Q 01/05

In which country did the first practical windmills, with horizontally turning sails, appear around the 9th century?

A) China

B) Egypt

C) Persia

D) England

Answer · why

C) Persia

The geographer Estakhri reported them in Khorasan; they had six to twelve reed-covered sails turning round a vertical shaft.

Q 02/05

What was the early Persian windmill with lightweight vertical sails on a vertical shaft called?

A) Smock mill

B) Post mill

C) Panemone

D) Fantail

Answer · why

C) Panemone

It was first built to pump water and only later adapted to grind grain.

Q 03/05

Which Babylonian ruler is said to have used wind power for irrigation as early as the 17th century BC?

A) Hammurabi

B) Sargon

C) Gilgamesh

D) Nebuchadnezzar

Answer · why

A) Hammurabi

Hero of Alexandria later described a wind-driven wheel powering an organ, though it may only have been a toy or a design idea.

Q 04/05

In which triangle of regions did the vertical windmill first appear in the 12th century?

A) Castile, Aragon and Portugal

B) Bavaria, Bohemia and Saxony

C) Tuscany, Lombardy and Provence

D) Northern France, eastern England and Flanders

Answer · why

D) Northern France, eastern England and Flanders

It is unclear whether it owed anything to the Persian horizontal mills that had reached southern Europe a century earlier.

Q 05/05

Northern Europe's earliest certain windmill reference, from 1185, comes from a village in which English county?

A) Lincolnshire

B) Yorkshire

C) Norfolk

D) Kent

Answer · why

B) Yorkshire

Weedley stood at the southern tip of the Wolds overlooking the Humber; these first mills ground cereals.