Harnessing the power of the wind goes back millenniums. Wind is kinetic energy created by the sun and earth’s rotation, creating air currents. Sailors used it to fill their sails on journeys across seas.
By the 1000 AD, windmills were used to pump seawater to make salt in Sicily and China. By the 1180s, windmills were used in northwestern Europe to grind flour. Nearing the late 1800s, development began for the first-known wind turbine that could produce electricity.