A half century ago, a scrappy crew at the University of Massachusetts Amherst erected a wind turbine on Orchard Hill, the highest point on campus. It was a frugal production, cobbled together from the rear axle of a Ford truck, a donated generator and microcontroller, a steam pipe, and various handcrafted steel and fibreglass parts, including its 4.5-meter blades. It was also tiny by modern standards — generating 1000x less power than today’s biggest wind machines. But the UMass ‘Wind Furnace’ delivered far more than most experts expected from wind energy in 1976.

The Wind Furnace project’s enduring impact is impossible to overstate. The training and inspiration it provided the spark and the engineers that unleashed the modern wind industry. For IEEE Spectrum magazine I profiled the UMass project and the visionary engineer behind the machine: Captain William Heronemus.

Bill Heronemus was a nuclear submarine veteran turned professor. A nuclear energy critic. Above all a brilliant engineer with a steady moral compass. I hope you read the profile and then want more, because I’ve got a lot more to say about ‘The Captain’ and his legacy.