Perth Amboy evening news., 1910-04-18
PUTTING THE WIND mo- WORK.

PUTTING THE WIND TO WORK.
Millions and millions of horse
power hourly sweep back and fourth
over the habitations Of men and
only very small fraction of this
wasted energy is used to turn a
wheel Such men as Edison, of Or
ange, Steinmetz, Of Schenectady,
and Tesla, of Denver, state upon au-
thority. backed with actual figures
that he day is already dawning when
the waves, the sun and the wind will
have to be harnessed to supply man
kind with the necessary power to
keep us live and In comfort.
In the East the windmill is prac-
tically unknown but scattered all
over the great plains in the Middle
West can be found these economical
power producers busily engaged in
pumping water or occasionally turn
ing a grindstone or feed mill.
These wheels are small, but they are
busy and successful workers and
there is no reason why they cannot
be made larger.
The modern farmer of this great
country now boasts of his telephone,
his automobile and his other city
conveniences and he will not be tot
ally satisfied until he has electric
lights and electric motors to do the
drudgery about his farm
The Yankee with his Barlow knife
has Whitfield out more labor saving
inventions than all the other nations
put together and it is not to be Won
dered at that an enterprising Him
ois farmer was the first to provide
his farm with an abundance of cleo
trieity from wind power.
This countryman knew nothing
about electricity or electrical ma
chinery beyond what he had seen in
the nearby cities but 1t did not take
him long to read up on the subject
enough to understand the rudiment-
airy principles of the mysterious en-
ergy. He already owned large
steel windmill so all he had to do
was to devise some scheme whereby
the wind power could be turned into
electricity. He soon found out that
a small generator direct connected to
his windmill shaft would not do at
all, for his power would not only be
uneven, but would cease entirely
whenever the wind stopped blowing.
He thought of making the windmill
pump water to high tank and then
convert the falling water into cleo
tricity through turbine-driven gem
orator but this would involve too
much expense. Then he chanced
upon an article dealing with batter
les for storing electricity and the
problem was Immediately solved.
The cNnplete windmill plant on
this model farm consists of a small
storage battery, an electrical gener-
ator for charging the battery, a
windmill for driving the generator
and an automatic device for control
ling the current to and from the
storage battery, together with the
necessary lamps, wire ana small
motors. The battery consists of
fourteen cells arranged on an open
rack in two tiers. This battery Is
clean, gives off no disagreeable odor
and needs no care except to keep 1t
in warm, dry place Near the bat
terry is located the automatic cutoff
device which breaks the circuit be-
tween the generator and the battery
whenever the latter is idle or run
ming at too low a speed to provide
sufficient current to the cells. II IL
wasn't for this little automatic de-
vice whenever the speed of the gem
orator fell below the normal the cur
rent, instead of flowing from the
generator to the battery. would re-
verse and flow from the battery into
the generator, converting the latter
into a motor and doing no end of
harm.