Young Brunette Girl With Pubic Hair Landing Strip Posing In The Village With Old Wooden Windmills

Gears inside a windmill convey power from the rotary motion of the sails to a mechanical device. The sails are carried on the horizontal windshaft. Windshafts can be wholly made of wood, or wood with a cast iron poll end (where the sails are mounted) or entirely of cast iron. The brake wheel is fitted onto the windshaft between the front and rear bearing. It has the brake around the outside of the rim and teeth in the side of the rim which drive the horizontal gearwheel called wallower on the top end of the vertical upright shaft. In grist mills the great spur wheel, lower down the upright shaft, drives one or more stone nuts on the shafts driving each millstone. Post mills sometimes have a head and/or tail wheel driving the stone nuts directly, instead of the spur gear arrangement. Additional gear wheels drive a sack hoist or other machinery. The machinery differs if the windmill is used for other applications than milling grain. A drainage mill uses another set of gear wheels on the bottom end of the upright shaft to drive a scoop wheel or Archimedes' screw. Sawmills use a crankshaft with to provide a reciprocating motion to the saws. Windmills have been used to power many other industrial processes, including papermills, threshing mills, and for example to process oil seeds, wool, paints and stone products
• Spread and decline
The total number of wind powered mills in Europe is estimated to have been around 200,000 at its peak, compared to some 500,000 waterwheels. With the coming of the industrial revolution, the importance of wind (and water) as primary industrial energy source declined and was eventually replaced by steam (in steam mills) and internal combustion engines, although windmills continued to be built in large numbers until late in the 19th Century. More recently windmills have been preserved for their historic value, in some cases as static exhibits when the antique machinery is too fragile to put in motion, and in other cases as fully working mills. There are around 50 working mills in operation in Britain as of 2009.
Of the 10,000 windmills in use in the Netherlands around 1850, about 1000 are still standing. Most of these are being run by volunteers though there are some grist mills still operating commercially. Many of the drainage mills have been appointed as backup to the modern pumping stations. The Zaan district has been said to have been the first industrialized region of the world with around 600 operating wind powered industries by the end of the 18th century. Economic fluctuations and the industrial revolution had a much greater impact on these industries than on grain and drainage mills so only very few are left.