The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-02-17
SUN AARNESSED At LAST
CLAIM THAT A SUCCESSFUL DEVICE
FOR USING IT'S POWER HAS
BEEN WORKED OUT.
GREAT THING FOR IRRIGATION
The Fact That No Fuel Is Required
Shows Its Great Advantage
Description OF the
Solar Motor.
Written for the Globe by the author of


THE Conquest of Arid America"
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 12-"Hitch your
wagon to a star" was the lofty counsel
of the Concord sage to aspiring youth
And 10! after more than a generation
practical farmers are accepting his adj
vice more literally than any one could
have imagined. They are hitching their
engines to the sun.
The ostriches at the farm near this city
surrendered one of their paddocks to a
mechanical engineer and a business man
from Boston a few weeks ago, and the
newcomers proceeded to set up a strange
device which casual onlookers have vari-
ouSly considered a windmill, a search
light, merry-go- round, and a looking
glass of gigantic size and fantastic de-
sign, but which proves to be new in
Ventfon of extraordinary interest and
wide practical usefulness. It is the solar
motor, and it solves the question Of ap-
plying the suns rays directly to the pro
duction Of steam power
There were a good many attempts dur
ing the past thirty-seven years, and. in
deed, more than a century ago, to make
a commercial proposition of sun power
Some of the more recent of these efforts
have been announced in a highly sensa-
tional way as likely to furnish power for
moving trains and steamships and even
for leveling down great mountains. No
such absurdities have been associated
with the solar motor which is now at
tracing the attention of scientific men
andspepular crowds at South Pasadena :
= Indeed, nothing has been claimed for
1t. The device speaks for itself in the
modest but impressive language of actual
daily performance.
1t drives a ten-horse power engine from
an hour and a half after sunrise to with
in half an hour Of sunset. Its perform
ance has gradually increased with each
days trial and the perfecting of details
and there is no reason to suppose that
its maximum has been reached, nor that
it will be with the present model At
this writing it's best record is the raising
OF 1,4O0 gallons per minute at a lift Of
twelve feet. The average percentage of
sunshine in the arid region as whole
is 20 per cent and this figure would cor
rectly represent the proportion of the
year in which sun power could be re-
lied upon. Making due allowance for the
hours of idleness after sunset, 400 gal
Ions per minute, which equal 155 miners
inches, would irrigate about 200 acres of
alfalfa, about 300 acres of oranges or
about 500 acres Of deciduous trees AL
though there are large districts where
water may be had at a depth Of twelve
feet that is by no means an average
lift, so that the actual capacity of the
solar motor cannot fairly be set so high.
It's capacity viii vary with the lift, with
the character of crops, and with differ
ences Of soil.
The important consideration is that. the
new power effects complete saving of
the item Of fuel, since it gathers all the
heat for its boiler directly from the sun.
Water power might be just as cheap If It
were as widely diffused as the sun power,
which unfortunately it is not. Water
power is being more and more used to
generate electricity for pumping, but this
can only be supplied by companies which
have made a large investment and who
then charge the irrigator an annual rent