Niagara Will Do It

Electricity from the Great Cataract May Supplant Engines, Cables and Locomotives.

STEAM WILL BE OBSOLETE.

Some of Bellamy's Brightest Dreams May Soon Be Realized in This City.

NEW YORK IS NOT TOO FAR.

Nikola Tesla Says the Problem of Long Distance Transmission Is Solved.

In an article in the Herald some time ago on electrical possibilities in New York I quoted the remark of Nikola Tesla that "the labor of the future will largely consist in pressing electric buttons." In a little talk I had with Mr. Tesla, a few evenings ago he disclosed to me that he is now engaged upon important experiments looking toward a very material realization of his prophecy right here in New York city.

Mr. Tesla is now completing experiments, in which he has been engaged for the last four years, upon means of transmitting great electrical power long distances. Just the immediate means and mechanical devices which he has adopted for this purpose Mr. Tesla does not care at the present time to disclose. He, however, gave me a glimpse of his method. It is, in brief, that he believes that while it would probably be too expensive and too wasteful to attempt to transmit large electrical power by ordinary alternating currents, the feat may be achieved by means of what he terms "electrical waves." The phrase is one which an electrician will understand, but which would involve technical explanation of little interest to the lay reader.

What is more to the point is that the feasibility of utilizing Niagara Falls to do the mechanical work of New York city is not only now assured, but that the attempt will very shortly be made.

It is probable that within a month the actual work of construction looking toward this great end will have been begun.

A BIG PROBLEM SOLVED.

The officers of the Niagara Falls Power Company, which has in hand the great feat of "harnessing Niagara," are as yet reticent to speak upon the subject, inasmuch as their plans are not fully developed and the right of way has not yet been secured. When I saw him at his home, at No. 453 Madison avenue, yesterday, President Edward D. Adams said:—

"It has been the policy of this company to say nothing of what it is going to do and to speak only of what it has done. I must, therefore, decline to enter into any discussion of the company's plans. We might have a great many things in mind which another month would give an entirely different face to. We have been compelled to change our plans many times, at least in important details, and it would, therefore, be premature to attempt to speak now upon what the company has in mind with regard to bringing power to New York city."

Mr. Adams expressed himself, however, as firmly of the belief that the problem of long distance transmission has been practically solved. Upon this point he has the backing of most advanced electrical experts, in addition to Tesla.

Whatever doubts may have been entertained nitherto as to the possibility of successful transmission for long distances, it may be set down that the question is no longer open. For comparatively small distances, ranging from ten to fifty miles, the question has not only been solved, but the process is now being successfully employed at many points throughout the country.

Some time ago a company was formed for the purpose of utilizing the power of the beautiful Snoqualmie Falls, in the State of Washington. This famous cataract, the most imposing and most beautiful on the continent, except Niagara, lies about twenty-three miles directly east of the cities of Seattle and Tacoma, on Puget Sound. It Is 268 feet in height, or more than one hundred feet higher than Niagara. Its total realizable energy is estimated at 51,000 horse power. What this means may be gathered from the fact that the total horse power employed in all the manufacturing enterprises of the industrial city of Buffalo, with a quarter of a million inhabitants, is only equivalent to about this single fall.

It is the design of the Snoqualmie Company to transmit the power acquired from the cataract and by electricity do all the mechanical work of Seattle and Tacoma.

Before undertaking the construction of their plan, the company looked carefully into similar enterprises now in operation. They found several successful examples. The San Antonio Electric Light Company of California transmits light and power thirty miles to San Bernardino, and recently tested its ability to employ a ninety mile circuit with perfect success. The Portland (Ore.) plant transmits power from the Willamette Falls to Portland, a distance of fifteen miles. A Mexican enterprise at the falls of Juanacatian transmits power a distance of seventeen miles. In Montana, Idaho, California, Colorado and Utah plants are in operation successfully, transmitting power all the way from four to thirteen miles. All of these have been In successful operation from two to five years.

MORE THAN MERE DREAMS.

It will be seen, therefore, that there is nothing particularly new or hazardous in the attempts of the Niagara Falls Company to turn the machinery of Buffalo by electricity from a distance of twenty-two miles. But this enterprise, great as it is, shrinks into insignificance before the definite dreams which this company has of practically furnishing energy for the whole machinery of New York State.

Several years ago it was officially estimated that the entire power employed to run all the machinery in New York State is equivalent to about 450,000 horse power.

The plans of the Niagara Company look to the generation of half a million horse power.

The question of transmission is practically the whole of the difficulty. Although the work of constructing a plant capable of generating this stupendous amount of energy has been a great one, it has practically been nothing more than a question of the application of capital and hard work along the lines of approved hydraulic engineering. The element of difficulty lies in the fact that electricity is of such an elusive character that, to speak untechnically, it leaks off the wires. Power that can be sold at a profit at Niagara Falls at $15 per year per horse power will at a certain distance reach a price equal to that of steam, owing to the loss from leakage and the expense of Installation. Electricians are cautious about making predictions as to whether this distance is 100 miles or 1,000 miles. Dr. Coleman Sellers — no relative of Colonel Sellers — is president of the Niagara Falls Power Company, and a most conservative and experienced engineer. On this point he writes:—

It is absolutely certain, from what has already been done elsewhere, that profitable transmission to a distance of 150 miles is only within the existing practice of distributed power. This 150 miles from Niagara Falls, in a straight line, brings us to within ninety miles of the city of New York. And if we assume as probable economical transmission to a distance of 320 miles, we have an area including the very densest population. It would take in Columbus, Ohio, the cities of Washington, Philadelphia and New York; would include the whole of Pennsylvania, New York, two-thirds of Ohio, three-quarters of Michigan, besides reaching to Montreal, in Canada.

Thus the situation of Niagara Falls is phenomenal in its ability to distribute the power over an area that furnishes the most desirable market for its profitable development. If in the near future, as now seems entirely probable, Chicago can receive its power from Niagara Falls, then the whole of New England, as far as Maine, will come within the reach of this cyclops of energy.

This opinion of Dr. Sellers has the indorsement of no less a personage than Lord Kelvin, formerly Sir William Thompson, who ranks as the greatest electrical authority in the world.

TESLA'S BOLD DECLARATION.

The problem was, perhaps, not wholly solved in theoretical demonstration, however, until Nikola Tesla, that daring wizard of electricity, assured the company that he had discovered, and in great measure perfected, mechanical appliances which would make it possible to deliver the electrical current under complete control, and without costly loss from waste, at long distances. Mr. Tesla has faith that he has now devised the means to deliver the cur rent, at fairly competitive prices, as far as New York city on the east, and as Cleveland and other great towns of Ohio on the west.

It yet remains to be seen whether Mr. Tesla's audacious views are entirely practicable. But no one who has watched the achievements of this wonderful genius can doubt for a moment that he is able to do everything that he promises. It was by a simple invention, of his alone, that it was possible to light the grounds of the World's Fair Exposition at Chicago in the dazzling fashion that made them almost as light as day. But for Mr. Tesla's invention the cost would have been absolutely prohibitive. It is this same simple device, too, that makes it possible to run a main current of electricity and tap it at a thousand points, exactly as we tap a water main. Before that each lamp had to have its separate current, and the use of electricity for house lighting, warming and a hundred other little purposes was economically impossible.

It was the first Intention of the engineers to carry the electrical current from Niagara out over the country by means of wires stretched through a subway conduit. It was found however, that the cost would be very great. Mr. Tesla has therefore been engaged for some time in experimenting and devising means to bring the current by overhead wires. He has assured the company that, by invention and the scientific application of newly discovered principles, which he has made, it will be possible to convey the current without very great loss by induction or leakage, and under absolute control, by the use of certain transformance. Mr. Tesla believes not only that this current will be employed upon the Erie Canal. but even to propel vessels from Albany, to New York.

WHAT WILL THE ELECTRICITY COST?

It yet remains to be seen whether the companies can bring electricity to New York city at a price sufficiently low to drive out steam, and practically abolish coal used for power purposes. In a general way, it has been estimated that the power can be delivered here at a cost of about fourteen dollars per year per horse power. If this can be done, it is safe to say that within one year after its introduction the use of coal will have very largely disappeared in New York city. We should have no more smoke and no more gas.

This means a great deal. Roughly speaking, New York pays out every year from $15,000, 000 to $20,000,000 for gas alone. It spends up ward of $30,000,000 a year for coal. In other words, if we could abolish coal and gas at a stroke, it would involve an item of from $40, 000,000 to $50,000,000. Add to this the sums paid out for coal and gas in the additional area of greater New York and the neighboring cities of New Jersey, and this sum would be nearly doubled. The Niagara Company Is therefore planning big things.

But even this does not begin to represent the actual saving that would be effected.

Take, for example. At the present time to run the big cable roads of this city there are required immense power houses, employing a large number of workmen, besides truckmen and horses used to transport the necessary coal to run the engines. If these roads were run by an underground trolley, all these power houses would be useless.

This fairly suggests the saving that would be effected all over the city. Steam engines would disappear, engineers would be out of employment and the number of truckmen and horses would be greatly reduced.

We are already dealing with an item of a hundred millions or so. But the prospect stretches still further. If electricity can be brought to New York, as Mr. Tesla declares, such a price, we should have a Bellamyized metropolis. We should have no noisy, dirty elevated railroads, throwing clouds of hot cinders into the eyes of passengers or passers by upon the streets below. We should have no clumsy, unreliable cable which leaves us stranded half way from our destination about every third time we board a car.

REAL RAPID TRANSIT.

If the municipality under the lead of the Rapid Transit Commission constructs the underground railway, it will probably be from Niagara Falls that it will obtain the power required for the operation of the system. The elevated railroads are a demonstration of the costliness, noise, soot, smoke, gas, cinders, and every conceivable annoyance involved in the use of steam.

The elevated railroads, even If they could obtain cheap electrical power at about the figures indicated, could abolish their steam engines, operate their cars by electricity, make trains of one or two cars each, run them very much faster than they do now, and at a two or three cent fare, probably make as large a profit, if not larger, than they do at the present time. If a cheap, odorless, smokeless, non-heating motive power would be of advantage to the elevated railroads, it would be doubly so, in fact, almost a prerequisite, to the comfortable and successful operation of the underground lines. In the latter, traversing a long and slightly ventilated vault, the presence of smoke, soot and cinders, would be simply unbearable. It is the hope, too, of the projectors of the underground road to not only run the trains at such a speed, but to so reduce fares as to make it feasible for the workers of the downtown districts to have homes in the annexed districts, and still not lose more time going to and fro than they probably do now. This end could only be achieved through cheap electrical power.

HOW THE BIG PROJECT WAS BEGUN.

While the project of transmitting electricity a long distance has been of late years only the dream of daring innovators, yet its use as a motor power has been practically demonstrated for a considerable time. So it is rather strange than otherwise that the tremendous energy of Niagara should have so long remained unharnessed. The energy of the falls is so great that the mind can hardly grasp it. It is so great that the deflection of enough water to turn all the machinery for five hundred miles around — that is to say, to do all the mechanical work for New England and the Middle States — will not make an appreciable decrease in the volume of the water which goes over the falls.

Up to 1885 its enormous power remained practically unused. There were hundreds of engineers or men of a mechanical turn of mind who lay awake o' nights thinking of the fortunes that could be made by turning mill wheels with this mighty stream. Finally one of them evolved a plan for a system of wheel pits a mile and a half above the falls, to which water would be carried by lateral canals and from which it would be taken to the river below the falls by a tunnel.

Capitalists were induced to take hold of the project, and the Niagara Falls Power Company was chartered in 1886. The first work was begun In October, 1890, four years ago. The main wheel pit was completed last year, and probably within another month the first of the giant dynamos will be ready The work has cost, so far some $4,000,000 and, incidentally, twenty-eight human lives. The device for applying the little portion of Niagara's strength which it is designed to utilize would be simple if one could see it on a small scale. From a point a mile and a half above the American Fall a broad, deep, inlet leads back from the river. The heavy masonry with which it is lined at the upper end is pierced by a score of gateways, through which the in-flowing water is admitted by short canals to pits, pouring down through huge steel pipes — engineers call them penstocks. The water strikes the bronze turbine wheels at the bottom and then whirls on through the subterranean passage ways that connect each pit with the main tunnel. This tunnel carries the water underneath the heart of the city to the portal just below what is known as the new Suspension Bridge.

A $1,250,000 TUNNEL.

The penstocks are brought down under the turbines and made to discharge upward into the wheels, an ingenious contrivance by which the pressure of the water is made to bear up the entire weight of the heavy wheels and 140 feet of shafting. Three of these turbines form practically an independent plant from which it is expected to cap 5,000 horse power. This will gradually be extended to a capacity of 50,000 horse power. In addition, another 50,000 horse power will be developed in various smaller pits adjacent. The tunnel which will carry away the water used in developing this 100,000 horse power is 1 1/4 miles long, 21 feet high and shaped like a horseshoe. It was cut in a straight line through the rock, 200 feet below the surface of the city. It cost $1,250,000, being lined its entire length with from four to six layers of bard brick.

The mouth of the tunnel is nearly 50 feet lower than the head, and the water tears through it at a furious rate. A marked piece of wood dropped in the water near the head of the tunnel is whisked out at the portal, 6,700 feet distant, exactly three minutes later.

Over the big pits is the power house, in which are the giant dynamos. Like almost everything else connected with this enterprise, the three dynamos in the central power station are far and away the most powerful ever constructed, each being expected to transform the 5.000 horse power received from its turbine shaft into an equivalent of electrical force. The most ambitious dynamos hitherto constructed sent out a little more than 2.000 horse power.

Some idea may be obtained of the force of the water in the big wheel pits when it is stated that if the stream injected into the turbines were directed at a man's body it would crush him like a triphammer. These big turbines, too, are so large that a man may stand between the blades.

When the company's entire plant is complete it will generate 450,000 horse power. In addition to this company, there is a second — the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Company — which, until the development of the more remarkable work up the river, possessed the largest water power plant in existence. While a much smaller enterprise than its great rival above, it still expects to compete with the latter in the generation and distribution of electrical power. It has the right of way for a canal 100 feet in width and has made arrangements to enlarge its plant at an early date.

THE CANADIAN ENTERPRISE.

Meanwhile, and in the face of these stupendous operations, yet greater plant is under way on the Canadian side of the falls. Permission to build this plant was obtained from the Canadian government on condition that the work be begun by May 1, 1897. It is the intention to generate 250,000 horse power eventually on the Canadian side.

All the power generated on the Canadian side will be transformed into electricity, and sent to a distance, as mills could not be built adjacent to the plant without disfiguring the scenery of the beautiful Victoria Park.

Those who have studied the question assure us that no one visiting Niagara Falls five or six years from now, when all these great enterprises are fully developed, will find any outward and visible sign of them except the mills along the hydraulic canal basin, which for years have formed a part of the view from Victoria Park.

There is little danger to the falls themselves. The vast mass of water speeding over the precipice will suffer but little diminution — not enough to even make it apparent to the naked eye. The official report of State Engineer Bogart in 1890 estimates that the diversion of enough water to produce a hundred thousand horse power would reduce the depth of the water at the crest of the American Fall about an inch and a half. So that the half a million horse power called for by the present plans of both companies will scarcely reduce the height of the falls three-quarters of a foot — hardly enough to make a noticeable difference in the appearance of this mighty cataract, whose sources of power come from half way across the continent, and whose strength, ceaselessly put forth, is more than twice as great as the combined energy of every steam engine in North America. Niagara will still be the monarch of waterfalls.