Bridling the Breeze

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Persistence, Jury-Rigging, and Ingenuity Against All Odds

A Malawian youth, whose family could not afford his school tuition, learns some physics and builds a windmill to generate electricity for his village.

William scoured trash bins and junkyards for materials he could use to build his windmill. With only a couple of wrenches at his disposal, and unable to afford even nuts and bolts, he collected things that most people would consider garbage-slime-clogged plastic pipes, a broken bicycle, a discarded tractor fan-and assembled them into a wind-powered dynamo. For a soldering iron, he used a stiff piece of wire heated in a fire. A bent bicycle spoke served as a size adapter for his wrenches.

William now has a blog