TIMS is ’The
International Molinology Society’. It is based
in Belgium, has representatives in many countries
and assembles information about wind and water mills
across the world.
Its most useful resource is the
TIMS database, a sophisticated spreadsheet assembly
of key information about the location and types of
water, wind and other types of mills in many
countries which anybody can access and add to.
It enables their location to be
easily plotted on the Google Earth maps and
constitutes a very useful tool when travelling
abroad. The coverage however varies considerably
from country to country:
There are 3 databases covering
a total of over 20,000 mills. One can download them
in a zip format which then opens into a big .xls
spreadsheet that then reduces by a factor of about 4
when saved as an xlsx. Each mill has one line
containing e.g. its name, coordinates, descriptions
of its function and its technical aspects etc.
And one can also download a .kmz
file which plots their location in Google Earth,
then go to a specific region to see the mills
available there.
The first ‘millscombined’
contains the 8,375 mills for which a photo has been
provided. In addition, there is a second database ‘nophotos’
of 10,661 mills without a photo, and another
covering 1,893 so-called ‘inaccurate’ mills for
which the information included is more fragmentary
or less reliable. The latter is like a work in
progress and its geographic cover differs from the 2
main ones.
I have analysed the
millscombined database which, as an xlsx file,
is of about 9mb:
|
DISTRIBUTION OF MILLS IN TIMS |
Mills
with photos |
|
03/01/2015 |
(Selected countries) |
% |
Total |
| |
Germany |
28.5% |
2,391
|
| |
Netherlands |
19.0% |
1,589
|
| |
Belgium |
9.5% |
795
|
| |
Portugal |
7.9% |
662
|
| |
France |
5.3% |
440
|
| |
Sweden |
5.1% |
423
|
| |
Denmark |
3.3% |
273
|
| |
Switzerland |
2.1% |
178
|
| |
Austria |
2.1% |
177
|
| |
Greece |
2.1% |
172
|
| |
Finland |
1.7% |
143
|
| |
Estonia |
1.5% |
122
|
| |
Italy |
1.4% |
120
|
| |
USA |
1.1% |
96
|
| |
England
(=UK) |
0.9% |
78
|
| |
Lithuania |
0.9% |
73
|
| |
Slovenia |
0.6% |
54
|
| |
Norway |
0.6% |
50
|
| |
Czech
Republic |
0.5% |
41
|
| |
Ukraine |
0.4% |
37
|
| |
Thailand |
0.4% |
33
|
| |
Canada |
0.3% |
24
|
| |
Poland |
0.3% |
23
|
| |
Romania |
0.2% |
20
|
| |
Russia |
0.2% |
15
|
| |
Hungary |
0.1% |
10
|
| |
Croatia |
0.0% |
4
|
| |
Cyprus |
0.0% |
3
|
| |
Slovakia |
0.0% |
1
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
Other
countries |
3.9% |
328
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
Total |
100.0% |
8,375
|
|
Of
which |
|
|
|
|
...
water |
|
40.4% |
|
|
...
Wind |
|
56.1% |
|
|
...
other |
|
3.5% |
|
This distribution probably
reflects 3 main factors:
size
of country, prevalence of mills in it, zeal of
contributors to TIMS
The ‘zeal’ factor comes from
the fact that the main contributors are from
northern Europe, and they have added places to which
they tend to travel on holidays from home!
So for instance the cover in
Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway,
Finland, Switzerland and Austria looks very
thorough, but it is much more sketchy elsewhere,
including in France and the UK where there is much
more information available from local groups but not
registered with TIMS.
Take a look - it may
be fun, and you may wish to contribute to TIMS your
own discoveries as you travel one day!
George A Roussopoulos
13 June 2015
