The oldest rotary windmills are considered to have been used regularly in agriculture and other purposes since 2000 B.C. by peoples of what would today be China and the Middle East who already sensed what the German physicist Albert Betz, the father of physics governing modern wind turbines, called The Theory of Wind Energy, presented and published in his book “Wind-Energie” at the beginning of the 20th century, almost 3000 years later.
The first wind turbine as we know it was created in 1888. Named the Brush turbine, an automatic wind turbine, it measured 17 m in diameter and had 144 wooden blades that moved slowly. Despite its considerable dimensions, it was only capable of generating a few kW. Battery-powered, it ran for two decades. The first modern turbine saw the light in the 1940s in the USA. It has been 130 years since mankind began to supply themselves with electricity produced by wind power.