Archive

In the March 1944 issue of Mechanix Illustrated one could find pictures of the newest war machines and advancements, or a do-it-yourself guide for building an anemometer. There was also one picture of Joe Jacobs (on p. 76) driving an electric car he had built for transportation purposes that proved very useful during a period of wartime gasoline rationing. For anyone out there interested in that homemade anemometer, we also included pages 90-91 covering its construction. Special thanks to Mr. Phil Wilson for finding and sending us these pages.

A picture of a Jacobs Wind Machine at the Eureka weather station on Ellesmere Island. The station, built in 1947, used the machine for additional power.

Photos from Admiral Byrd’s Little America base camp in Antarctica. The first one shows the two radio towers in the original 1929 camp. The Jacobs unit was installed in the second camp in 1934. The last picture shows Byrd’s final visit to Little America. All that is left to mark this camp is the very top of the radio tower that once held the Jacobs machine. It was taken down just prior to the picture, but the mount and protruding wiring is still visible.

Plowboy Series June 2nd and 3rd 1973 interview with Marcellus Jacobs. Article released November of 1973

An article from the Minneapolis Star about the second Jacobs Wind Electric Company and its progression from the past designs of its predecessor.

Another article about Jacobs Wind and the general state of the small wind industry as of 1983. It hits on declining oil prices and the end of tax cuts that eventually brought about the second downfall.

An obituary for M.L. Jacobs from the September/October 1985 issue of Alternative Sources of Energy.

An article about the Jacobs brothers as “Montana’s Pioneer ‘Windsmiths’”. This link is to the Winter 1996 issue with this story, but it just lists the article titles and does not have them completely. This article was referenced, though, when initially writing the history section on this website.

A letter written by M.L. Jacobs to the United States Congress pitching the idea of multiple small wind generators (5kW) being tied into a grid vs. a single large generator (1 megawatt) being designed by Percy H. Thomas at the time.

A promotional pack for the Island Park development in Ft. Myers Florida. Built by Marcellus Jacobs and named after the once great amusement park on Lake Minnetonka, MN, Island Park was where development of water flushing systems and marine products took place. It is also where the prototype machine for the second generation of Jacobs Wind was designed.

A certificate awarded to Marcellus Jacobs in 1977 by the Santos=Dumont Foundation in Brazil for being a pioneer in aviation. The English translation was written down on the following sheet of paper.

A paper submitted by M.L. Jacobs to a joint symposium of cathodic protection held by the National Association of Corrosion Engineers in 1947. It outlines the use of wind generators as “an external source of protective currents”.

This report was submitted to the United Nations Conference on New Sources of Energy in 1961. It outlined his experience with Jacobs wind machines in regards to engineering, construction, and performance over the 26 year period in the title.

Paper that originally appeared in the 1961 UN Report but also presented to NASA in December of 1973 during the Wind Energy Workshop. This version also contains a short discussion after the original document.

A report by Dennis G. Shepherd in 1990 for the NASA Lewis Research Center. This is a well researched historical overview of wind energy spanning from ancient windmills to modern wind turbines at that time. On page 41 there is a paragraph about the original Jacobs wind machines.

This sizable document lists a wealth of resources for further research on historical wind turbine technology. Page 9 has a short blurb about the December 1973 Wind Energy Workshop and Marcellus Jacobs’ participation in it.

Proceedings from the Wind Energy Conversion Systems Workshop held from June 11, 1973 to June 13, 1973 in Washington, DC. This document also includes the same paper by Marcellus Jacobs referenced in two other document links here and also including the followup discussion Q and A from the conference. In addition, though, are all other items from the proceedings as well.