those who are parties to these controversies. It is impossible to doubt that the wide diffusion of education is always helping to clarify the situation. It has done much already to relieve the industrial strike of its uglier features. Riot and bloodshed now rarely mark it where the parties to a contest are men of average intelligence and education, like the English engineers. So the evolution will advance, step by step, and point by point, until the time shall come when exact justice to all concerned, in harmonious accord with the economic laws of modern business, shall have worked itself out.
| THE ELECTRIC TRANSMISSION OF WATER POWER.[1] |
By WILLIAM BAXTER, Jr.
EVER since the electric light and power industry began to be a factor in the economic affairs of the industrial world, its adaptation to the work of transmitting the power of waterfalls to more or less distant points has been the dream of those who realize its vast possibilities, and who believe that the ingenuity of man is equal to the task of overcoming any difficulties that may be encountered in attempts to find a successful solution of the problem. For more than twenty years those who may be called electrical enthusiasts have prophesied that the day would come when the power of Niagara would be delivered at the door of the consumer in the city of New York, and capitalists have not been lacking who would have provided the means for carrying out an undertaking of this kind if they had been given the proper assurance by electrical engineers of prominence that the results sought for could be attained. Such assurance, however, could not be given; for, although it is known that there is no difficulty in the way of accomplishing such a result theoretically, the practical development of the art has not reached a stage that would render the realization of such an undertaking possible.
To transmit power by means of electric currents over long distances, without suffering too great a loss in overcoming the resistance of the conducting wires, it is necessary to make use of a high electrical pressure, the effect of which is to render very difficult the perfect insulation of the line, so as to prevent the escape of the current. The greater the distance to which the current is transmitted, the greater must the pressure be to keep the loss of energy and the cost of wire within permissible limits; hence, when the pressure
- ↑ For the illustrations in this article we are indebted to the kindness of the General Electric Company.
