Omaha daily bee., 1908-06-21
WONDERS OF WATER POWER
Harnessed to Machinery by the Ever
Growing Skill of Man.
DISTRIBUTOR OF GREAT WEALTH
Becoming n source of Awe-InspirinE
Power In Agriculture and Manu-
facture - UtiItEed the
World over.

Power In Agriculture and Manu-
factures - UtiliSed the
world over.
water is the heir Of the future. Ages
after the coal and forests Of the earth are
gone mountain streams and falls will be
affording man power for his factories,
lights for his streets, heat for his homes.
Through the beneficient agency Of water
the vast deserts Of the west, replaced by
fertile gardens. will be a memory.
Before the age OF machinery water was
used for drinking. bathing and irrigation
in a small, primitive way. Harnessed In a
machine. water becomes a genie OF awe
inspiring power and a distributor Of fabu-
lous wealth. II is estimated that the water
power Of this country is worth more than
all our gold and coal mines.
When you go In swimming at the sea-
shore and slap the water forcibly with your
hand or take a back dive from a pier and
land squarely on your back you realize that
the unstable liquid offers not a little re-
%sistance. Yet 1t would surprise almost any
body to see what water can do under GER
tain conditions. A stream from a fire
mans hose will knock a man down. The
set from a nozzle, used in placer mining in
the west eats away acres of land in a day.
toys with great powders as II they were
pebbles, and would shoot a man over the
country as though he were a projectile
from a cannon. There is a story Of an
eastern blacksmith who went west and
made a bet that he could knock a hole
through the jet OF this nozzle with a sledge-
hammer. He lifted his arms. swung the
sledge and came down on the ten-inch
stream with a force that wolld have dented
an anvil. But the jet, never penetrated,
whlsked the massive hammer out OF the
b~lacksmith's hands and tossed It several
hundred feet away into the debris of gold
bearing gravel beneath a crumbling cliff.
After this the blacksmith left out iron
when he spoke Of hard substances.
shown.
There is also a power plant near Du-
range, Colo, where a United States caval-
ryman one day thought he had an easy
job in splitting a two-inch stream with his
sword. He made a valiant attack, and the
result was that his sword was shivered
in two and his wrist broken. A little thin
ner jet of water descending 1000 feet to a
mandatory at Grenoble, Spain. and trav-
cling at the moderate speed of 100 yards a
second, fractures the best blades of To-
ledo. OF course, no one would believe such
stories without eyewitness proof and one
may think 1t a scientific imagination that
an inch thick sheet of water, provided it
had sufficient velocity, could ward off
bombshells just as well as steel plate.
However, many persons while travelling
have seen a brakeman put a small hy~
dreulic jack under one end OF a Pullman
car and lift twenty tons or so by a few
lelsurely strokes Of the pump handle. and
the experience OF riding every day in a
hydraulic elevator tends to remove doubts
| of the magic mower Dossesspd by water
hitched to a machine.
At the physical laboratory of Manchester
university there is a hydraulic press that
gives a pressure of 5000 pounds to the
square inch. A pump is used to forco the
water through q half-inch steel tube until
one-third OF the total pressure IS gained:
then the operator turns a wheel connecting
with a ram, and about one turn is enough
to produce a pressure equal to six loaded
coal trucks balanced ON the end of a
broomstick. When cotton is baled by this
force it becomes as hard as oak and can
he planed off in the same way.
Freakish Devices.
Nothing more freakish could be imagined
than the mthod of propulsion, initiating
that employed by certain low forms OF
marine animals, used on a thirty-ton life
boat at Harwich, England. This goodly
craft, which is fifty-three feet in length.
advances by squirting out Jets of water in
the direction contrary to that in which 1t
is going. The scheme ought not to work,
but IT does and gives the boat a speed of
eight and a half knots. There are two
powerful centrifugal pumps which draw in
the water from an inlet in the bottom of
the boat and expel it through two twelve
inch holes near the stern and under water.
Similar jets propel the boat astern and
fdarg.a hut thaGa - gitsufaA nhnua
water. Among the advantages claimed for
the craft is that there can be no racing of
the crew in tempestuous seas. 1t may be
inferred that If man could expectorate
with sufficient power he would constitute
a prime motor in his own person and his
speed would be limited only by that of the
health board minions in pursuit.
At Niagara Falls there is a wheel pit 17s
feet deep. through which falls a column
of water seven and one-half feet in dia-
meter. This, striking twin turbines with a
pressure of upward Of 10000 pounds. pro-
duces 5000 horsepower that is turned into
electricity. The wheels devour 43O cubic
feet OF water in a second and make $50
revolutions a minute. A paper company
there has a pen-stock or water tube thir-
teen feet in diameter, made of inch-thick
iron riveted on the spot by hydraulic
~riveters and 40 feet in sheer length. Each
turbine of l,1OO-horsepower takes the en-
ergy out Of IA tons OF water a minute and
transmits 1t to a giant vertical shaft which
extends from the bottom TO the brink of
the falls. Syracuse and Buffalo and places
between are getting power and light from
NiagarA's torrent. Some day New York
will be connected. Niagara Falls can pro-
duce 100000 horsepower. The total stream
horsepower OF the United States is about
II, 100000.
Harvesting Mountain Power.
In Colorado, Montana. Washington and
California the power OF water plunEing
over cliffs or conveyed down mountains
through fumes and pipes is lighting many
cities, propelling street cars and turning
factory wheels. UNCLE Sam is amazed to
discover that he has a by-product worth
perhaps 81, 100000 a year in the waste
water flowing over great dams built TO aid
navigation. There is Loo, Oo0-horsepower
available in the surplus liquid. The Inland
waterways commission has reported this
fact 10 the convention OF state governors
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