Throughout history the wind has been used by humans as an energy source for such things as transportation and food production. Energy released by the trade winds-winds that almost always blow in the same direction-was first captured in the sails of ships and used to transport the ship and its cargo across oceans. There are few large ships that still use wind power, although many people continue to enjoy sailing smaller crafts using the power of wind.

Food production, such as grinding flour for baking bread, was sometimes powered by wind-driven windmills. Those windmills were eventually modified to run water pumps and even later, to generate electricity. Today, the modern windmill, called a wind turbine, is used to generate large quantities of electricity. Through advances in technology, energy producers can even generate electricity from a whole series of wind turbines, called a wind farm. These wind...