windjammer
n.— «Many of these farms never even had electricity until the mid to late 30’s. And even those that did often had an onsight “windjammer” that produced very small voltage from which the juice was run into the buildings often on bare wires and only for dim low wattage light bulbs. If the wind didn’t blow, there was no electric power for them either.» —“learning about old cows” by ontic Ask MetaFilter May 3, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...