The Eustis Wind Turbine

From 2023 to 2024, I worked as a Research Fellow for Historic New England studying the history of technology at the Eustis Estate in Milton, MA. The patriarch of the family WEC Eustis built the estate with many novel innovations for the late-nineteenth century, including several generations of an electric generating wind turbine. WEC electrified one room at the estate with a store-bought turbine system in1894, and in1896 began experimenting with his own designs inspired by steam turbines of the1890s. By1902 he had perfected a system that electrified the entire estate. His design for a vertical-axis wind turbine was so unique as to be inscrutable: upon seeing a photograph of the final machine, a giant wooden cylinder with a conical roof atop a steel tower, visitors to the Eustis Estate Museum often think they are looking at a water tower. The turbine was unfortunately dismantled in 1938, leaving only the stone powerhouse, a smattering of local press, and a few photographs in the family albums as proof of its existence. No drawings or diagrams survive to give us a clue of what went on inside this wooden cylinder.

In studying the largely untold history of wind energy in the nineteenth century, I discovered the comparative novelty of WEC’s designs. As a visual thinker, I began drawing diagrams of his turbine based on its contemporary accounts for my own understanding. What started as visual curiosity became an intense interdisciplinary exercise as I filtered historic and technical readings through my training as a draftsman and sculptor to produce a scale model of this machine. The process of reverse-engineering the turbine became an important means of understanding it, forcing me to consider how all the components had to work together. It also required me to read broadly, incorporating historic articles, correspondence from the Eustis family archives, and patents from other nineteenth century technologies to piece together the turbine’s function. The resulting 146-page final report, digital models, diagrams, and animations will be incorporated into museum interpretation in late 2024 as interactive content on the www.eustis.estate web app as well as a physical model for display in the museum, 3D printed in partnership with Brown University.