Schermer wind mills by iaacf

Photography • Historical • posted on May 26, 2005

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Description

Jan Adriaanszoon Leeghwater (1575, De Rijp,The Netherlands - 1650) was a Dutch mill builder and hydraulic engineer. He was involved in the reclamation of the Beemster polder, the first polder in the world created from a lake by draining the water using wind mills. The reclamation of the Beemster was started in in 1607 and Leeghwater supervised the milling. Between 1607 and 1635, the polders Purmer, Schermer and Heerhugowaard were also created under his supervision. Leeghwater was among the first to advocate reclamation of the Haarlemmermeer, a lake whose growth presented a danger to the surrounding towns (several villages were swallowed and even Amsterdam and Leiden were eventually threatened). When this was finally accomplished in 1852, one of the three large pumping installations was named after him. This installation, the Leeghwater-gemaal, is still in use today. It is not clear exactly how the prevalent spelling of Leeghwater's name came about. Leeghwater himself spelt his name as Leegwater. A curious fact about the name Leeghwater which may be of interest to non-Dutch speakers, is that it translates literally to empty water The mills you see here are located in the Schermer polder, one of the 17th Century polders Leeghwater helped to create.

Comments (14)

lordstormdragon

2:25PM | Thu, 26 May 2005

A beautiful photo! I love these windmills, gives me all kinds of ideas...

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Cosme..D..Churruca

2:26PM | Thu, 26 May 2005

Super interesting info... and a excellent image of those impressive artifacts !

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Margana

3:00PM | Thu, 26 May 2005

Interesting info and beautiful clean shot to accompany it. Have no idea what a 'polder' is,Lol!

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iaacf

3:08PM | Thu, 26 May 2005

A polder is an area of low-lying land, especially in the Netherlands, that has been reclaimed from a body of water and is protected by dikes

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Sekadhar

10:35PM | Thu, 26 May 2005

Beautiful! Excellent shot!!!

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kimariehere

3:37AM | Fri, 27 May 2005

postcard perfect windmill landscape!!!!!!!!!!!!! just gorgeous!!!!

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sossy

3:40AM | Fri, 27 May 2005

Ohhh again some beautiful windmills I love so much! excellent composed photo! ;o)

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WandM

5:57AM | Fri, 27 May 2005

Perfectly captured!

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MossSphere

8:35AM | Fri, 27 May 2005

Interesting picture and fascinating background, do the mills still work?

ebsmooth

9:33AM | Fri, 27 May 2005

ahhh..more windmills!!! outstanding capture, those mills look awesome, wish i had something like that in my area... i'd have thousands of pics by now...lol!!! very well done!!!

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