Reddit mentions of Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope

There was a very popular book written about this called The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Harnessed-Wind-Electricity/dp/0061730327

It's an incredible story. He knew no English, and he simply used the diagrams of a junior high textbook in an American donated library. He had no access to the Internet. He was in an environment of famine and scientific illiteracy/superstitions. He went to a junk yard for months, in between farming duties, to search for the exact components he needed to complete the windmill project.

I highly recommend picking the book up.

Find a 14 year old to build it for you

I listened to an interview with him on NPR this morning it was really good. He basically taught him self physics and about electricity at his library and built his first windmill out of what ever he could find at the local junk yard. He did all of this to help save his country (Malawi) from drought and famine since he could use the wind mills to power irrigation systems.

Here is the amazon link to it, check out the video it shows what he built its quite incredible considering he had no tools at all (his soldering iron was a nail heated over a fire) and it was all from junk.

http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Harnessed-Wind-Electricity/dp/0061730327