Science: Electricity from Wind

For 50 years inventors have been trying to make the wind generate electricity, but with no commercial success. Three years ago Julius D. Madaras, Detroit Hungarian, persuaded six power concerns that he could succeed by adapting a Magnus rotor such as carried Anton Flettner’s sailing vessel Baden-Baden from Hamburg to Manhattan (TIME, May 24, 1926) and lifted Harold Elstner Talbott Jr.’s hydroplane from Long Island waters in 1930. The utilitarians gave Designer Madaras $104,000 to build a demonstration rotor at West Burlington, N. J. Last week he showed them that it works.

The rotor functions like a spinning baseball or tennis ball. As ball or rotor turns it piles up the wind on one side. A suction develops on the other side. So the ball or rotor moves forcibly in the direction of the suction.

The West Burlington tower is 90 ft. high, 22.2 ft. across. A small motor turned it into a 10-m. p. h. wind during last week’s demonstration. The force developed was four ton. It bent 2 in. by 6 in. steel bars. If the tower were on a truck, where it will ultimately be mounted, the four-ton force would turn the truck wheels. The turning wheels would operate an electrical generator.

The utilitarians intend to build a train of such rotor-surmounted trucks and run them around a circular track half a mile in diameter. Thus, on windy days, power companies can draw current from the wind, can let their steam plants idle.