More than 125 years ago, Erwin Barbour, a geology professor at the University of Nebraska, took an interest in what he described as an “agricultural movement”—the proliferation of creative and inexpensive homemade windmills on farms across Nebraska. In 1897, Barbour documented this phenomenon, traveling the state, photographing the mills, interviewing their inventors and owners, and estimating the costs and benefits. He found that both wealthy and poor farmers built a wide variety of mills, many of them of novel or experimental design, made largely out of spare parts and scrap wood. These mills were used to pump water for irrigation and livestock, and to power farm machinery—often giving the owners a huge advantage in a time of drought. During a recent visit to the U.S. National Archives, I found and converted these images from an 1898 photo album that had not previously been digitized. Many of the woodcuts used in Barbour’s 1899 report were based on these photographs.
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theatlantic.com