Evening star., 1936-03-08

names Of these factories. I can say
that one will be chemical company.
another huge paper mill. another an
aluminium company, and"
Then. you begin to vision thousand
per cent growth in population over
night. Eastport. with its $500 in
habitants. suddenly springs into being
as striving and thriving new city
of 25,000-with all of the city's
glamour and life.
Poor little Eastport is rather dull
spot on the map at the moment. even
with Quoddy only 2 miles aWay-and
the boys and girls coming to town on
Saturday nights. Precious little en-
tertainment they find. for the livest
center of mirth is Browns Palace of
Pleasure. Not palace of pleasure at
all. but merely a place where pool and
billiards are played.
Between games, in Browns Palace
of Pleasure, they talk about the
Quoddy project-and you learn from
engineers standing by that this bit of
work in far corner of Maine is being
watched by power people the world
over. If the Quoddy Dam is success
full. they say, England will build one
like it. Germany already has plans
somewhat similar to these patents
taken out by Dexter Cooper.
In simple terms you learn that
wind, streams and tides are the three
natural sources of power. Streams
and wind have been conquered by
man, but not the tides-unless Quoddy
turns the trick.
New England. a century and half
ago, turned to the tide mill-to grind
grain. Some of these old tide mills
are still in service. To get a power
plant of this style it was necessary
first to construct an in-shore reser-
voir. It was filled at high tide. Then
the water was run back to the sea
at low tide through race in which
the water wheel turned. Sometimes,
by means of reversible gear, these
power plants were enabled to take ad-
vantage of both the incoming and
outgoing tides. Thus the daily
period of operation was increased, but
there was never full efficiency, such
as they expect to get out of Quoddy-
If it works.
THAT "if" comes from the nature of
the tides themselves. The tidal
cycle is controlled by the moon. Tides
advance and recede twice day, as
any good fisherman knows. The
length of the lunar day is "a hours.
Is minutes and IA seconds. Because
of this the high or the low tide comes
each solar day so minutes. and IA sec
onds later than on the preceding day.
Approximately, this means an hour
later each day, so that the old tidal
mills kept their owners busy the clock
around during the course Of month.
In using tides for generating power
this was always disadvantage.
Quoddy hopes to do away with that
inconvenience. and here is how the
engineers hope to work out their
problem:
A dam will close of Cobscook Bay,
with an area of 46 square miles. This
will make q grand lake and reservoir.
Gates in the dam will permit Cobscook
Bay to be filled at high tide. That
done. the gates will be closed in order
that the water will be retained at high
level. When the tide goes out Cobs-
cook Bay will be higher than Passama-
quoddy Bay. As the difference In
elevation reaches somewhere between
S and s feet, the impounded water
will fiow through the turbines Of a
power house to be erected between the
two bays
Under this system II will be- possible
10 generate power for 7 full hours.
but there will also be an interval Of
8 hours and 20 minutes when no