Distribution and types of windmills in Pomerania across the 19th century in the light of cartographic sources

Abstract

The aim of this text is to evaluate the distribution of windmills in Pomerania, an area which stretches from Gdańsk to Toruń, over the period of the nineteenth century. The basic research method was to analyse various maps from both the early nineteenth century and the late nineteenth century. The results made it possible to state that the total number windmills increased by a factor of three, and that this referred mainly to cereal mills. The number of vertical windmills with rotating caps increased at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but the number of drainage windmills remained unchanged. The very high demand for wind energy was a result of significant economic development within the Prussian partition in the second half of the nineteenth century. Cartographic sources allowed this phenomenon to be verified in the most complete way.

Keywords

• cartography
• pomerania
• natural energy source
• molinology
• windmills
• drainage mills