2.7 Honors Timeline By jbowker25 Jun 21, 700 Wind usedd to smelt metal from rock in Sri Lanka Jun 21, 1200 The horizontal axis postmill was built and used in Europe Jun 21, 1200 Genghis Khan forces Persians to build windmills for irrigation Jun 21, 1500 Tower windmills with cloth sails were used in Spain Jun 21, 1700 The Netherlands and Englad had about 10,000 windmills Jun 21, 1767 Horace de Saussure invents the first solar collector Jun 21, 1861 Augustin Mouchot patents a solar engine Jun 21, 1891 Clarence Kemp patents first solar water heater Jun 21, 2015 Da Vinci proposes the first industrial applications of solar concentrators Mar 2, 2022 Windmills ground corn meal in Persia.