by Mercedes Galíndez, University of Cambridge
This blog is based on research funded by a bursary from the Economic History Society. More information here
Seventeen years passed between Edison patenting his revolutionary incandescent light bulb in 1880, and Poul la Cour’s first test of a wind turbine for generating electricity. Yet it would be another hundred years before wind power would become an established industry in the 2000s. How can we explain the delay in harvesting the cheapest source of electricity generation?
In the early twentieth century wind power emerged to fill the gaps of nascent electricity grids. This technology was first adopted in rural areas. The incentive was purely economic: the need for decentralised access to electricity. In this early stage there were no concerns about the environmental implications of wind power.
The Jacobs Wind Electricity…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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