In the year 1879 Charles F. Brush created the first street lighting in the United States when he introduced his new arc lamp in downtown Cleveland. He was also the first person in the world to use windpower to operate incandescent lamps.

Charles Brush lived on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland. It was here that he had a tower built, 60 feet in height, which was anchored into the ground to a depth of eight feet - in solid masonry. The wind wheel was 56 feet in diameter, its sail surface, with 144 blades, had 1,800 square feet. The sail surface was turned into the wind by a tail that was 20 feet wide and 60 feet long. His house was lighted entirely by storage batteries, which were located in the basement, for a period of 12 years and the mill was used to charge the batteries for a period of 20 years. The apparatus was described in the magazine Scientific American in the Dec 1890 issue.

The Brush house had 350 incandescent lamps ranging in candlepower from 10 to 50; it also contained two arc lamps. A view of the windmill, as scanned from the Feb 20, 1895 issue of Electricity (Vol VIII, No 6, pg 65), is shown below.