Thomas O. Perry
American engineer (1847–1927)
Thomas Osborne Perry (1847–1927) was an American mechanical engineer, designer, and the original innovator of the all-metal windmill. Perry made significant contributions to the field of wind powered turbines and was an early pioneer of modern wind power technology.
History
Thomas Osborne Perry was born in Franklin, Michigan on February 28, 1847.
In 1882 and 1883, while working for the U.S. Wind Engine and Pump Company, Perry conducted a series of over five thousand experiments on windmill rotors and rotor blades. His experiments resulted in a windmill design that was 87% more efficient than other windmills manufactured at that time. Perry's main improvement was the use of concave windmill blades made from steel, rather than flat wooden blades. In order to conduct his experiments, Perry had designed and built an enclosed wind tunnel, a research tool that was not in common use at this time.
In 1888, Thomas Perry and LaVerne Noyes started the Aermotor Windmill Company and began manufacturing Aermotor windmills. The Aermotor was used for pumping water for livestock and became indispensable to midwestern farmers and ranchers in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Selling only 45 windmills in its first year, Aermotor rapidly increased sales and by the turn of the century had sold hundreds of thousands of windmills.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7792845. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1847, 1927, 1882 and 1883.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomas O. Perry” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.