Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/643

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POWER DEVELOPMENT AT NIAGARA.
623

for the construction of larger and larger machines, and the requirements are just as steadily being met without difficulty), and yet this very tangible dislike of their use for power transmission undoubtedly exists. The result is that, without undertaking considerable work on new ground in the way of patterns, designs, etc, no company could obtain such machines; and since the alternating current has had practically the exclusive attention of the laborers in the field of electrical power transmission there is no

Fig. 6.—River, Canal, Wheel Pit, and Tail-race Tunnel.

method, tried on the large scale, for the other. The second disadvantage referred to is the greater cost of motor transformers over the simple stationary ones for alternating work. In view, however, of the fact of the proposed installation of these very motor transformers in adapting the alternating current to the arc lighting of Buffalo, and to the aluminum smelting works at Niagara, it would seem that this objection could not count for very much.

In connection with the Niagara Falls work there is the further