Situated southeast of the German city of Hanover, the ore-rich veins of the Harz mountain region had been mined since the middle of the tenth century. Because the deeper parts tended to fill with water, they could only be mined so long as pumps kept the water at bay. During the seventeenth century water wheels powered these pumps. Unfortunately, this meant that the lucrative mining operations had to shut down during the cold mountain winter season when the streams were frozen.
During the years 1680–1685, the Harz mountain mining managers were in frequent conflict with a most unlikely miner. G. W. Leibniz, then in his middle thirties, was there to introduce windmills as an additional energy source to enable all-season ...
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