Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/887

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Popular Science Monthly

��8.59

��capital and patents, have realized, aerial scenic cableway now spans Rapids from cliff to cliff.

For sheer excitement and thrill

��An the

the

��It was the successful operation of the San Sebastian cableway, for the past six years, during which time it carried as many as twenty-six thousand passen-

���trip by air over the Whirlpool out- does anything that tourists have ever ex- perienced. True, there is the first stage of the cable- way which climbs the Wetter- horn in Switzerland; but it can not compare in magnitude with the Niagara project. Then there is the tramway at San Sebastian, Spain, for the transportation of tourists from a trolley terminus to a casino overlooking the Bay of Biscay — the only previous installation of the system in use at Niagara Falls and owned by the same company. But, the span at San Sebastian is only nine hun- dred and nineteen feet, while at Niagara it is eighteen hundred feet. It maybe safely said that Niagara now has the longest and probably the safest scenic cableway in the world.

��gers in a single season, which brought Torres y Quevedo, the inventor of the system, to Niagara Falls. No time was lost in starting operations. Work was begun July 12, 1915- The cables are now erected, and cars are now runn- ing upon them.

Diplomacy and Engineering

The Whirlpool is situated some three miles below the Falls and is almost entirely within Canadian territory. Hence, the two anchorages or terminals of the cableway, Colt's Point and Thompson's Point, are both in Ontario. Because the boundary line between New York State and Ontario forms an acute angle, which is intersected by the cableway about sixty feet within the apex, the promoters found themselves in a diplomatic tangle. After securing the sanction of the Province of Ontario

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