Painted on countless tiles, teapots and trinkets, the windmill is a cliche of the Dutch tourist trade. But it became an icon for good reason: wind-powered pumps kept two-third of the country from disappearing beneath the sea. The Dutch didn't invent the windmill, which was in use in the Persian Empire in the ninth century, and the earliest mills were built to grind corn. But from 14th century Dutch engineers installed and developed windmills as part of ingenious drainage systems to create and maintain productive manmade landscapes and to power some of the world's earliest industrial operations such as sawing wood for shipbuilding.
In the low-lying coastal regions of Holland and Utrecht, a constant battle had to be fought against flooding from the time the first dykes were built around AD 1000, but the Dutch also became experts in land reclamation, draining the marshlands by digging canals and regulating the flow of water with networks of sluices and reservoirs. Windmills, powering rotary iron scoops, made it possible to lift water out of low-lying fields and over the dykes into reservoirs that were emptied into the rivers at low tide. The orderly rectangular fields between the waterways, known as polders, were used as pasture and for growing crops in the fertile, peaty soil. Polders now make up approximately 60 per cent of the country.
In the 18th century thousands of windmills dotted the Dutch landscape, but in the age of steam they were gradually replaced. the graceful Kinderdijk mills were erected in 1738 - 40, and are among the few survivors of over 150 mills in the Alblasserwaard area, which battled to control water levels between the Lek, Noord and Merwede rivers for over a century until steam pumps were installed in 1868. The windmills of Kinderdijk are a serene and beautiful monument to an old technology, but one that is now becoming relevant again as we face a post-oil world. Tellingly, they were brought back into regular use during World War II when there was no diesel available to power the pumps and they are still maintained in working order in case the modern equipment breaks down.
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Windmills of Kinderdijk |
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Windmills of Kinderdijk |
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Windmills of Kinderdijk |
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