James Blyth - Britain's first modern wind power pioneer

Abstract

The American, Charles Brush is often credited with being the first person to use a wind powered machine to generate electricity, which operated for the first time during the winter of 1887. However, earlier in July 1887, Professor James Blyth, a Scottish academic of Anderson's College, Glasgow (which later became Strathclyde University) was undertaking very similar experiments to Brush, which culminated in a UK patent in 1891. Likewise the Dane, Poul La Cour, is known to have constructed relatively advanced wind turbines throughout the 1890s, which were also used to generate electricity which was then used to produce hydrogen. This paper investigates Professor Blyth's life, seeking to understand his motivation to generate electricity from the wind and his association with contemporaries, including Lord Kelvin. The paper argues that it was Blyth and not Brush, who was the first to produce wind-powered electricity.