pumps pumped and that therefore his real
interest was in wind pumps not windmills! I haven’t
managed to change his or anybody else’s usage of the
term windmills but our correspondence
eventually led to me making trips to Texas where I
have enjoyed Dr. Baker’s hospitality first in Canyon
and more recently in Waco.
There are two strong common interests shared between
Lindsay Baker and myself. Firstly, we are both
educators, and recognize the fascination of the past
as a means to stimulate and focus inquiring minds on
the present. The second common interest between the
“hydrological earth scientist” and the
“historian” is related to a fascination with the
role of technology in developing natural resources. In
the development of the west in the last third of the
19th century, three separate but related
technologies worked together: the development of
water-well drilling technology to reach beyond the
very limited depths of hand-dug wells; the development
of windmills to use the force of the wind to pump
water from underground; and the invention of the
barbed wire and the means to mass-produce it. These
were three interrelated ingredients of the development
of the southwestern United States, each one critical
in transforming cattle-based agriculture. Without
fencing, there could be no selective breeding: without
drilling, there could be no economic access to range
lands away from permanent water courses; without
wind-powered pumps, there could be no access to vital
ground water resources. The early development of many
ranch homesteads, small towns, and the railroads in
the United States were totally dependent on windmills
to raise water from aquifers.
Blades in the Sky principally concerns Texas
and a small but critical service industry that evolved
to apply technology to provide the vital link between
ground water resources and water demand. Windmillers
were a select band of specialist who installed and
erected windmills and water pumps. In a much wider
context, much of the late 19th- and early
20th-century development of windmills in
the west and south of the United States was in part
dependent on initial inventions and technical
developments of the windmill by inspired small-town
entrepreneurs and engineers from New England. A short
digression to earlier times, and to different places,
will give a little background and context to the craft
and the art of the Texas windmillers.
The
first recorded windmills in the United States were in
Jamestown, Virginia in the 1620s and were used for
grinding flour. The development of wind power for
raising water is a more recent application and has had
a profound effect in rural development in the United
States, as well as in countries throughout the world.
Engineers had long ago solved the problem of
transforming the circular motion of a wind-driven sail
to the reciprocal motion needed to drive pumps, but
what was missing until the mid 19th century
was a means control automatically the speed of the
turning blades so that the windmill and the pump would
not self-destruct in high winds. On August 29, 1854
the United States Patent Office approved the
“self-governing” windmill invented by Daniel
Halladay of Vermont. Production soon moved to the
Midwest, where there was a greater demand for
wind-powered pumps, and by 1855 the Illinois Railroad
Company of Chicago was a early Halladay windmill
customer. In Halladay’s design, an increasing
strength of wind changed the pitch of the blades as
they faced the wind. The change in pitch slowed the
wheel resolutions. A different concept, patented by
Leonard Wheeler in 1867, used a rigid mill wheel with
a vane behind. In high winds, the vane forced the
revolving wheel away from the main wind direction
resulting in a slower rate of turn for the wheel. The
original Eclipse windmills used this design.
Many companies were involved in United States windmill
manufacture in the 19th century. There was
tough competition and an almost endless advance in
improvements and modifications. Patent lawyers were
kept busy as manufacturers improved bearings, gears,
self-oiling mechanisms, blade design, etc. The
evolution of windmill designs, the background to
inventions and the registering of patents, and the
fierce commercial competition and company takeovers,
make an incredibly interesting aspect of American
history. The definitive book on the subject is A
Field Guide to American Windmills written by Dr.
Baker in 1985. Most Americans who travel by road in
rural areas will be familiar with two or three of the
famous name windmills such as Dempster, Eclipse,
Monarch, and Fairbanks. There are, however, hundreds
of different manufacturers and a plethora of models
that have been produced in the last hundred years. The
Field Guide is a mine of information that has
been meticulously researched, much of it from
hitherto-ignored contemporary trade publications. When
seen in the context of the development of American
windmill technology and manufacturing, the importance
of Blades in the Sky, as an original cameo of American
history, becomes especially significant.
The increased application of wind power for water
raising throughout the west in the last century
necessitated the evolution of service-industry
entrepreneurs to build the windmills and service the
pumps. Once a settlement or range was dependent on
wind-raised ground water, it was essential to have a
fast and responsive repair service. Lack of water
could mean death of cattle and economic ruin for the
landowner. There do not appear to be published
contemporary accounts of the 19th century
windmiller artisans and businessmen, but probably the
19th century activities of windmillers were
not too different from the scenes captured in the
Burdick photographs.
By the 1860s and 70s, there was a great demand for
windmills, a demand that was paralleled in the
barbed-wire industry by demand for economical fencing.
Proliferation of windmill production and barbed-wire
manufacture (there are 900 or so different designs of
barbed wire) is an indication of the surge of demand
and output in the farming community as the short-lived
“wild west & cowboy” era ended and development
began toward scientific farming and today’s
agribusiness.
Windmills were produced in many different sizes and
configurations depending on the windiness of an area,
the depth of pumping necessary, and the amount of
water needed. Many windmill manufacturing companies
had a “mix & match” inventory, which required
the windmiller to become an advisor and consultant to
farmers about what design was best suited to a
particular need. The owner of a windmill installation
company usually provided far more of a service than
merely to erect a tower and install the sails and
pump.
Until the use of rotary drill in the 20th
century, virtually all deep water wells were drilled
by cable tool rigs, many of which were home made, of
timber frame construction, and which used horse power
as the means of raising the drill bit. Some shallow
wells were constructed by hand digging, and in some
valley situations, wells could be driven up to forty
feet into sandy sediments. (The story of early well
drilling in the United States is not well documented
and should perhaps be the subject of research for Dr.
Baker’s next book!)
In any process involving many stages, as in a machine
with many cogs, each stage, or cog, is a vital part of
the total process. In the development of ground-water
sources by the use of windmills, the process of
assembling the sails and gears, designing and erecting
the tower, and installing the pump are too often taken
for granted, or perhaps not really ever considered.
The windmiller has been, however, a vital and hitherto
unsung “cog” in the process of exploiting
groundwater resources for over a hundred years. There
are still firms today that offer the service of
erecting and installing windmills. The majority of
today’s “windmillers” are likely to belong to a
family-owned well drilling or pump-installing business
that offers a wide range of additional water supply
services to customers.
The
trials and tribulations, success and enterprise of the
Burdick company, as documented in Blades in the Sky,
serve to exemplify the family business ownership that
is still characteristic of much of the current United
States water-well contracting industry, even though
windmill power for pumping may have been replaced by
electrical submersible pumps and horse-powered
drilling rigs by $500,000 monster drilling machines.
The professional services of today’s water-well
contractor are highly technical, including, for
example, advanced designs in high production wells and
precisely installed sampling wells used in scientific
studies of contaminant migration. The vital personal
service in providing an application of technology to
satisfying water needs, however, remains the same as
it was in the heyday of the windmillers. In the 1990s,
windmills may be a small part of the United States
ground-water industry, but there is little doubt that
for some areas and for some water needs, wind pumping
will continue to be the most effective, economical,
and environmentally friendly way of linking economic
need with the vital underground source of the
nation’s water. With over 50% of the United States
population dependent on ground water for drinking
purposes and more than 13 million private drinking
water wells, the United States water-well industry of
today is as much a vital cog in national economic
development as were Burdick’s men in the development
of rural Texas in the 1920s.
All travelers are familiar with the silhouette profile
of a slowly turning windmill in a rural landscape at
sunset. How many have ever considered the complexities
and difficulties of installing the windmill? How many
have understood the windmill as a symbol of the
nation’s underground wealth? Blades in the Sky
provides a fascinating insight into one aspect of the
process of the development of water resources.
No reader of Blades in the Sky will ever again
see a windmill (or wind pump!) in the landscape
without giving throught to the sometimes harsh and
semi-nomadic life of the windmillers. The survival of
Burdick’s photographs and their publication along
with the accurate historical context of Baker’s text
provide a wonderful insight to times past. With only a
little imagination, the reader of Blades in the Sky
can be moved back in time, and extended in geography,
far beyond Burdick territory. Read on…
