A Gigantic Scheme

A sensational story is sent to the New York papers from Albany in regard to the Niagara Falls Light and Power company, and other companies said to be associated with it. The Light and Power company was supposed to be organized to furnish power to local manufacturers at Niagara Falls or at most to convey it to Buffalo, but now it is claimed that it is the center of a gigantic organization for the distribution of power over a large territory. It is said that the bill passed last winter providing for testing electrical appliances for the canals, to which was added a rider giving to the superintendent of public works power to grant to any corporation right to erect poles and string wires along the canal, was secretly in the interest of this combination, and designed to give them a valuable right of way for their electrical conduits without any cost or trouble. It is claimed that behind this enterprise are such capitalists as Drexel, Morgan & Co., the Vanderbilts, D. O. Mills, August Belmont, I, N. Seligman, and others. It is said the company has already spent $5,000,000 on their plant. Local companies have been formed under the titles of the Cataract Electric Company of Rochester, Syracuse, Utica or Albany, as the case may be, to work in harmony with the Light and Power Company.

As to the commercial feasibility of the scheme, Prof. George Forbes, F. R. S., of London, England, who is superintending the development of the enterprise, and who is probably the most noted electrical engineer in the world, says:

"The vital part of the whole subject is the ability to transmit powerful currents of electricity over long distances," "and that can be done beyond question. From Niagara we get a power that is practically without limit. It has to be, for this is the greatest electrical work ever undertaken. Our dynamos will be the largest ever made. The largest now in use is the 1,500 horse power Ferranti dynamo at Deptford, by which London is lighted. Our dynamos will be nearly four times greater. The big Westinghouse dynamos at the World's Fair are but 1,000 horse power, and the General Electric dynamos that run the intra- mural railway are but 925 horse power. Our unit is 5,000 which is so very unusual that but few of our leading manufacturers were prepared with the necessary tools to furnish our machinery."

As to carrying the current long distances, that, is already settled. Two years ago a 30,000 volt current was sent over bare copper wire on poles a distance of 112 miles from Lauffen to Frankfort-on-the-Main to furnish light and power. The loss of energy was trifling."

Nikola Tesla, the young Hungarian electrician whose fame already eclipses that of the wizard Edison, is equally enthusiastic. He says: "The distribution of electrical energy in quantities of 100,000 volts or even more becomes with high frequencies so easy that it can scarcely be called an engineering feat. With oil insulation and alternate current motors transmission of power can be effected with ease and safety on an industrial basis for distances of as much as a thousand miles."