Niagara Power - Progress of the Great Harnessing Enterprise

DR. SELLERS’ PREDICTIONS

An Account of Recent Developments — Interesting Assurances for Manufacturers as to the Consumers of Horse-Power.

Although electricity has been tamed and harnessed, and has come into general use in doing man’s work in the last 10 years, those who have known it best have always said that it is only in its infancy. But on the 1st of February next, if all goes well, it will doff its swaddling clothes. On that day the greatest engineering enterprise ever undertaken in this country, and by far the greatest experiment ever made in electricity, will be put to the test which will decide whether $4,000,000 have been poured into a hole in the ground, or whether this sum has been planted in fertile soil and will soon begin to bring forth fruit an hundredfold.

On that day it is expected that one, at least, of the 10 massive electric gates leading from Niagara River inlet to the Niagara Falls Power Company’s wheel-pit will be raised. If the water dashes 140 feet down the penstocks, turns the wheels below and sends back up to the surface 5,000 horse-power from each wheel, then it will be determined that the day may not be far distant when every wheel in New-York west of the Hudson River shall be turned with a power from the Falls, which shall be transmitted as far West as Chicago and as far South as Baltimore, taking in Philadelphia, Toronto, Cleveland and many other large cities. This seems an extravagant statement. It has been made loosely by men who did not fully believe in it themselves, but now it is backed by some of the most famous engineers living.

At a rough estimate the total horse-power used in the State of New-York is between 600,000 and 800,000. The present capacity of the Niagara Falls tunnel is 100,000 horse-power. The company has obtained permission of the State of New York to duplicate its plant. Precisely the same company, under the name of the Canadian Niagara Falls Power Company, has obtained from the Dominion Government the right to build a 250,000 horse-power tunnel on the Canadian side and is under agreement to produce power there before January 1898. The company has therefore 350,000 horse-power and expects to produce under its present rights in all between 450,000. Accordingly, the statement that the Niagara Falls may in a few years turn every wheel in New-York west of the Hudson, with many in Ontario, is not at all extravagant, for it leaves the metropolis and Brooklyn out of the question.

Any one who saw the 2,100 horse-power electric generator in the Intra-Mural Electric Railway’s power house in Chicago can get some idea of the magnitude of this undertaking at Niagara Falls. The Chicago dynamo was by far the largest ever built, and was rightly considered an electrical marvel, but the Niagara Falls Power Company has just let to the Westinghouse Company at Pittsburg the contract for three 5,000 horse-power dynamos, beside which the 2,100 horse-power affair in Chicago would have to be considered as a sort of electrical babe-in-arms. When these machines are in place little more will remain to be done. At present the finishing touches are being put on the steel and stone power house over the wheel-pit, and the electrical subway which is to carry the most powerful current ever generated is being built through the district which will soon be covered with great mills, unless a number of long-closed contracts are forfeited. The subway will be finished this month, and the only important unfinished work besides the electrical machinery is the inlet canal.

WHERE THE WATER WILL TRAVEL.

The operations of the company which is making this extraordinary venture have been on so large a scale that many of those who have read about them, and many even of the thousands of tourists who have visited the Falls this summer have not a definite idea of the work.

There is, first, the main inlet canal which, when completed, will be some 1,500 or 2,000 feet long. This will lead from the Niagara River, at a point about a mile and a half above the Falls, down to the wheel-pit, whose solid masonry is pierced near the top by a row of gates through which the water will be admitted to the pipes, called penstocks, 7 1/2 feet in diameter, which will convey it to the mighty turbines 140 feet below, a generating power that will be conveyed by shafting to the dynamos at the surface. After the water has done its work at the turbines it will pass on into the tunnel and rush down to the river a few hundred feet below the American Fall, emerging from the portal almost underneath the new suspension bridge, and 214 feet below the brink of the cliffs which form the magnificent Niagara gorge. That is all there is to it.

The tunnel, through which half a million cubic feet of water will flow each minute when it is used to its full capacity, was built under the direction of Chief Engineer Burbank, and is a gloomy place to walk through until they confuse the visitor and make him forget what he is saying. It is much too wet for comfort, even now before the water is officially turned in. Not long ago a company of directors who undertook to walk through it found themselves wading in water up to their knees before they had reached the great steel-plated dip at the mouth, and were obliged to take a boat (pulled in to them from the river below). All of them clambered in and were rowed the rest of the way, some 300 feet under the city of Niagara Falls. The favored few visitors who have been permitted to explore this tunnel have had to trust themselves in rubber and to take their lives in their hands.

The interior of water and the softness of the rock have made the difficulties which would have appalled men of ordinary means, but it is said that $4,000,000 was required to the capitalists back of the Niagara Falls Power Company — the Vanderbilts, Drexel, Morgan & Co., Francis Lynde Stetson, Edward A. Adams, D. O. Mills, Charles Lanier and others of the same kind — they simply called a little meeting and in 20 minutes had voted $100,000 to pump out the water and to line the tunnel with brick, of which from four to six rings, 14,000,000 bricks in all, were used.

The tunnel is 21 feet high, and is horseshoe-shaped, being 18 feet and 10 inches wide at the widest part and 14 feet five inches at the bottom. A goodly part of the 200,000 tons of limestone rock which came out of this great hole was valuable real estate, for it was dumped along the shore of the Niagara River, and made some 20 acres of new land that was worth $5,000 an acre. The Niagara Falls Paper Mill is built almost entirely on such land. The tunnel has a downward pitch of four feet in a thousand at first and, further on, of seven feet in a thousand, and it is expected that when in full blast the water will whirl through it at a speed of 26½ feet a second.

The portal, where the water discharges into the river below the Falls, is said to be one of the most solid pieces of masonry of the kind that was ever constructed. It rests on a ledge of sandstone 40 feet below the level of the river. The tunnel for 100 feet from the portal is lined with heavy steel plate and is calculated by the engineers to be able to withstand the wear and tear of water for ages to come.

Since October 4, 1890, when Mr. B. H. Gaskill — who was then president of the Cataract Construction Company — dug the first spadeful of earth for the tunnel, 17 men have been killed in the tunnel, eight in the wheel-pit and two in the work outside. While the tunnel was being dug some 1,500 men were kept busy, and the pay-rolls ran as high as $50,000 in one month. Now, however, there are not more than 200 men at work and the most of those soon will be out of employment. While the colony of laborers was thickly settled it was one of the liveliest places on earth, as may be judged from the fact that there were nine murders there in the time the tunnel was being built.

A MIGHTY POWER.

When the Legislature was asked seven years ago to give its permission for the undertaking of this enterprise, the first question asked was: “What effect will the deflection of so much water have upon the Falls?” The answer was: “Practically none.” According to careful estimates it will take about three per cent. of the Niagara’s water to generate 100,000 horse-power. In other words, the water in the river will be lowered about two inches when the tunnel is carrying off all the water it will hold. That is not much when it is considered that a strong wind which blows the water back toward the lake will lower the river a foot at the Falls. The great lakes drain an area more than twice as large as Great Britain and Ireland put together, from which some 265,000 feet of water pour out of the Niagara River every second, so that there would be enough left of the Falls to make a respectable display, even if they were stripped of power sufficient to turn every wheel in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, with Ontario thrown in. Mr. William Siemens has estimated that if the daily output of all the coal in the world could be used in driving steam pumps, it would be just about enough to pump back the water flowing over the Falls. Somebody has taken the trouble to figure out that the theoretical value of the Falls in horse-power is 5,878,100. And yet 100,000 horse-power is more than is used by the great water-power mills at Lowell, Lawrence, Holyoke and Fall River, Mass., and Minneapolis.

DR. COLEMAN SELLERS.

Dr. Coleman Sellers of Philadelphia, one of the most famous engineers in America, and one of the very few men who have received the degree of Doctor of Engineering, a few days ago accorded an interview to the writer — a rare favor, for the venerable Doctor is generally too busy with great undertakings to have much time left for talk about them. It was on Dr. Sellers’s final recommendation that this great enterprise was undertaken. He is president of the Niagara Falls Power Company, Professor of Engineering Practice at Stevens Institute of Technology, and Professor of Mechanics at Franklin Institute. He has a fine strong face, close-clipped white beard, and shaggy eyebrows which stand far out above keen eyes which glisten through gold-rimmed glasses. His office is in a square, plain building which is bare except for desks, chairs, and the tools of trade. There are not even carpets or rugs.

“I shall be tremendously disappointed,” said Dr. Sellers, “if we are not supplying Buffalo with power within a year, and I fully expect that we will send electricity to Albany soon. Sending power even from here to New-York is not a dream. It has been most seriously thought of by the company. Sir William Siemens said he almost expected to live to see New-York City lighted and heated by electricity from the Falls, and it looks now as if he would, although he is getting well along in years.

“If they can transmit power 130 miles in Europe by what are now considered crude methods, we won’t have any difficulty in this country; economy is the only question, and in view of what has been done already that question is practically answered now. We know now that we can send power 150 miles at a profit to ourselves and our customers. But the Falls power is so much cheaper than steam, and so many improvements in the conveyance of electricity are being made, that the loss in transmission can hardly prevent our sending it profitably to cities much further away than New-York. Pittsburg, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore come within the limit of our profitable district, and before long even Chicago may get its power from here. Of course Buffalo will reap the greatest advantages, and the earliest after the city of Niagara Falls, because power will cost less there than in places further away. It is wonderfully situated as a manufacturing center, and by its harbor and dock facilities has a great advantage over Niagara Falls. I don’t see any possible argument against its advancing even more rapidly than it has.”

Dr. Sellers disagreed emphatically with Buffalo manufacturers who say they can get steam power for less than the Falls current would cost them. “That is utterly absurd,” said Dr. Sellers, disappointedly. “It is a fallacy; it is out of the question. They don’t know what horse-power is. My first assistant engineer has been making a careful study of the question and he finds that even the pumping engines and others of that sort having a steady load — a purpose not common in the United States which costs much less than $100 per year per horse-power, when scientifically measured, and including belting, shafting, attendance and everything. The cost of attendance alone in a steam plant is more than the cost of attendance when electricity is used is comparatively small. In estimating the difference in cost between steam and electricity one must take into account the difference in the manner of using the two in a factory. Instead of a great mass of shafting, belting, furnaces, boilers and engines, you have with electricity small motors at convenient places in the factory — a great saving of space, machinery and inconvenience. All of these must be counted in when you are estimating the comparative cost.

“Our dynamo will be by far the largest ever constructed, will be exactly alike, and will be interchangeable. We can send alternating currents at as high a potential as we can economically distribute in a radius of three or four miles, beyond that we shall use transformers. Our dynamos will be smaller than the Westinghouse machines, but more readily built. The revolving part will be about 15 feet in diameter, will make 250 revolutions a minute and is to be made in sections, not including the revolving parts of the water-wheels below, which will be of the same size and direction and will be absolutely safe and even. What the cost per horse-power here at the Falls or in Buffalo will be I am not prepared to say exactly, but it will be at a lower price than power was ever offered before.

“Now,” said Dr. Sellers, as his guests rose to go, “I’ve told you more than I ever told before.”

A COMING CITY.

The great corporation which is developing the Falls power is divided into three separate organizations: The Niagara Falls Power Company, the Niagara Falls Development Company and the Niagara Junction Railway Company. The last named has put $200,000 into a line of railway which will connect all of the new factories with main lines of railroad running to Buffalo. To the Development Company has been set apart 340 acres of the 1,579 owned by the united corporation. These 340 acres have been plotted. They will surround a pretty little town which has been christened Echota. Some $30,000 has been spent in putting in 20 miles of sewerage; 35 attractive cottages designed by Mr. Stanford White have been built and many more are to be erected soon; additional works for sewage is being built; sidewalks and tree roads are being laid, and a pretty railroad station is practically ready for use. The houses, which will be rented for $15 a month and up, will be intended for the employees in the mills which will soon begin to spring up on the river bank a mile away. Many applications have been made for these cottages, but none has been rented yet, or will be until the improvements are in. In addition to this land, which has risen in value anywhere from five to ten times the price paid for it, it is said the company has been buying a large number of acres at the foot of Grand Island, which it would be a simple matter to run a cable and transmit power. If the Power Company is as successful as some of the most sanguine this land will alone more than pay the interest on the investment.

It is known that a number of large milling concerns have turned their attention toward the advantages of cheap power offered by the Falls. The Niagara Falls Paper Company has already come to the wheel-pit, the largest paper mill in the world, and has contracted for 6,000 horse-power with the privilege of getting 10,000. The Pittsburg Reduction Company has leased eight acres and has contracted for 5,000 horse-power, and is at once beginning the construction of the largest plant of the kind in the world. The company controls the production of aluminum by the electrical process, and it will move to the Falls its present large plants in Pittsburg and a smaller one in Lockport. A subway already strong enough to convey safely more than 100,000 horse-power has been built from the wheel-pit a third of a mile down the river toward Buffalo, to the site of the Reduction works. It is known that the land for some distance each side of this subway has been leased for a long term of years to milling companies which will soon begin the erection of their plants. The latest of these to be announced is the Briggs Manufacturing Company of Niagara Falls, which has been organized in Wheeling, W. Va., with a capital of $1,500,000. Boston, Toronto, and Dayton (Ohio) men are interested in this company, which is to make the improved press, patented by James E. Briggs of Boston, and which is to include the consolidation of the Morrison stitching machine interests.

Like a good deal else connected with this enterprise at the Falls, secrecy has been maintained about these new-comers. Upon the amount of power already contracted for depends the length of time Buffalo will have to wait for the transmitted power which will entitle her to the name she has already appropriated — the Electric City. After Buffalo, in the natural course of things, comes the rest of the State. Even Nikola Tesla, the electrical wonder-worker, does not claim to be able to transmit electricity long distances without serious loss, and Niagara power will therefore be cheaper at Buffalo, for instance, than at Rochester. Contracts, mysterious as to terms, have been made with both cities, but Buffalo will get a bit of power while mills to be built on the company’s own land at the Falls are asking for it.

Besides those already mentioned, contracts have been made with at least two milling companies for power to supply mills to be built soon on the Power Company’s land close to the wheel-pit. In view of the company’s statement that power can be sent out through the State next year, and of the further fact that the first installment of 15,000 horse-power must have been nearly all sold in advance, it is evidently the intention of the company to enlarge its plant at once. This will be done by extending the wheel-pit, putting in more turbines, and opening more gates from the inlet canal. One new wheel can be put in in about three months, and the engineers say it would take very little more time to put in three or four at once.

ENOUGH FOR MANY CITIES.

Mr. William S. Humbert, a New York civil engineer who was division engineer in charge of construction on the tunnel, wheel-pit and canal, and has since been in charge of the work on the electrical subway, said to the writer: “You may be sure the company’s isn’t going to produce power faster than it is wanted, but there is no reason why we can’t supply 1,000,000 horse-power when the demand for it comes. And when economical transmission is assured — it is almost assured already — there is almost no limit to the demand. After extending the wheel-pit to the full 400 feet and adding another just like it, thus using up to the capacity of the tunnel, and after disposing of the 100,000 horse-power we expect to have then obtained from the present plant, the company will at once sink more wheel-pits and dig a second tunnel, for which right of way has already been obtained. Then we shall have another 100,000 horse-power available. Besides these 200,000 horse-power we expect to be able to haul from the tunnel on the Canadian side. It doesn’t look, does it, as if anybody should need to worry about a power famine, because the company proposes to supply itself first, but I think the company could sink another pit and have power all ready for transmission a year from the time it is asked for.

It is said that 20,000 horse-power will be developed on this side of the border before ground is broken for the Canadian tunnel. As yet the site has been surveyed only and its location has been kept a mystery. The present tunnel cost in round numbers $1,000,000, but the big hole in the ground on the other side will not be nearly as expensive because, according to Engineer Humbert’s statement, it will have to be only 600 feet long instead of a mile and an eighth.

“Are you likely to be producing 100,000 horse-power on the American side in five years from now?” Mr. Humbert was asked.

“That is a difficult question,” he replied, “but I think it can be answered in the affirmative.”

This seems likely enough. It is stated that the Cataract Electric Company of Rochester has a contract for 10,000 horse-power; it is reported that a Buffalo company, also called the Cataract Electric Company, has obtained the promise of at least 10,000 horse-power, and a company called the Niagara Electric Company has been organized with a capital stock of $5,000,000 to deliver power from the Falls through the State. The stockholders, some of whom are Buffalo men and more of whom are New-Yorkers — others coming, so it is said, from Philadelphia and Chicago — have been chary of information about their plans, but it is understood that they have been taking time by the forelock and do not expect to be called on for important action for several years yet. Companies to handle the power have also been organized in Albany, Syracuse and Schenectady. The latest is the Cataract General Electric Company, incorporated at Albany on November 8th by Thomas G. Platt, William Marcy, C. P. Vedder, Frank W. Hawley and Charlton Lewis of New York. This company was formed mainly for the purpose of trying the power on the Erie Canal in the hope that electricity may some day be used on the canal with power. The Legislature will be asked for permission to lay wires along the Erie-canal bank.

It has not been decided yet whether power will be sent the 25-mile distance from the Falls by means of a subway or by overhead wires. The underground method would cost more in building, but it would be safer and permanent. As much cannot be said of overhead wires. Engineer Humbert says he thinks the Power company could deliver power at the Buffalo city line four months from the time it is ordered if the overhead method is used, and in eight or nine months by subway. It is 25 miles to Buffalo, and the time required to reach other cities would be in proportion to this distance.

A statement which will be of great interest to Buffalo manufacturers and real-estate men was made to the writer by one of the Power Company’s engineers. He said: As nearly as I can estimate it, we will be able to deliver power at the Buffalo city line for about $18 or $18.50 a year. The expense of carrying it thence to the factories will add considerably to the cost, but not nearly enough to bring the total up to $25 a year, which, according to the Buffalo manufacturers themselves, is the lowest price at which they can get steam-power, even in large quantities. It would take about 40,000 horse-power to turn every wheel in Buffalo. The city of Niagara Falls will become a great manufacturing center undoubtedly, but predictions that it may become a successful competitor of Buffalo are ill-considered. The reason is simple. Buffalo has unsurpassed facilities for lake traffic; Niagara Falls has practically none, and never will have, on account of the narrowness of the channel. Buffalo’s advantage in that one respect will always overbalance the cost of transmitting power 25 miles.

“If we can undersell steam power in Buffalo, we will have a market for 100,000 horse-power there sooner than most Buffalo people believe. You can understand what that means by considering that, according to the census estimates, each horse-power gives employment, on an average, to three men, each of whom supports a family of five. It must be remembered, however, that in a large manufacturing city like Buffalo the average is found to be somewhat less than that to a horse-power, owing to the large amount of labor-saving machinery used. In Buffalo each horse-power probably means a population of about eight or 10. In other words, it will not be long before the Falls power brings Buffalo’s population up to a round million.”

CURTIS BROWN.