Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1901-02-23
Some of the Wonders That Have Been
Accomplished.
GREATER ONES YET TO-: CONE
Possibilities of the Development
of Water Power.
STEEL CON STR q c TION

Written for The Evening Star by Frank W. Skinner,
NJ. Am. Soc. e. Il.
Copyright, 1901, by F. w. Skinner)
Civil engineering three generations ago
was summed up in surveying, road making,
masonry building and designing heavy ma
chinery, and it's masters could be CONVEX
SAINT with the whole recorded horizon of
the profession. Now it is divided into rec
Organized fields, each of which requires a
lifetime of study and concentration. There
is mechanical, electrical, mining, naval,
railroad, geodetical, hydraulic, structural,
municipal and sanitary engineering.
The scope of the first four is too elab-
crate and technical for present considera-
ton. Geodetical engineering includes the
most accurate and extensive surveys.
Structural engineering may here be con-
sidered as chiefly the building Of steel, ma
sonry and timber bridges, buildings and
foundations, thus including the essentials
of modern architecture; and the other
great branches deal with the specific works
their names imply, the different ones over
tapping each other on all sides.
Measuring the Continents.
The geodetical engineer measures on the
Atlantic coast base line few thousand
feet long with an accuracy of one-fve-mil-
lionth part of its length. From it he TRAN
gulates more than 1000 miles to the Pacific
coast and measures the total distance with
an error less than 100 feet. His lines are
corrected for the earths curvature and Tor
the refraction of the atmosphere. His lev
els are carried over mountains. chasms ana
deserts so perfectly that the differences be-
tween the tides of the Atlantic and PACING
oceans are accurately measured, and long
canals are planned and built with a perfect
control of the water level ana now: he ek-
dc hic To
toms of rivers, lakes and seas. BY his
plots and charts, curved, crooked and slop-
ing tunnels are driven under land and sea
so accurately that they can be started 81
mutaneously from many intermediate
points and meet almost as perfectly as the
tubes of a telescope.
In this field of engineering a perfection
sufficient for present requirements has been
attained and few radical changes may be
anticipated. More delicate instruments and
cheaper methods may be provided, but the
results will not be noticeable to the lay
man. Long before the close of the twen-
tieth century the hydraulic and railroad
engineer will probably find every portion
of the country so exactly mapped that,
without survey, he may locate the roads
and canals and connect works hundreds of
miles apart by measurements from the
nearest monuments.
Limit of Speed.
The railroad engineer has already brought
his train speeds up to a possible rate of 100
miles an hour for short distances. Beyond
this the limit of safe endurance of his ma
terials is not far distant The dangers to
life and property much multiplied
and the expense so disproportionate for
farther increase that the maximum speed
will hardly become notably higher. A
great advance will be made in the ordinary
speeds, the perfection of service and the
safety of trains.
There will be far less proportionate con-
struction of new railroads in the United
States and far more in Africa, Asia, South
America and in some parts of Europe. Asia
will be traversed by the thousands of miles
of the great Siberian railroad now being
built. The Soudan is already reached by a
military railroad that may be the entering
wedge for the development of the Sahara,
and the intercontinental railroad across the
Andes has already been surveyed Wher-
ever commerce travel justifies it, the
tallest mountains and the widest waters
will be crossed by railroads In many
places the steam locomotive will give way
to cheaper, more agreeable and more eff
Gent motors. The terminals in the great
cities will be combined in great union de-
pots.
Rivers and Lakes Put to Work.
In hydraulic engineering the develop
ment of water powers, construction of ir-
rigation works, canal, river and harbor i'm
provement, and the water supplies of cities,
include the principal classes of work. Until
within a half score of years the develop
ment of water powers has been limited by
the wants of adjacent manufacturers and
the difficulty of handling, so that many of
the best power sites were unavailable. Now
power can be transformed to electricity and
can be so advantageousy applied and
transferred that numerous large water
ers are being utilized. The most n6ta-
BILE instance of this is at Niagara Falls.
Millions Of dollars have been spent to con-
vert less than the fiftieth part of the poten-
tial energy of the falls into commercial
horse power Water from above the cat
aract Is taken down deep shafts and
through immense tunnel blasted out of
the living rock and discharged 200 feet
down at the surface of the river, a mile
below the falls. Great turbines are f1oated
in the water at the bottoms of the SHAFTS
and drive huge dynamos in the power
house above, from which the electric cur
rent is transmitted many miles to furnish
light and power for great city.
In California shafts and tunnels have been
driven in a granite mountainside, and in
them charge of $4,000 pounds of nitro
glycerine was fired to shatter the rock for
the building of a great dam. In the center
like a gigantic sheet of paper, is a dla-
phragm of riveted thin steel plates hedded
in a narrow concrete jacket and set in a
groove cut in the sides and bottom of the
rocky valley. On both sides are heaped
enormous slopes of loose stone. The steel
gives tightness, the stone Soldity, and the
dam thus formed will impound the waters
| of the valley and furnish a great power.
| Hydraulic constructions like these may not
| increase greatly in size, but they will be
| built in more and more remote wildernesSes
| as the transportation of the power by cleo
| tricity becomes cheaper, and it's accumula-
| ton and preservation in storage batteries are
| perfected. Eventually no great stream vail
| be allowed to waste it's energies. Its forces
| will be transmitted by turbines to power,
| heat, light and motion for factories, cities
| and railroads hundreds of miles away.
Vast Artificial Waterways.
| Costly dams and conduts to store rain
and flood waters for the irrigation of arid
plains and transform them into fertile gar
dens have reclaimed millions of dollars
worth of land in the United States. Nearly
100000 is now being spent on such con-
structions to regulate the Nile and irri-
| gate Egypt. Careful surveys indicate that
a channel could be cut to admit the sea to
| the Desert Of Sahara, TRANSFORMING it to an
inland ocean and creating there new eli
| mate as well as new geography.
| Within fifty years canal building has been
| wholly revolutionized by the .use of high
| explosives steam shovelsf and dredges. me-
chanical systems Of handling the excavated
materials, and, notably, by machinery for
chiseling the vertical rock sides as smooth
as a plastered wall. New types Of power
full machinery will be perfected and the