How to avoid trouble at mill
QUESTION Why do modern windmills turn clockwise and traditional windmills turn counter-clockwise?
The Dutch type of windmill tends to have a counter-clockwise movement. The sails consist of a latticework structure attached to a thick, solid beam — the stock — to which a canvas sail is attached.
Maintaining the sails is crucial to ensure the mill is working efficiently. On windy days, to stop the windmill turning too quickly, which can damage the machinery, the canvas is rolled up manually and tied to the stock. On calm days, it is unfurled and attached to the latticework to catch more wind.
To furl or unfurl the canvas, the miller has to climb the sails. As most people are right-handed, millers prefer to hold on to the lattice with their left hand while using their right hand to unfurl the sails or tie the rigging. The stock would be on the miller’s right-hand side.
The trailing edge is on the left of the sweep that makes the sails turn counter-clockwise.
While there are left-handed millers, there is also safety in conformity — when exiting the mill, you instinctively know which way the sails are moving.
Modern windmills turn clockwise as a matter of safety and aesthetics. Some early Danish wind turbines did turn anticlockwise, but planning authorities later decreed they must all turn the same way.
Michael Olivers, Cromer, Norfolk.
QUESTION In Victorian times, Vanity Fair caricatures were reproduced by Vincent Brooks, Day & Son. What is known of this firm?
VincenT Brooks, Day & Son were lithographers and printmakers, famous not only for Vanity Fair, but for printing the famous London Transport posters.
Lithography is a printing process that makes use of the immiscibility — the inability of being mixed or blended together — of oil and water. it uses a flat stone or metal plate on which areas of the image are worked using a greasy substance so the ink will stick to them. The blank areas are made ink-repellent.
The process was discovered in 1798 by Alois Senefelder of Munich, though he only made it public 20 years later.
William Day was a British pioneer of lithography and subsequently chromolithography, whereby colour is applied to the pictures.
Day established his firm in 1823, and in 1831, Belgian lithographer Louis haghe joined the company. They were appointed lithographers to Queen Victoria and Adelaide, Queen Dowager, in 1838.
The firm pioneered the use of coloured plates in books.
haghe left in the 1850s to devote himself to watercolour painting. The firm continued as Day & Son under the guidance of William Day the younger, but was forced into liquidation in 1867 following a scandal.
in 1861, it had printed a large run of bank notes for Lajos Kossuth, a hungarian patriot living in London, who hoped to overthrow Austrian rule by establishing an independent hungarian currency.
The plot failed and Kossuth and Day & Son were charged with levying war upon the emperor of Austria. The printers delivered the notes to the Bank of england where they were burnt, but this did not save them from going bust.
The company’s name and goodwill was bought by Vincent Brooks, who had set up as a printer in 1843 and produced lithographs from the 1850s.
he renamed the printers Vincent Brooks, Day & Son. it became widely known for reproducing caricatures for Thomas Gibson Bowles’s Vanity Fair magazine and the illustrations for cassell’s Book Of Poultry.
After Brooks’s death in 1885, the firm was run by his son, Frederick, and then two of his sons, Wilfred Vincent and Frederick Allan. it was taken over by Baynard Press in 1960.
Mike Dobbs, London SW14.
QUESTION The 1966 World Cup final is famous for Kenneth Wolstenholme’s BBC TV commentary. Does footage exist of the German TV commentary?
FurTher to the earlier answer, German commentator rudi Michel explained why he had been so low-key during the final: ‘We were the first generation of commentators after the war. We were aware of the burden we had to carry. ‘And when you listen to radio live coverage of the Third reich, you realise what kind or reactions they provoked.’ however, the French commentator Thierry roland felt the odds were stacked in england’s favour. ‘end of first-half of extra time. Both teams will change sides and the game will start right away with an advantage for england, three goals to two, thanks to a goal by hurst that will remain litigious for a lot of people,’ he said. ‘One can really say that during this World cup the english had all the possible luck on their side. ‘not only is the World cup organised in their country, for them, but they played all their games at Wembley with time to rest between their matches . . . ‘But if ever it is thanks to this goal that the english win the World cup, they may well thank and worship all the gods of football . . . As far as i’m concerned, i’m not sure at all if the ball completely crossed the white line.’ Paul Vine, Colchester, Essex.
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