Aermotor Windmill

Aermotor Windmill. . , The windmill that you see before you was discovered and dismantled in 1995, in Pra[i]rie du Sac, Wisconsin, by Mars Historical Society member Cliff Atkinson... and then purchased by the Mars Historical Society in 2006. It was restored by members of the society, and erected here on the train station grounds during the summer of 2011., Some facts about this windmill structure:, The Tower: , . Built by the Aermotor Co., Chicago, Il., sometime between the late 1800s and 1905. . It is 40 feet tall , . The top half of the tower swivels in the middle. This allows the windmill to be tilted down close to the ground for maintenance. , . The large weight at the bottom of the tilting portion of the tower serves as a counter weight when the mill is tilted down., The Windmill: , . Built by the Aermotor Co., in Chicago, Ill, sometime between 1915 and 1933. , . It is a Model 602 Aermotor Windmill with an 8 foot diameter wheel. , . It is designed for pumping water, The tower / windmill combination that you see before you is very rare. The tower was originally supplied with an open-gear type windmill that had to be lowered for lubrication once a week. At some point after 1915, the open-gear mill was replaced by the oil bath type mill that you see here, which reduced the maintenance to once a year or more., This combination does present a maintenance challenge...if it is tilted, the oil will run out, so maintenance must be done with an external hoist or crane. Normally, these oil bath mills sit on a fixed tower that a person can climb to a platform for performing maintenance. We do not know how this was done before the existence of extended boom cranes...and perhaps this is one of the only combinations of this type ever accomplished. There are very few tilting towers in existence today...mostly located in museums., If you look closely, you will notice that the mill is mounted offset to it's supporting pole. In very strong winds, this design permits the wheel to swivel sideways to the wind direction, so that the internal mechanism does not become damaged from over-revving. As the wind speed dies down, a heavy spring pulls the wheel back to face the wind. The tail keeps the wheel always facing into the wind., This design was patented by Aermotor in the late 1800s, and permitted the Aermotor Co. to become the dominant windmill supplier in the world., There have been hundreds of thousands of Aermotor windmills built and shipped throughout the world, and many are still operating today., The Aermotor Co. is still in existence (as of 2011)...in San Angelo, Texas. At that time, they built about 2000 windmills a year, and will still supply parts for this Model 602 mill.