The Kimball graphic. (Kimball, Brule County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1905, 1897-06-26
sUBWAYs or PARIS.
They Are Broad and Eigh and Give Man.
business Facilities.

The main sewers are IL feet high and
Is feet broad, and are constructed of
solid masonry covered with cement. says
the Boston Record. Workmen are con-
stantly working on them, and the water
only rises to the sidewalks after a verr
heavy rainfall. The sewers contain two
water mains, as we'll as telegraph and
telephone wires, and tubes for COM
pressed air. This ingenious system
sprang from another embodied in q
contract granted in 1881 by the mu-
nicipal council of Paris to the Pneuma-
tic Clock company, who were given
permission to place their tubes in the
sewers on condition that they erected Il
given number Of clocks in the public
places in the city. and undertook to keep
them to the time furnished daily atnoon
by the observatory. The clocks are
worked from a central Office by the com.
pressed air, and constitute a great public
convenience.
After twenty-five years from the date
Of the contract they will become the
property of the city. AS a set-off the
company receive u concession to estab-
lish and keep their pipes in the sewers
o GRITTY years for the purpose of dis
%tributing compressed air as a motive
power throughout the city. Avery wide
use Is made of so advantageous system,
for it obyiates the purchase of an engine,
saves space. time and trouble. All that
is needed is II meter and the proper con-
nections with the compressed air tube.
then a turn of the tap aud the machinery
is in motion.
Tho sewers are also used to accom-.
MEDIATE the pneumatic tubes by meal
of which the carte kilograms are con-
veyed from II end OF the city to the
other. The convenience of having the
telephone wires in tho sewers is very
great. There are thousands of miles of
these, connecting pa postotlices, as well
as hundreds Of private subscribers in
every part of the city. Any subscriber
in any part of Paris may be heard with
ease in the general p~ostotlice in London
and a whisper can be heard over the
telephone in Paris, with the result that
the hard swearing that goes on over
the London telephones is almost I'M
known. The sluice carriage is run
along the lodges OF the sewers, while =
tongue scrapes the side and bottom clean.
Tho sewers are lighted with lamps, and
not only is every thoroughfare inscribed
on enamel plates, but every house
which is connected with the sewer is also
numbered.
AS many as fifty tourists a day go
down the sewers in the tourist season TO
ride in the tourist car or sail in the
gondola. The Paris council has de-
cided upon adopting the system of
drainage which is in vogue in English
towns. They are to spend $l3, 900, 600
in adapting the sewers to take all the
sewage which at the present time is
stored in cess-pools. They are also go
ing to spend 10, 600, 900 francs more in
improving the water supply and the
means of distributing it. One of the
sewers passes under the river by means
of a syphon ITO yards long and 8 feet
in diameter. This is kept clean by in
serting u wooden ball on the left bank
of the Seine which almost exactly fills
she tube. Tho pressure of the steam
carries the ball down, and then. being
of lighter specific gravity, it rushes to
tho surface, carrying before it every
thing that may have settled in tho
syphon.