Ohio inventions and firsts · Invention · 1888
Brush's wind turbine for his Cleveland mansion
Charles Brush built an early large wind turbine in 1888 that charged batteries to power his Cleveland mansion.
At a glance
- Year
- 1888
- Place
- Cleveland, Cuyahoga County ZIP 44106 · Cleveland · Cuyahoga County
The story
In the 1880s electric power came only from generators run by steam. Charles F. Brush, a wealthy Cleveland inventor who had lit Public Square with arc lamps, tried the wind.
In the winter of 1887-88 he built what Wikipedia calls the world's first automatically operated wind turbine at his Cleveland mansion. It had a 12-kilowatt system and it powered his home for twenty years without failure.
Other accounts give 1887 for the start. The turbine charged 408 batteries in the basement, which in turn ran the household's lamps, motors and arc lights.
Brush lived from 1849 to 1929 and won the Edison Medal in 1913. The machine is an early example of wind making electricity.
Timeline
What it changed
- A 12-kilowatt system that ran for twenty years without failure.
- Called the first automatically operated wind turbine.
Why it matters
Early electricity-generating wind turbine.
Worth knowing
Accounts date Brush's wind turbine to 1887 or 1888.
Further reading
Sources
Confidence. Medium: the main facts were confirmed, but some details (often an address or ZIP code) were not.