Windmills in History
Oldest known forms of Water or Wind powered mills

Horizontal Windmill (bottom left)
There are two forms of windmill:
· The windmill with its main shaft standing vertical and its sails rotating horizontally, parallel to the ground, this is called a Horizontal Windmill.
· The windmill with its main shaft horizontal and its sails rotating in a vertical plane, at right angles to the ground, this is called a Vertical Windmill.
Historians know that there were Horizontal Windmills in the Middle East, in Persia in the seventh century. This type of windmill appears to be a very ancient one and has been in use in China and other countries for a long time.
Windmills of this type but with the grinding stones mounted below the wind rotor can still be seen in use today in Afghanistan.
It is easy to see the progression from the horizontal water mill to the horizontal windmill as they have fundamentally the same parts.

Old Horizontal Windmills require that the wind blow from the same direction for a reasonable part of the year because their walls have to be lined up for the prevailing wind. They will not work if the wind is not blowing from this direction or its opposite direction. This is not as bad as it seems as in many parts of the world there are seasonal winds, which reliably blow from one direction during parts of the year.
The horizontal windmill was very useful in these countries but not for our Northern European weather where the wind blows from any direction, although the most common wind direction is from the southwest. In order to harness the winds successfully in Western Europe it was necessary to develop a new type of windmill.

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