"Who Has Seen the Wind": Imagining Wind Power for the Generation of Electricity in Victorian Britain

This article argues that discussion and construction of wind mills for the generation of electric power represent a sociotechnical imaginary which linked Victorian unease over waste and resource depletion with a conviction that technological systems that allowed more direct transfer of power than fossil fuels, in combination with widespread, even "unlimited availability" of wind, would provide the soundest and most responsible answer to the empire's energy challenges. Electrical specialists discussed and designed these systems amid critiques of steam, anxieties over coal depletion, and moral commitments to efficiency and sufficiency. Even though these systems were eclipsed by hydropower and fossil-fueled electric power production, this narrative questions the inevitability of fossil fuels in early and contemporary electric systems.