Perfecting a Motor

THE ELECTRICAL COMPANIES THINK THE RAILROADS WILL ADOPT IT.

Experiments Being Made on the New Haven and Pennsylvania Roads — Preparing For a Visit of George Gould at East Pittsburg — George Westinghouse's Hobby

[Special Correspondence.]

EAST PITTSBURG, Pa., Nov. 3. — They are making some very interesting experiments in rapid transit at the Westinghouse Electric works here. These experiments are being made with a view to offering a system to be adopted on the elevated railroad in New York and on interurban roads which are now operated by steam.

Some time ago an official of the Pennsylvania railroad was quoted as saying that he thought it possible the Pennsylvania system would be equipped with electric locomotives and cars within a very few years, and he spoke of a fact which is known to very few people — that a short line of the Pennsylvania running from Burlington to Mount Holly has been operated by electricity for nearly two years.

Now the Westinghouse company is equipping two miles of the Pennsylvania road from this point with electricity. Like the Mount Holly branch, the Turkey Hill branch will be operated on the trolley plan. When the equipment is complete, George Gould and Russell Sage will pay their long promised visit to the Westinghouse works to examine the plant and consider the adoption of the system on the "L."

Electricity on New York "L" Roads.

Just now the "L" is experimenting with a motor invented by a New York man. This motor is being operated on the Thirty-fourth street branch. It uses the direct current and the storage battery. The storage battery lays up part of the current when its whole strength is not needed to run the motor-on level places or running down grade-and when the direct current is not strong enough to take the motor up grade the storage batteries furnish the additional power.

The Westinghouse people do not think much of this system. They say it is beautiful in theory, but in practice it fails. They think that the motor now in use on the branch "L" will be found impracticable in service on the main line. Their present experiments are all with the direct current. They have the motors and the cars, and the most serious question they are considering is the method of transmitting the current. There are only two great electrical concerns in the United States-the General Electric and the Westinghouse. If Mr. Westinghouse and his associates were not so wealthy and so independent, there would be only one. The General Electric swallowed all its rivals except the Westinghouse long ago. Mr. Westinghouse takes much pride in his electric concern, and he did not go into the combination. He did enter into litigation with the General Electric over patents, however, and this litigation, involving the companies in hundreds of suits, threatened to eat up all their profits. Last summer they got together and came to an understanding by which all these suits were dismissed, and the companies now work in harmony, but there are strong rivalries between them for the production of the most effective motors, and each has a large force of inventors at work in the laboratories of its shops.

The General Electric company has entered the railroad field on the New Haven road at Nantasket Beach, near Boston. Both companies are straining every nerve to bring about the adoption of the electric system on some one of the great railroads. The Westinghouse company has a little the advantage of the General Electric in this contest, if its motors are equally effective, cheap and economical, because Mr. Westinghouse is hand in glove with the Pennsylvania railroad, and the Pennsylvania is not only the richest and the biggest, but the most enterprising of the railroads of America. A road that could go through a Johnstown disaster without skipping a dividend can afford to throw out its enormous steam equipment and put in electric motors more quickly than any other road in the country, or in the world for that matter. So the railroad world is watching the Pennsylvania railroad's experiments with keen eyes.

In Favor of the Trolley Wire.

The Turkey Hill equipment is on the trolley plan, and Mr. Westinghouse thinks the trolley system is the one which railroads will adopt. It is the cheapest form of construction, and the use of the polyphase current, by which the power can be carried for 100 miles or more over a slender copper wire, will make the construction of power stations at short intervals unnecessary. The cost of maintaining these power stations has been one of the principal obstacles in the path of the trolley for use in long distance journeying.

For city use Mr. Westinghouse has another system, which is probably too expensive for suburban use. Some cities will not permit street railroad companies to use the trolley. New York is one; Washington, another. The railroads in those cities are using the underground trolley or the cable system. Mr. Westinghouse's system differs from both of these. He has two wires laid between the car tracks in wooden casings. At short intervals on top of these casings are metal buttons 3 inches in diameter. These buttons are mounted on stout springs, and they are not in contact with the wires until a metal shoe on the locomotive or motor car touches them and presses them down. There are two of these shoes, one above each wire. As the motor moves along they press the buttons down on the wires and form a direct circuit through the motor on the car. This button system has been in use on a suburban road in the District of Columbia for about 18 months. It has been in use at the Westinghouse shops here since they were completed, a year ago last summer, and I saw a light motor, hauling a train of freight cars through the yards, drawing its power from the buttons between the rails.

Everything about the works is operated by electricity. You go to the second floor in an elevator which is run by a Westinghouse motor. Every line of shafting in the factory gets its power from the big electric power house which stands beside the railroad track. The huge cranes which travel from one end of the factory to another, swinging thousands of tons of metal off the floor and depositing it swiftly but quietly at its destination, are operated by electric motors. Even the furnaces in the big boiler room are fed with coal and stoked by a Westinghouse electric device.

The main building of the Westinghouse works is 754 feet long. It is arranged so that the castings come in at one end and move along step by step from one machine to another until they reach the other end complete and ready for shipping without retracing a step on the way. Then the electric freight train comes along and hauls them away for shipment.

The Westinghouse Plant.

This big factory, with its electric cranes and electric lathes which handle castings the size of a small house as easily as though they were children's toys, is the most interesting part of the Westinghouse plant. But the most important part of it is found in the adjoining building, in which the offices are located. Here is the laboratory for experiments, in which a corps of electricians is at work steadily trying to make improvements on the devices in use. There is a drafting room in which the plans for these improvemenets are made, and if there seems any chance that they will be useful they are patented by the Westinghouse company. In addition to this corps of inventors the company has a number of electricians working in their own laboratories on devices which will be offered the company for adoption. Nikola Tesla was in the employ of Mr. Westinghouse at one time, and the Westinghouse company holds 29 patents on Tesla's polyphase system, subject to a royalty to be paid to the inventor.

The terms made with a man of reputation as an inventor are that he is to receive a salary, or retaining fee, and either a fixed sum or a royalty or both for any invention of his which the company may adopt. The young electrician receives only his salary, and his inventions belong to the company.

This question was discussed by the navy department at Washington some years ago. Many naval officers busied themselves making improvements in gun carriages, etc., for the use of the navy, and some of them contended that the government ought to pay for their inventions in addition to paying them salaries. It was determined finally that if a man was assigned to work out an improvement or a new device, using government material and government time, his invention belonged to the navy department; if not, it belonged to him.

One of the consulting electricians of the Westinghouse company is a graduate of the Naval academy, O. B. Shallenberger. He used to be the superintendent of the works, but now he lives at Rochester, where he has a laboratory of his own. He is the inventor of an electric motor of which the Westinghouse company has sold more than 100,000.

The company has a punching establishment, blacksmith shops, brass foundry, iron foundry and carpenter shops. It employs about 4,000 people. Many of them live in East Pittsburg, many in the little towns near by. Mr. Westinghouse has no theories about industrial colonies, and his men and women employees live where they will. A club has been established for the office employees, however.

An Inventor's Industry.

Mr. Westinghouse works harder than any of his employees in spite of his $15,000,000 fortune. He is often at the works at 7 o'clock in the morning. He is in control of a dozen other important interests as well, and he can give only a part of his time to each. But the electrical works are his pet, and he is to be found there oftener than anywhere else.

One of the sure indications of the drift toward electric locomotion is a contract made between the Westinghouse company and the Baldwin Locomotive company of Philadelphia, tho greatest makers of locomotives in the world, by which the two companies are to work together in the construction of electric locomotives. All the car construction is done by the Baldwin company, and the motors are put in by the Westinghouse company.

A writer in an electrical journal recently figured that the Pennsylvania railroad between New York and Philadelphia could be operated by electricity at a saving of 16 per cent. It will not be long, probably, before Mr. Westinghouse will ride in his private car behind an electric locomotive from Pittsburg to Jersey City and possibly be taken by electric ferryboats across to New York.

GEORGE GRANTHAM BAIN.