The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-03-21
HE WONDERFUL
 POWER OF WATER An Age of Water Power Is Now
 Dawning THE BLACKSMITH'S TEST Discovers Strength of to-inch Stream and Loses Unique Bet-ereat Development of Power in
 United States.
By JONAS WILSON.

DJ JOiNfN0 WiLOoifs
 Those who look into the future with prophetic eyes predict that an age of water. over is dawning They point wisely towards the great water-power developments already completed or in course of construction all over the world, from the rivers of Maine to the canyons of California; from Alaska to Argentine and from the Kashn,ir Valley in India to the outlet of Victoria Nyanza in Africa. And they back up their arguments with the statement that coal will be ex- hausted early in the next century and that mineral oil and natural gas will vanish with the coal.
 Amid all this prognosticating and ar guing arises a host of questions about this water-power which is to keep us from freezing in the next century, to turn the wheels of industries, to pre- pare the food and to run our vehicles
 Every stream of running water, from the trout brook sporting through the farm meadows to the largest rivers, is capable of producing more or less power A hundred years ago, when steam power was still in it's infancy, water power was
  try, but the steam engipe. with cheap wood and coal fuel quickly reached the practical stage and the "over-shot'' and "under-shot water wheels were aban- doned. Up to few years ago it was not practical to develop most water-pow- CT because this power had to be utilized on the spot and very naturally the very best water falls were located in tho wilderness, scores of miles away from the seaports, the railroads and the cities which needed it. But the invention of the electric transformer changed all this and made it possible to transmit this energy for hundreds of miles without serious loss.
 The power of water is greater than any one without experience can imagine. For many of us have, when in swim ming. struck the water a sharp blow with the fiat of the hand, or when learn ing to dive struck the water flat instead I of head arss only to learn that the liquid offered considerable resistance.
 stream from a fremans hose will knock a man down. The jet from a noz- gle in placer mining in the west eats away a large piece of land In a day and toys with great boulders as if they were pebbles.
 There is story of an eastern black smith who went west and made bet that he could knock hole through the jet of one of these nozzles with a sledge hammer. He lifted his arms, swung the sledge and came down on the 10-inch stream with a force that would have dented an anvil. But the jet never pen etrated, whisked the massive hammer out of the blacksmiths hands and tossed 1t several hundred feet away into the de- bris of gold-bearing gravel beneath crumbling cliff.
 There is a power plant near Durango, Colo, where United States cavalryman one day thought he had an easy job in cutting a two-nch stream with his sword. He made a valiant attack The result was that his sword was shivered in two and his wrist broken.
 A little thinner jet of water descending 1900 feet to a manufactory at Grenoble, Spain, and travelling at the moderate speed of 100 yards second fractures the best blades of Toledo.
 If it were possible to surround bat tleship with an inch sheet of water of sufficient velocity it would ward off the largest bombshells better than the best steel plate.
 Water-power represents heat energy The water Is drawn up into the clouds by the heat of the sun and deposited on the distant mountains in the form of rain. This water spends this required energy in racing downhill, back to the sea. Water wheels are but devices to catch and utilize this energy which ordi- narily is wasted on the unmoving rocks and stones. Water acts as a moving power. either by it's weight, which is over 62 pounds to the cube foot, or by its pressure or impact. The power of a fall of water is equal to the weight of its volume and the vertical height of it's fall. To compute the power of falling water it is necessary to multiply the volume of flowing water in cube feet per minute by It's weight, 625 pounds, and this product by the vertical height of the fall in feet. Thus stream of water when flowing over a weir five feet in width by one foot in depth and having a fall of 20 feet develops S7s1 horsepower.
 It is easy enough to weir a small stream. A rough plank dam is made between the banks. One end Is fixed with a slide so the rectangular aperture can be widened until the water flows just foot deep over the edge of the topmost plank Knowing the width of the aper- ture in linear feet one can figure out the number of cubic feet of water flow ing in the stream per minute. In larger streams the flow can only be computed by soundings for the average depth and using floats to determine the flow.
 But the water power of stream must not be computed at a time when the stream Is swollen by heavy rains, be- cause the horse power will not be there during the summer season when rains are not so plentiful. A large number of streams, whose sources are in snow capped mountains or in great swamps, maintain almost constant flow the year around Others get very low during July or August To secure reliable and per manent source of power in a small stream which runs low during the sum mer if is necessary to build storage res ervoirs to store up the water. which us-. ually runs quickly to waste after heavy rain. so it can be used when needed. Swamps and capped noun tains are in themselves storage reser- voirs.
 If s possible in these days of scientific research to determine very accurately the amount of power available fn any given stream. Weiring the stream dur- ing the summer months will show JUS average flow. transit in the hands or surveyor will quickly show the number of feet of fall available for any dis tance. The surveyor can also ascertain the number of acres in the water shed. and, by writing the weather bureau at Washington, the average rainfall in that section for the season can be determined, showing just how much water goes to waste In the spring freshets and just how large a. reservoir would be needed tN -t~-> thak water sns ,'sA durinH fhA