The Press., 1893-03-16
NIAGARA IN HARNESS
WATER FROM THE GREAT FALLS
 USED TO DRIVE MACHINERY.

| Great Engineering work-Over G2,-
 5OO,OOO Spent for 100, 900 Horsepower.
 There Will Be Little Diminution of the Flow Over the Falls.
 No engineer ever looked at the spec tacle of power displayed by Niagara falls without 8 feeling that it was a crime to allow the enormous energy there stored up to run to waste from eternity to eternity. The artist is con- tent to steep his soul in the beauty of the scene, but the average utilitarian American is likely to do some figuring on horsepower and available units of work. The prophecies of years are about to materialize i'll a great power plant which will utilize 100000 of the 15,000,000 Of horsepower going to waste over the fs lis, and $2,5O0, 900 has been appended, al'd the water wheels will be h place and the sluices will be opened.
 From the early years of the owner ship of the falls by the Porter family the advantages of the great water power were freely discussed, but nothing was done until about 1850, when Horace A. I Dey caused the construction of canal, which takes water from a point above the rapids and conducts it to set of mills built on the banks below the falls and now known as Schoellkopf s mills. The Niagara river makes q bend at a right angle, and the falls are at the apex of that angle. This canal forms the hy- pothenuse of a right angled triangle, of which the longest side is the river above 1 fho ci1 1n bn, l,a1 +, falls. The mills are near the falls and are not a picturesque feature of the scenery.
 The turbines which drive the mills are sunk in pits only about fifty or sixty feet deep. and consequently their tail races discharge hundred feet or more above the surface of the rapids below the falls, and half of the available power of the water brought down by the canal is thus wasted. Less than 6,000 horsepower is utilized.
 The new works have reversed this plan of long supply canal and short tailrace. They have been constructed on modification of a plan first proposed by Thomas Duershed, a division engl- neer of the New York state canals. The plan is to have the mills on the banks above the falls and at distance from the scenic locality, and then to have a long tunnel to carry the waste water down to the rapids.
 The mouth of the canal is more than mile above the falls. As far as con. ,, structed the canal is about ,500 feet long, 12 feet deep, and varies from q breadth of 900 feet at the mouth to 10( feet at its inner end. Along the sides ! of this canal and of it's branches to be built are sunk pits to 8 depth of 16( feet, and at the bottom of these pits art placed the turbine water wheels. Each of these wheels has 40 feet effective head of water over it. The water i< carried down to them in great pipes seven or eight feet in diameter, called penstocks. After the water had. done it's work on the wheels it is discharged , into the big tunnel, which runs away un derground to the river below the falls
 This tunnel has been the most diff , cult and costly part of the work so far , It was out through solid limestone rock but the rock was found to crumble SC badly after exposure that the whole 1000 feet of the tunnel had to be bricked up. It is in the form of B horseshoe twenty-eight feet high and eighteen feet broad, inside dimensions. Starting at a depth of 160 feet it has a downward slope or pitch of four feet in thousand at first, increasing to seven feet in 8 thousand. Its mouth where it dis charges into the rapids is 214 feet below the brink of the cliffs which form the ravine. Its cross section is 365 square feet, and at the speed of twenty feet a second, with which the water will rush out of it, there will be discharge of about 50,o0O gallons every minute.
 And yet this enormous amount of water will not show any appreciable drain whatever on the magnificent vol :, ume of Niagara. It will lower the level of the great flood only about one and half inches. The extent and con. stancy of this water power can be un i, derstood when it is realized that the water service of the great lakes, with the land sloping into them and contrib uting to the Falls of Niagara, has to- tai drainage basin of over 240, 1000 square } miles-equal to more than twice the area , of Great Britain and Ireland, about 40, 900 square miles more than the total area of France, and more than fifteen , times the total area of Switzerland. The . Horseshoe falls are 159 feet high and 2,000 feet wide. The other channel, in the state of New York, forms the Amer. ican falls, which are 169 feet high al the eastern side, and 1000 feet wide both falls comprising $500 linear feet of water.
 The extreme limits of variation i'll the depth of the river at different times above the falls are 315 feet, but these limits are rarely reached. The ordinary variation is about one foot Below the falls the extreme variation reaches if teen feet. Generally variation of one foot above the falls is followed by g change of level of five feet below the falls. These slight changes are of short duration, and are due mainly to long con tinued and violent wind or sudden great accumulations of ice.
 The average discharge of water at the outlet of Lake Erie into the Niagara river is estimated by some authorities al 265 ,000 cubic feet second. Moreover as far as this or the next two genera tions are concerned, it doesn't matter whether there is any rainfall, for there are 5000 cubic miles of water backed uI in the little mill pond of the Niagara Falls Power company, which is sufficient to run the falls in their present style fol 100 years without the help of another drop from the clouds.-New York Trib une.
 One of the finest collections of antique watches and miniatures is in privat, house and has never been exhibited.
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