page_title: Holyoke Testing Flume
section_title: Emerson's predecessors
hierarchical_section_title: Holyoke Testing Flume / History / Emerson's predecessors
caption_attribution_description: English: A portrait of James B. Emerson, a former sea captain and self-trained hydraulic engineer who went on to design and build the Lowell and Holyoke Testing Flumes, making the mass standardization of American water turbines possible during the Second Industrial Revolution.
context_page_description: The Holyoke Testing Flume was a hydraulic testing laboratory and apparatus in Holyoke, Massachusetts, operated by the Holyoke Water Power Company from 1870 to 1932, and used to test the performance of water turbine designs, completing 3,176 tests of efficiency in that time. It was described by Robert E. Horton in court testimony as the only facility of its kind in the 19th and early 20th century, which made it possible for the standardization of American turbine designs. Indeed Clemens Herschel, who managed and redesigned the facility in the 1880s, later described it in Congressional testimony as the "first modern hydraulic laboratory" in the United States and the world. It was through Herschel's need to determine the water power consumption of different mills, and in this testing system that he would invent the Venturi meter, the first accurate means of measuring large-scale flows, which still retains widespread use in modern technology today.
context_section_description: The origins of the Holyoke Water Power Company's testing flume and its subsequent success are inextricably linked with the industrial progress that preceded Holyoke in the history of Lowell, Massachusetts. In 1868, a testing flume was constructed by one Asa M. Swain to the specifications of noted-turbine engineer James B. Francis. Initially this flume was designed to test the designs of the Swain Turbine Company with James B. Emerson, a former ship captain and self-taught civil engineer, commissioned to construct a Prony brake dynamometer for it and oversee efficiency experiments. Following its initial success however, the flume was opened to the public with Emerson operating it as a personal endeavor, furnishing funds for the use of Lowell water in its experiments. Among the first tests conducted thereafter were a series of competitive trials to find designs with the greatest efficiency, with the Swain and Leffel wheels attaining the best results. Though Emerson would later discount the figures these tests generated, upon hearing the initial success of the competition, he was contacted by a Mr. Stewart Chase, agent for the Holyoke Water Power Company, who wrote:
  The testing of turbines is the only way to perfection, and that is a matter of great importance. Move your work to Holyoke and use all the water that is necessary for the purpose, and welcome, free of charge.
caption: James Emerson, the first to manage the testing flume was entirely self-taught in hydrodynamics
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