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This being the case, and the principal expense attendant upon the construction of ordinary wind-engines being due to the need for providing a large diameter of wind-wheel, with all the attendant complications required to secure such a wheel from risk, it is obvious that as soon as the long axis and the very short sail, or the metallic spiral, have been generally introduced as adjuncts to the dynamo storage battery, an era of cheaper wind-motors will have been entered upon, in fact, the "little want" of which Lord Kelvin spoke in 1881 will have been supplied.
There is no need to attempt the construction of wind-motors that shall run lightly in a soft zephyr of only five or six miles an hour, and stability is the main desideratum to be looked to. The fixed windmill, which requires no swivel mechanism and no vane to keep it up to the wind, is the cheapest and may be made the most substantial of all the forms of wind-motor.
The analogy followed in reaching this conclusion is that of the sails of a ship, but, as applied to wind-motors, it is quite misleading, because not more than one-third or one-fourth of the energy of the wind is expended upon the oblique sails of an ordinary wind-wheel.
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