W. S. Jevons (1865) on Wind power — MasterResource

1) wind power is not new.

2) wind power is intermittent and unsuitable for modern work:

The first great requisite of motive power is, that it shall be wholly at our command, to be exerted when, and where, and in what degree we desire. The wind, for instance, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear (p. 122).

3) wind power is land constrained:

No possible concentration of windmills … would supply the force required in large factories or iron works. An ordinary windmill has the power of about thirty-four men, or at most seven horses. Many ordinary factories would therefore require ten windmills to drive them, and the great Dowlais Ironworks, employing a total engine power of 7,308 horses, would require no less than 1,000 large windmills! (p. 123)

4) wind power for transportation did not work:

Richard Lovell Edgeworth spent forty years’ labour in trying to bring wind carriages into use. But no ingenuity could prevent [wind carriages] from being uncertain; and their rapidity with a strong breeze was such, that … ‘they seemed to fly, rather than roll along the ground.’ Such rapidity not under full control must be in the highest degree dangerous (p. 126).

via W. S. Jevons (1865) on Windpower (Memo to Obama, Part I) — MasterResource.

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