LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
Columbia SUmbnsttu Hectares 
 
 POWER 
 
 THE HEWITT LECTURES 
 1909-1910 
 
COLUMBIA 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 SALES AGENTS 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 LEMCKE & BUECHNER 
 80-32 WEST 27ra STREET 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 HENRY FROWDE 
 AMEN CORNER, E.G. 
 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LECTURES 
 
 POWER 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES E. LUCRE, PH.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 
 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
 gork 
 THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 1911 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1911, 
 BY THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PKESS. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1911. 
 
 Nortoooti 
 
 J. 8. Gushing Co. Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IT is the object of the series of lectures included in this 
 volume to point out the enormous effect that the substi- 
 tution of mechanical power for hand and animal labor 
 has had on the organization of society and the conditions 
 of living, and by presenting the development of power 
 machinery to show what sort of ideas have produced this 
 result. The effect of power machinery is soon told and 
 readily understood ; but it is not so easy, though far more 
 important, to show how the men who are responsible for 
 what lias been done have thought and worked, and with 
 what kind of things and with what reasoning those men 
 must deal who are to take up the responsibility for future 
 progress. The bulk of the subject-matter, accordingly, 
 is concerned with the apparatus and machinery for the 
 converting of natural energy in any of its available forms 
 into useful Avork, together with the physical processes for 
 the execution of which that apparatus was devised. 
 
 C. E. L. 
 
 v 
 
 ooonnr; 
 ** ^ U i> (J 3 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 I. THE RELATION OF MECHANICAL POWER AND MA- 
 CHINERY TO SOCIAL CONDITIONS . . . .11 
 II. MEANS EMPLOYED FOR THE SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 
 
 FOR THE LABOR OF MEN 29 
 
 III. ESSP;NTIAL ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER SYSTEMS . 66 
 
 IV. PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER SYSTEMS 101 
 V. PROCESSES AND MECHANISM OF THE GAS-POWER SYS- 
 TEM 142 
 
 VI. ADAPTATION OF FUELS FOR THE USE OF INTERNAL 
 
 COMBUSTION ENGINES 177 
 
 VII. WATER-POWER SYSTEMS AND BASAL HYDRAULIC PRO- 
 CESSES .......... 211 
 
 VIII. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE SUB- 
 STITUTION OF POWER FOR HAND LABOR . . . 266 
 
 INDEX 305 
 
 vii 
 
POWER 
 
 THE RELATION OF MECHANICAL POWER AND MACHINERY 
 TO SOCIAL CONDITIONS 
 
 RECORDED or unrecorded history, the story of things 
 that have happened, with explanations of the probable 
 reason, may be regarded as a most useful, if not a nec- 
 essary, guide to the conduct of present-day affairs; 
 whether it be concerned with wars and governments 
 or the customs and mode of living of the people ; 
 whether written in books carrying the title of history 
 or told by the old to the young, treating of ancient 
 times or the events of yesterday. For a long time 
 writers of history were content with records of armies 
 and battles, and their relation to the fall of one empire 
 and the rise of another. Little, if any, attention was 
 given to such ordinary questions as the sort of food 
 the people ate, the kind of clothes they wore, of what 
 sicknesses they died, at what occupation they labored, 
 and with what tools to assist them, what compensation 
 they received, and how the product of their labor was 
 obtained by the non-producer, all of these questions 
 of far more vital importance to the welfare of the 
 average individual than the quarrels of nations. While 
 some little information of -thi^ class may bp found in 
 B i , ; 
 
2 POWER 
 
 general literature, not ordinarily classed as history, 
 the topics there discussed seldom refer to the daily 
 work of the mass of the people, by means of which the 
 whole population was fed, clothed, and housed, or the 
 relation of these questions now generally classified as 
 industrial to the social or governmental organizations, 
 the welfare of the individual, or changes of state. 
 Modern historians, however, are waking up to the fact 
 that present conditions have been brought about not 
 so much by the victories of war as by the practice of 
 every-day acts of peace, and that a diagram of a loom 
 for weaving cloth may really be a more valuable thing 
 to study than a map of the battle of Waterloo. 
 
 There seems to be little doubt now that industrial 
 conditions are of primary importance in shaping the 
 various conditions of human affairs, and are funda- 
 mental to the mere existence of government, but this 
 did not appear so clearly in early times. In the days 
 when the great body of the people were farmers, when 
 little mining was practised and practically no manu- 
 facturing, about the only unusual or extraordinary 
 happenings were the wars, so it is not surprising that 
 a history of the period should be a record of these con- 
 flicts. Later on, however, things changed, industrial 
 affairs assuming more importance as factories were 
 built, drawing men from farms and concentrating 
 them in factory towns, and stimulating the develop- 
 ment of steamships and railroads to bring raw materials 
 to the factories and to distribute their products, giving 
 more and varied employment to others, and supplying 
 all with new forms of the necessaries and luxuries of 
 life, and ccjrn^letely changing the whole social organism. 
 
POWER AND MACHINERY 3 
 
 The great change in conditions, which made those 
 things which formerly seemed all-important assume 
 minor significance, and accented the truly greater 
 importance of industrial affairs, began a little over 
 a century and a half ago, with the invention of spinning 
 and weaving machinery and the steam-engine to drive 
 it. Tracing from that time the progress of the sub- 
 stitution of mechanical power and machinery for hand 
 labor, by which those things that people want can be 
 produced better and cheaper than ever before, as well 
 as new things previously not thought of, but which 
 are wanted as soon as seen, will serve to explain modern 
 conditions as no other study can. Instructive as such 
 a review of industrial history may be, it is as nothing 
 compared to the value of an understanding of the in- 
 dustrial conditions of the present time. It is far better 
 to know how a hat is made, a trolley car works, or the 
 fruit of California can be sold cheaply in New York, 
 three thousand miles away, than any of the facts of 
 history, though the latter may precede and make easier 
 the comprehension of the more complex present. Re- 
 ferring to the importance of these industrial changes, 
 which is slowly but surely becoming accepted as it 
 should be, is a well-worded statement in Robinson and 
 Beard's " Modern Europe." 
 
 "The story of mechanical invention is in no way 
 inferior in fascination and importance to the more 
 familiar history of kings, parliaments, wars, and con- 
 stitutions. The chief factors in it never stirred an 
 assembly by their fiery denunciation of abuses, or led 
 an army to victory, or conducted a clever diplomatic 
 
4 POWER 
 
 negotiation. On the contrary, their attention was 
 concentrated upon the homely operations of every-day 
 life; the housewife drawing out her thread with dis- 
 taff or spinning-wheel, the slow work of the weaver 
 at his primitive loom, the miner struggling against 
 the water which threatened to flood his mine. They 
 busied themselves perseveringly with wheels, cylinders, 
 bands, and rollers, patiently combining and recombining 
 them until, after many discouragements, they made 
 discoveries destined to alter the habits, ideas, and 
 prospects of the mass of the people far more profoundly 
 than all the edicts of the National Assembly, or all the 
 conquests of Napoleon taken together. " 
 
 The often-heard characterization of our times as 
 the " industrial age" and of our most influential citi- 
 zens as " captains of industry" are indications of 
 growing respect for the manufacturing and transpor- 
 tation industries not merely as occupations or means 
 of employment, but as world-shaping forces stronger 
 than armies and navies, and marks of appreciation of 
 the fact that the training of engineers is more important 
 than that of generals. It is not so generally realized, 
 however, that all this would be quite impossible without 
 power-generating machinery, which, receiving the water 
 of the river or the heat of fuel as sources of energy, 
 changes them under man's control, and finally turns 
 the wheels of industry. It is difficult to believe that 
 any one with ordinary natural curiosity, after having 
 his attention drawn to these facts, and knowing that 
 practically every article that he uses, especially in cities, 
 is power produced, at least in part, can fail to inquire 
 
POWER AND MACHINERY 5 
 
 how it was brought about ; in just what way man has 
 succeeded in harnessing nature to do his will ; for the 
 employment of power-generating machinery is a demon- 
 stration of his control over those forces of nature that 
 once struck fear into the hearts of men by lightning, 
 fire, and flood. 
 
 When, in addition, it may be promised that an exam- 
 ination of the power-generating processes and machin- 
 ery, on which so much of general interest and personal 
 welfare depend, will also reveal the working of broad, 
 philosophic law applicable to all human affairs with 
 profit, the systematic location and reduction of waste 
 in all things, then mere curious questioning may well 
 be expected to yield to enthusiastic study. 
 
 We are every moment surrounded by manufactures 
 and results of mechanical power and driven machinery 
 in almost infinite variety. Not only are the clothes, 
 hats, and shoes we wear produced by power-driven 
 machinery, at least in part, but so also are all the fabrics 
 of the household, linens, carpets, and hangings, the 
 furniture, glass, chinaware, and metal house furnish- 
 ings, and practically all that enters into the making of 
 the house itself, cement, brick, pipe, nails, furnaces, 
 radiators, and lamps. 
 
 In addition, we use power-generated electric light 
 and bathe in power-pumped water, ride in powered 
 cars and boats, make war with power-made guns and 
 ships consisting of several million dollars' worth of 
 machinery each. The very food on our tables is drawn 
 from the waters, forests, and farms of the earth by 
 highly developed systems of transportation, preserved 
 by machine processes or stored between production 
 
6 POWER 
 
 and need in power-cooled refrigerators, and we cool 
 our beverages by manufactured pure ice. 
 
 In order that we may just exist, we require a supply 
 of food and clothing, while comfortable living adds 
 the necessity of housing with heat, light, and water, 
 finer clothing and more choice food. To supply the 
 necessities, comforts, and luxuries of present-day life 
 requires a most complex series of operations by men 
 with knowledge of nature's stores, and of the means 
 by which they can be brought from the hidden places 
 at the extremes of distance, and changed when neces- 
 sary to that form which may be desired. Seldom are 
 nature's stores of substances found in suitable form 
 for use; but man early learned to change their form 
 by hand, and devised tools to assist in the cutting of 
 stones, the weaving of grasses and fibrous wool of ani- 
 mals into cloth; and later to use natural energy to 
 assist, by baking clay to form bricks and pots, and by 
 heating certain rocks to get copper and iron, though 
 for a long time there was no realization of the fact that 
 the use of fire to assist change of form was a demon- 
 stration that heat was one kind of natural energy, or 
 that it could be made to do common work of lifting, 
 pushing, and pulling. 
 
 A still earlier though similarly unconscious use of 
 heat energy was made when man planted seeds in the 
 earth to obtain a supply of food. These seeds grew, 
 and in the growing the substances of the earth in which 
 the seed was placed, together with the air and water 
 which surrounded it, were transformed into the potato 
 and the tree by the chemical and molecular forces 
 derived from the energy of the sunshine, binding up 
 
POWER AND MACHINERY 7 
 
 the sun's energy in the new plant form taken by the 
 primary inanimate substances. This change of sub- 
 stance form, through the assistance of natural energy, 
 by which the useless may be made useful, and of which 
 life itself is the best example, taught a lesson unlearned 
 through countless ages, during which but little progress 
 toward what we are pleased to term " civilization " was 
 made. No one dreamed that energy was being used, 
 or even that there was such a thing, in those days, and 
 it is not too much to say that the conception of energy 
 which recognizes heat, work, electricity, magnetism, 
 sound, and light as interchangeable energy manifesta- 
 tions was one of the most significant in point of results 
 that the world has ever seen. 
 
 The discovery that energy was available in nature 
 for the doing of man's work is sometimes traced to his 
 natural indolence when he placed sails on boats, and 
 paddle-wheels under waterfalls to lift weights, even 
 though no idea existed that the capacity of the moving 
 water and moving air to do these things was proof of 
 the existence of energy in nature, and exactly similar 
 to the capacity of fire to melt things or extract metals 
 from ores. 
 
 From the practice of these simple processes of form 
 changing, such as weaving and the application of wind 
 and water energy to the service of men, there is a long 
 period during which no real progress worth mentioning 
 was made, and which came to an end only with the 
 general realization, first, of the possibility of devising 
 combinations of sticks and metal parts to reproduce 
 the movements of hands and fingers and eliminate 
 the guidance of the eye ; in short, to make things wanted 
 
8 POWER 
 
 from other things available; and secondly, that the 
 heat of burning fuel, if properly applied to other sub- 
 stances and metal parts, was capable of doing the same 
 sort of work as the waterfall and the wind. 
 
 The general process of changing useless materials 
 into useful and serviceable things is termed to-day 
 "manufacturing," when carried out systematically 
 and repeatedly in the same way, while the processes 
 by which natural energy of whatever form can be made 
 to do man's work are called rather incorrectly " power 
 generation . ' ' Together these processes of manufacturing 
 and the generation of power, carried out in the machin- 
 ery of manufactures, perform the function of changing 
 natural things into other things that people want; 
 so man has learned in part nature's own lesson of 
 organic life and applied it to his needs and pleasures. 
 
 Culture and the full enjoyment of life are possible 
 only when the demands for the necessities have been 
 satisfied; or, speaking more broadly, national pros- 
 perity is a necessary prerequisite to civilization, and 
 that nation is most permanently prosperous in which 
 production of wealth is the more universal occupation ; 
 wealth derived primarily from the farm, the sea, the 
 mine, and the forest, the raw materials of which are 
 augmented in value by manufacture, giving rise to 
 transportation and commerce. In all of these indus- 
 tries, basal to national security and happy living, 
 mechanical power plays a part, more important in 
 some than in others, but an important part in all. 
 Practically all our fish products are gathered in power 
 boats to-day ; mines that can raise the ore to the sur- 
 face without power are rare, and still more rare are the 
 
POWER AND MACHINERY 9 
 
 ores that can be reduced to metal without it ; the 
 farmer is resorting more and more to power, one manu- 
 facturer alone last year having sold 30,000 gasolene 
 engines for farm use. It is, however, the other two 
 industries that are most dependent on power ; manu- 
 facturing owes its very existence to our ability to gen- 
 erate, apply, and control power economically, while 
 power is the prime element in transportation over land 
 and water. These two great businesses of making 
 things and moving them, now classified as the indus- 
 tries of manufacturing and transportation, underlying 
 practically all of commerce, owe their present state to 
 power, and their future is largely a power problem. 
 
 Clearly as does a review of these things indicate our 
 dependence on the use of power applied in the indus- 
 tries, it will be helpful in reaching a measure of the 
 magnitude of the interests involved to examine some 
 statistics drawn from the last United States Census 
 Reports for the year 1905. From these reports it 
 appears that the manufacturing and steam-railroad 
 industries alone represent a capital valuation of nearly 
 twenty-four billion dollars, about equally divided. 
 The railroads of the country alone represent a mileage 
 of 213,932 miles, or enough to go eight and a half times 
 around the earth, while the manufacturing industries 
 reported over two hundred thousand establishments. 
 These together gave employment to nearly eight 
 million people, about six million in manufacturing 
 and over one and a half million on the railroads, paying 
 them on the average $640 each on the railroads, and 
 $550 in the manufacturing classes, the manufacturers' 
 pay-rolls aggregating over three billion dollars ($3,186,- 
 
10 POWER 
 
 301,763) yearly. Raw materials from mine, farm, 
 forest, and sea used by the manufacturers cost them 
 over eight and a half billion dollars ($8,503,949,756), 
 and the processes through which they were transformed 
 increased their value about 70 per cent, adding to the 
 wealth of the country over six billion dollars, the manu- 
 factured goods becoming worth nearly fifteen billion 
 dollars ($14,802,147,087). These industries now em- 
 ploy power to an extent approaching 50,000,000 h. p., 
 and the whole is not reported, but for each horse-power 
 that is reported the products were worth $1152, and 
 $248 in wages were paid in the manufacturing industry. 
 The present total is estimated from the following 
 figures, Table I, which do not include automobiles, 
 hoisting, pumping, and compressing engines, and in- 
 dependent engines used in buildings not engaged in 
 manufacturing, such as hotels, which should be added, 
 and which would considerably increase the reported 
 total, while the total to-day must be much increased 
 over the census year of 1905, as the rate at which the 
 use of power has been increasing has been itself on the 
 increase since the Civil War. 
 
POWER AND MACHINERY 11 
 
 TABLE I 
 
 POWER IN USE BY LAST CENSUS. CORRECTED BY H. ST. CLARE 
 
 PUTNAM 
 
 Manufactures (1905) 12,765,594 
 
 Mines and quarries (1902) 2,753,555 
 
 Street railways (1902) 1,359,289 
 
 Electric light and power stations (1902) 1,845,048 
 
 Telephone, telegraph, and fire alarm 3,148 
 
 Custom flour, grist, and sawmills, and industries 
 
 omitted from Census 883,685 
 
 Naval vessels (1905) 777,598 
 
 Licensed merchant vessels (1905) 2,608,270 
 
 Locomotives (1904) equivalent 3,750,000 
 
 Total horse-power accounted for 26,746,187 
 
 In reporting the manufacturing industries, many 
 establishments were omitted in accordance with the 
 Bureau's definition of a factory as u an establishment 
 in which there is an association of separate occupations 
 to facilitate the combination of the processes into which 
 the manufacture is divided, and producing goods for 
 the general market stock rather than on the order of 
 an individual." This definit'on excludes the small 
 shoemaker, milliner, all the building trades, and sim- 
 ilar kinds of business. 
 
 The greatest manufacturing industries may be judged 
 by either the number of wage-earners or the value of 
 products, and on this basis the following two tables 
 are offered, from which it appears that each of five 
 groups of industries employed over two hundred thou- 
 sand wage-earners, and each of six industries produced 
 goods valued at half a billion dollars or more. 
 
12 
 
 POWER 
 
 TABLE II 
 
 GREAT INDUSTRIES BY WAGE-EARNERS 
 INDUSTRIES EMPLOYING OVER 200,000 WAGE-EARNERS 
 
 INDUSTRY 
 
 NUMBER OF 
 WAGE-EARNERS 
 
 Lumber and timber products 
 
 404 626 
 
 Foundry and machine shops 
 
 402 919 
 
 Cotton goods 
 
 315 874 
 
 Steam railroad shops 
 
 236,900 
 
 Iron and steel works and rolling-mills .... 
 
 207 ; 562 
 
 TABLE III 
 
 GREAT INDUSTRIES BY VALUE OF PRODUCT 
 INDUSTRIES WITH PRODUCTS WORTH A HALF BILLION DOLLARS YEARLY 
 
 INDUSTRY 
 
 VALUE OF 
 PRODUCTS YEARLY 
 
 Slaughtering and meat packing . 
 Foundry and machine shops . . 
 Flour and grist mill products 
 Iron and steel works, rolling-mills 
 Lumber and timber products . . 
 Cotton goods 
 
 $801,757,137 
 799,862,588 
 713,033,395 
 673,965,026 
 580,022,690 
 450,467,704 
 
 To supply the manufacturing industries with raw 
 materials there are supported the other industries of 
 lumbering, mining, farming, and fishing, each of which 
 contributed, as shown in Table IV; over 94 per cent 
 coming from farms and mines. 
 
POWER AND MACHINERY 
 
 13 
 
 TABLE IV 
 SOURCE OF RAW MATERIALS AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION 
 
 SOURCE 
 
 YEARLY VALUE 
 
 PER CENT 
 
 Farm 
 Forest 
 
 $2,492,836,646 
 163 464 677 
 
 81.2 
 
 50 
 
 Mine 
 
 471 118 181 
 
 13 4 
 
 Sea 
 
 13.715,086 
 
 .4 
 
 
 $3,141,134,590 
 
 100.0 
 
 FARM PRODUCTS 
 
 PER 
 
 CENT 
 
 SEA PRODUCTS 
 
 PER 
 
 CENT 
 
 Food products industry 
 
 63.6 
 
 Food products . . . 
 
 83.1 
 
 Textile industry . . 
 
 18.6 
 
 Chemicals .... 
 
 1.9 
 
 Leather goods industry 
 
 6.4 
 
 Miscellaneous . . . 
 
 15.0 
 
 Liquors and beverages 
 
 2.4 
 
 
 
 Chemicals .... 
 
 3.9 
 
 
 
 Tobacco 
 
 4.0 
 
 
 
 Miscellaneous . . . 
 
 1.1 
 
 
 
 MINE PRODUCTS 
 
 PER 
 
 CENT 
 
 FOREST PRODUCTS 
 
 PER 
 CENT 
 
 Iron and steel goods . 
 
 23.9 
 
 Lumber products . . 
 
 53.8 
 
 Chemicals 
 
 33.9 
 
 Paper and printing . . 
 
 15.6 
 
 Clay, glass, and stoneware 
 
 5.3 
 
 Chemicals 
 
 5.6 
 
 Other metal products 
 
 29.8 
 
 Vehicles 
 
 1.6 
 
 Miscellaneous .... 
 
 7.1 
 
 Miscellaneous . . . 
 
 23.4 
 
 Not only does the manufacturing process add to the 
 wealth of the country by increasing the value of the 
 materials used nearly 80 per cent, but it also gives a 
 
14 POWER 
 
 value to the raw materials which they did not previously 
 possess in their original state. There would be little 
 demand for iron ore without the means of extracting 
 the iron and making from it things that people want ; 
 fruit, vegetables, and fish are produced at definite 
 seasons and are worth more since means of preserva- 
 tion and cold storage were developed than before; 
 the machinery for making shoes has so increased the 
 demand for shoes as to give increased value to hides, 
 or an equal value to more of them. Coal tar was once 
 an annoying by-product of gas-works, but is now a 
 source of medicine, beautiful dyes, and perfumes; 
 cotton seed has become valuable as the source of a 
 useful oil ; in 1860 it was refuse, in 1870 a fertilizer, 
 in 1880 a cattle food, in 1890 a table food. Certain 
 parts of animals slaughtered for meat were once annoy- 
 ing waste; now every part is utilized, and from the 
 former waste by-products are made gelatine, glue, 
 brushes, oils, buttons, medicine, and soap. What 
 was once useless has been made useful, and that which 
 had value has been given ever increasing value by 
 manufacture, so that the prime producing industries 
 of farming, fishing, mining, and lumbering may be said 
 to be largely supported by the manufactures, trans- 
 portation being the connecting and similarly dependent 
 industry, and of this complex organism the vital organ 
 is the power plant, without which the operating machin- 
 ery would be lifeless and impotent. 
 
 In trying to realize the strides that have been made, 
 which is the first step in the appreciation of our present 
 situation, it will be helpful to look at some pictures, 
 in addition to studying the figures which tell the story 
 
POWER AND MACHINERY 
 
 15 
 
 FIG. 1 
 
 FIG. 2 
 
16 
 
 POWER 
 
 of the magnitude of industries practically non-existent 
 before power became available. In those days there 
 was nothing but the water-mill and windmill, such as 
 are shown in Figs. 1 and 2, and about all they did 
 was to grind grain, lift hammers, or blow bellows for 
 furnaces; boats were small and moved by sails, and 
 
 FIG. 3 
 
 land transportation was dependent on the horse. Com- 
 pare these illustrations of the old conditions with the 
 following illustrations of the present. The picture 
 (Fig. 3) shows the exterior of the New York Subway 
 power house, occupying a whole block, with a capac- 
 ity approaching a hundred thousand horse-power, 
 and filled with seemingly complicated machinery, as 
 will be appreciated from the interior of one half shown 
 
POWER AND MACHINERY 
 
 17 
 
 in Fig. 4. This power station, while the largest, is 
 only one of hundreds of similar ones located in every 
 city in the country. A modern steamship, such as 
 the Kaiser Wilhelm and others, would have been no 
 
 FIG. 4 
 
 more wonderful or unreal to the owner of the old wind- 
 mill, or to the captain of the small sailing vessel of those 
 days before the steam-engine, than would a vision of 
 heaven. These vessels, some of them over seven hun- 
 dred feet long, carry deep down below the water-line 
 a large steam-power plant, such as is shown in the sec- 
 
18 
 
 POWER 
 
 tional view (Fig. 5), with nineteen boilers, each seven- 
 teen feet in diameter and shown in Fig. 6, supplying 
 
 FIG. 5 
 
 steam to ten engines of nearly fifty thousand horse- 
 power, the size of which is clearly indicated in Fig. 7 
 by the man standing in the center of the picture. 
 
 No less impressive is the 
 comparison of the old horse 
 and wagon as the sole de- 
 pendence for moving goods 
 on land with a modern loco- 
 motive, one of the latest 
 and heaviest of which for 
 the Erie R. R. is shown in 
 Fig. 8, a complete steam- 
 power plant in itself, ca- 
 pable of drawing across 
 the country half a hundred 
 cars, each carrying fifty 
 tons of coal, at high speed, 
 and another for the New 
 York Central, shown in Fig. 9, which is capable of 
 drawing a heavy ten-car Pullman train over a mile 
 a minute, making possible a journey to Chicago, of 
 about nine hundred miles, in eighteen hours, main- 
 
 FIG. 6 
 
POWER AND MACHINERY 
 
 19 
 
 taining an average speed, including stops for coal, 
 water, switch, signals, and stations, of fifty miles an 
 
 hour. There are no statistics of steamship transporta- 
 tion available, but the railroad business, so largely 
 supported by the manufacturing industries, is fairly 
 
20 
 
 POWER 
 
 well determined, and included in 1900 a passenger 
 mileage of over one and a half billion miles, or over 
 two hundred miles per capita of population, while the 
 freight haulage was equivalent to one hundred and 
 
 FIG. 
 
 forty-one billion six hundred million ton miles (one 
 ton hauled one mile). 
 
 Just as a comparison of the pictures of the modern 
 power plants with the old wind and water mills is use- 
 ful, so will be a brief survey of a few characteristic estab- 
 lishments of the larger manufacturing industries, which 
 did not exist at all before the advent of the steam engine. 
 
 FIG. 9 
 
 Some of these establishments employ hundreds and 
 even thousands of men, and constitute, with the homes 
 of the workmen, the stores and homes of the tradesmen 
 who supply them, fair-sized cities in themselves. The 
 greatest manufacturing groups are of food-stuffs, iron 
 and steel products, and textiles, and the following 
 
POWER AND MACHINERY 
 
 21 
 
 pictures of one establishment of each class will serve 
 the purpose. The slaughter-houses, meat-product fac- 
 
 FIG. 10 
 
 tories, and cold-storage warehouses of Swift & Co., 
 at Chicago, in which over ten thousand horse-power 
 is used, are shown in Fig. 10 ; the Homestead Works 
 
 FIG. 11 
 
 of the Carnegie Steel Co. at Pittsburg in Fig. 11 ; the 
 machine shop of the Allis-Chalmers Co. at Milwaukee 
 
22 
 
 POWER 
 
 in Fig. 12, and in Fig. 13 is shown the largest cotton 
 mill in the world, located at New Bedford. This mill 
 can house over five thousand looms for weaving cloth, 
 
 ' FIG. 12 
 
 and one hundred and fifty thousand spindles for making 
 the necessary thread, all of which require some ten 
 thousand horse-power to drive. The appearance of a 
 
 FIG. 13 
 
 spinning room showing the rows of spindles on the 
 machines is shown in Fig. 14. 
 
 In round numbers, 85 per cent of all the power last 
 reported in use in this country for manufacturing is 
 
POWER AND MACHINERY 
 
 23 
 
 derived from the combustion of fuel in steam-boilers, 
 which deliver steam to engines and other apparatus 
 capable of producing mechanical motion, and in the 
 case of locomotives and steamships nothing but fuel- 
 burning steam systems are in general use. About 
 14 per cent of the power generated on land for station- 
 ary use is derived from falling water, and about 1 per 
 
 FIG. 14 
 
 cent from fuel turned into gas, mixed with air and 
 exploded in gas engines, so that practically 86 per cent 
 of the power in use on land, and all of that in use by 
 railroads and steamships, are derived from fuel sources, 
 and the remainder from natural streams. Fuel in 
 some form is, then, our principal source of natural energy 
 to-day, and is becoming increasingly our main depen- 
 dence, as the percentage of power derived from streams 
 has been continuously decreasing for forty years. 
 
24 POWER 
 
 While the natural fuel may vary from hard, glossy, 
 anthracite coal through various grades of soft coal 
 to spongy peat in the solid fuel class, and through 
 various oils in the liquid class to natural gas, all can 
 be traced to sun-grown plants that have died and become 
 packed together beneath earth and rock. The source 
 of the energy of these fuels, then, seems to be traceable 
 in turn to the heat of the sun, which produces the plant 
 growth, and it is likewise the sun that evaporates 
 water from the ocean, forming clouds, which are driven 
 by sun-produced winds over the cold places, condens- 
 ing the vapor into rain, which, falling on high places, 
 produces rivers and waterfalls. Fuel, flowing river 
 water, and the winds themselves all owe their energy 
 to the sun, each manifesting its energy in its own 
 peculiar way, and requiring a corresponding variety 
 of machines to enable each form to do the same work 
 at will. It has been estimated (Putnam) that the rate 
 of increase in using power since 1870 has been such as 
 to double the amount every ten years, shown in Fig. 15, 
 and this same rate of increase applies as well to coal 
 production, railroad gross earnings, freight ton mile- 
 age, passenger mileage, and value of agricultural 
 products, proving absolutely the direct relation and 
 dependence of the industries on power, and how serious 
 will be the effect of lack of available power to meet 
 the demands of industrial progress. 
 
 Coal is the main fuel dependence now, and there was 
 produced in 1907 about 450,000,000 tons ; in 1906 the 
 railroads alone used 90,000,000 tons, for which was paid 
 $170,000,000. At the present rate the known supply 
 of anthracite will be exhausted in about 70 years, but 
 
POWER AND MACHINERY 
 
 25 
 
 the bituminous supply will last longer. It is estimated, 
 by E. W. Parker, of the United States Geological Survey, 
 that, if the present rate of increase continues for 150 
 
 NOTALLCO 
 
 I 
 
 OOKCN l_IMt ( ESTI MftTCD IMCBfftSE 
 
 m HBILOOS SU NOTE PACE 
 
 FIG. 15 
 
 years and the consumption then becomes constant, 
 the supply will last 700 years. Similar estimates place 
 the water-power capacity of our streams at 30,000,000 
 
26 POWER 
 
 h. p., of which only 10 per cent is now used. So long 
 as these natural supplies are depended upon, great care 
 must be exercised in preventing waste; but it must be 
 remembered that millions of square miles of land, 
 especially in tropical countries, can be put under culti- 
 vation to produce wood for fuel, or the more rapid- 
 growing substances like sugar-cane, sorghum, corn, or po- 
 tatoes, bearing starch or sugar, which can be converted 
 into alcohol in never ending supply. Just what fuel 
 is to be used and by what system of machinery now or 
 in the future, and whether fuel or water-power, will 
 depend on the cost of the power by the system, which 
 is a negative measure of waste. That source of energy 
 and system of machinery that produces power with 
 the least net waste is the one that will be used, least 
 waste of energy, of man's labor, of wear in machinery, 
 and of investment, all together; and the prediction of 
 the industrial future of the country, which in turn so 
 powerfully influences its social and economic welfare, 
 is resolved to a study of waste reduction. 
 
 By making studies of nature's substances and na- 
 ture's stores of energy, and evolving means of using 
 the latter to do the work of transporting the substances 
 which are to be or have been changed to useful forms 
 by similar power-driven machinery, not only has the 
 wealth of the country been enormously increased and 
 the general average of living likewise been raised, but 
 direct employment has been created for ever increasing 
 millions of population as wealth producers and traders 
 in goods produced. The success of industrial under- 
 takings, dependent as it is primarily on the economic 
 use of power, is, however, and always will be, impossible 
 
POWER AND MACHINERY 27 
 
 without men, men of every walk of life, every degree of 
 physical strength, mental power, and education. Equal 
 as men may declare themselves to be before the law in 
 their claim of a right to live without annoyance from 
 others, no sane man can believe they are equal in at- 
 tainments, or that the attainments of any one may 
 not be increased by study, training, and experience. 
 Were we all farmers or all weavers of cloth, there would 
 be no possibility of finding an occupation for each, 
 best suited to his ability, but the creation of these varied 
 industries has had the effect of diversifying the duties 
 of the army of men necessary to conduct their affairs. 
 There is now work to be done in infinite variety and of 
 different degrees of difficulty, so that the most ignorant 
 man may find a useful place in the same establishment 
 with the one most richly endowed with brain power 
 developed to the maximum by education and experience, 
 and capable of directing its affairs, which are often more 
 complicated and difficult to administer correctly than 
 those of state government. 
 
 To make a watch requires a very large number of 
 processes on many separate pieces of metal ; for each 
 process tools and machine are devised and men trained 
 to be skilful in their use; other men must buy the 
 metal and the tools, sell the watches made, keep the 
 factory in repair, keep records of cost, answer letters, 
 secure money for pay-rolls, decide how many watches 
 of each style shall be made, far in advance of the time 
 they will really be wanted. Each man must work in 
 definite relation to the others or the result will not be 
 attained ; so that the relation of the men to each other 
 and to their tools and machines must be similar to the 
 
28 POWER 
 
 relation existing between the parts of the watch, even 
 in spite of the fact that each man is human and is 
 endowed with feelings and human perversity. The 
 adjustment of these human relations to form the human 
 machine, called the organization, is just as necessary 
 in one kind of industry as in another ; without such 
 organization there would be no effective or economic 
 manufacturing or transportation. The organization 
 is the result of the attempts to reduce waste of human 
 effort, such as results when one man has to repeat the 
 work of another, or when one man opposes the efforts 
 of another, or when any one is idle or fails to produce 
 as much as he can. The systematic study of reduction 
 of waste of labor, by management and organization 
 systems, is a comparatively recent thing, undertaken 
 only after years of effort in reducing waste of energy 
 in power machinery, and waste of substances not in 
 available form, but which could be made into new and 
 useful forms by persistent trial. That men properly 
 organized, trained, assisted, and properly paid can 
 produce effects enormously greater than many times 
 the same number of unorganized individuals, especially 
 when assisted by capital, is a basal proposition of the 
 industries, which we were as slow in learning as we were 
 the lesson that nature's energy might be made to do 
 man's work. It really seems as if the methods learned 
 in applying nature's orderly laws controlling the gen- 
 eration of power and its application to machinery are to 
 be the means of teaching us how best to get along with 
 each other, to work in common to produce desired results 
 with the least waste, as effectively and harmoniously 
 as do the parts of the press that prints our daily papers. 
 
II 
 
 MEANS EMPLOYED FOR THE SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 
 FOR THE LABOR OF MEN 
 
 IN the story of the development of power machinery, 
 the part played by the rods, shafts, cylinders, and 
 other elements of the mechanism as arranged and 
 rearranged, important as it is, is subordinate to the 
 ideas or conceptions of the physical processes that 
 each rearrangement of well-known parts is devised to 
 carry out. 
 
 It is more important to know j ust how steam when made 
 should be treated to give the most work, than to make 
 a steam-engine that will run ; more important to know 
 how combustible gas mixed with air should be treated 
 to give an explosion with the highest possible pressure, 
 than to make a chamber strong enough to hold the 
 exploding mixture without breaking. Generalizing, 
 it may be said that knowledge of what should be done 
 is more important and of higher order than mere 
 ability to make a mechanism that will work after a 
 fashion. 
 
 Each process as it was conceived added a fact to 
 man's understanding of physical nature, and in turn 
 contributed to the discovery of the next. Air and 
 water in motion, being capable of moving wheels with 
 paddles, naturally lead a student to inquire how fluids, 
 water, air, steam, etc., may be put in motion, a question 
 
 29 
 
30 POWER 
 
 which, once conceived, almost instantly answers itself, 
 - by allowing them to escape from high-pressure cham- 
 bers. The next logical step is to inquire how fluids 
 may be prepared so as to have high pressures in cham- 
 bers from which they may escape, and this leads to 
 the discovery that water may be boiled in closed vessels 
 by fire outside, or that explosions of powder and gas- 
 eous fuels may be caused to take place, or, more simply, 
 that water may be led in pipes from the upper level 
 of a waterfall to the lower level; and at once the three 
 characteristic systems of power generation are under- 
 stood, water-power, steam-power, and gas-power 
 systems. Experience with high-pressure fluid results 
 in an understanding of its tendency to push apart the 
 inclosing walls, one of which may be movable and on 
 which the pressure may alternately act, as it moves 
 back and forth, and there is in consequence developed 
 the idea of another way of securing motion from fluids 
 under pressure, besides the older one of jets striking 
 paddle-wheels. An almost infinite number of com- 
 binations of mechanism parts and constructive details 
 can be found to carry out each process, so that the 
 processes are fundamental and the mechanisms inci- 
 dental. It must not be understood, however, that 
 these several parts may have infinite variety of form, 
 or that they may be made of any convenient material, 
 for there are limitations which must not be ignored. 
 The mechanical elements must have such simple form 
 as to be easily made by the shop tools and workmen; 
 both the form and material of each part must be suit- 
 able for the purpose in strength, stiffness, flexibility, 
 or wearing qualities; and the whole machine must be 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 31 
 
 neither too costly to produce or to keep in repair, nor 
 require too skilful an operator to manage. 
 
 The problem of power-machinery development is, 
 therefore, divisible into several parts: First, what 
 processes must be carried out to produce motion against 
 resistance from the energy of winds, the water of the 
 rivers, or from fuel. Second, what combinations 
 of simply formed parts can be made to carry out 
 the process or series of processes. These two steps 
 when worked out will result in some kind of an engine, 
 but it may not be a good engine, for it may use up too 
 much natural energy for the work it does ; some part 
 may break or another wear too fast ; some part may 
 have a form that no workman can make, or use up 
 too much material or time in the making; in short, 
 while the engine may work, it may be too wasteful, 
 or do its work at too great a cost of coal or water, 
 attendance in operation, or investment, or all these 
 together. There must, therefore, be added several 
 other elements to the problem, as follows : Third, 
 how many ways are there of making each part, and 
 which is the cheapest, or what other form of part might 
 be devised that would be cheaper to make, or what 
 cheaper material is there that would be equally suitable. 
 Fourth, how sensitive to care are all these parts when 
 in operation, and how much attendance and repairs 
 will be required to keep the machine in good operating 
 condition. Fifth, how big must the important parts 
 or the whole machine be to utilize all the energy avail- 
 able, or to produce the desired amount of power. 
 Sixth, how much force must each part of the mecha- 
 nism sustain, and how big must it be when made of suit- 
 
32 POWER 
 
 able material so as not to break. Seventh, how much 
 work can be produced by the process for each unit of 
 energy supplied. 
 
 In the early days of power generation all these ele- 
 ments of the power problem were not recognized, but 
 they were developed and studied about in the order 
 named, a fairly satisfactory solution of the first part 
 pointing out the existence of the next and the neces- 
 sity of studying it, the solution of a new question 
 reacting on the older so that new solutions of it appeared 
 that could not be conceived before. It may fairly be 
 said that this systematic study has been receiving 
 attention for about a century and a half, but divided 
 into periods as the study advanced to the higher stages. 
 For example, it was not until 1860 that the seventh 
 element of the problem was successfully treated for 
 those power systems depending on the heat given out 
 by fuel as the source of energy. Although successful 
 and commercially valuable steam-engines had been 
 continuously produced for a hundred years, no one 
 was able to calculate exactly how much of the heat 
 in the steam might be converted into work by a mecha- 
 nism ideally perfect, so that the goodness or badness 
 of a mechanism could not be judged by any absolute 
 scientific standard, but only comparatively. One 
 engine might' in operation produce a certain horse-power 
 with less coal per hour than another, but no one could 
 state positively why, which, of course, is the first step 
 in rational improvement of economy; nor could the 
 minimum possibilities of coal consumption for a system 
 be calculated, so that the comparative value of com- 
 peting systems could not be judged. This sort of cal- 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 33 
 
 culation is now an every-day affair, which every engineer 
 is capable of carrying out, and is the basis of all modern 
 designing and improvement. The fact that it took 
 over a hundred years after building useful engines began 
 to arrive at a scientific conception of the fundamental 
 processes which were being more or less imperfectly 
 executed in machines designed largely by rule of thumb 
 is doubly significant of the high order of mental develop- 
 ment necessary for this conception, when it is realized 
 that the first and second elements of the problem appear 
 to have been understood to a degree sufficient to pro- 
 duce working models some two thousand years before, 
 since operative machines were built at that time, even 
 though they were not much more than toys. 
 
 The period of systematic and scientific power de- 
 velopment is coincident with the true progress of the 
 most basal of the several branches of natural philosophy, 
 chemistry, physics, mechanics, thermodynamics, and 
 the theory of elasticity of materials of construction ; 
 and there is no doubt that the steam-engine which was 
 designed and built by workmen before these were formu- 
 lated attracted the attention of philosophers who, in 
 attempting to explain what took place in it, created 
 a related body of principles by which future develop- 
 ment was guided, and which are now the fundamental 
 bases for the design of the future. Those men who 
 became familiar with the natural sciences, and also with 
 the shop methods of making machinery, and who 
 brought both to bear on the problem of the production 
 of machinery for specified conditions, combining the 
 special knowledge of the scientist and shop mechanic, 
 were the first mechanical engineers; and the profession 
 
34 POWER 
 
 of mechanical engineering, which is the term applied 
 to this sort of business, was created out of the efforts 
 to improve power systems, so as to make them more 
 efficient and adapted to all classes of service, and to 
 render that service for the least cost. 
 
 Nothing is more absorbingly interesting than the 
 detailed history of power-system ideas, mechanism, 
 and the economic production of both the machinery 
 and the power itself, studied along with the parallel 
 development of the natural sciences ; but this is beyond 
 the scope of these lectures, in which no more than the 
 merest outline can be attempted, just sufficient to per- 
 mit of a little understanding of modern machinery. 
 
 As has been already said, one of the earliest under- 
 stood ideas applied to power generation is that water 
 
 in motion may, by striking 
 paddles on wheels, move them 
 and itself lose some of its 
 motion, or that the energy of 
 motion can be communicated 
 from one body to another. 
 -''''-"'''''''' ''<'<'<'.'''''<'.'.'.. Q ne O f the earliest kinds of 
 
 wheels based on this idea is 
 
 shown in Fig. 16. The wheel was hung by its shaft, 
 which was just a log of wood, over the surface of a 
 fast-moving stream at such a height as would allow 
 the paddles to dip into the water. This same funda- 
 mental idea, old as it is, is also one of the most modern, 
 inasmuch as it is basal to the largest modern water 
 and steam-turbines, for steam is a fluid that behaves 
 much like water. It must not be understood that the 
 basal idea consists in the dipping of paddles into a 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 
 
 35 
 
 brook ; this is a mere incident, a convenient way of 
 carrying out the real, fundamental principle, which is 
 that moving fluids have energy by reason of their 
 motion, which 
 energy can be 
 imparted to 
 wheels by bring- 
 ing the original 
 fluid to rest in 
 a suitable way. 
 One of the 
 largest water- 
 wheels ever 
 built, and which 
 was designed to 
 carry out as 
 efficiently as 
 possible this 
 same idea, is 
 shown in Fig. 
 17, as it ap- 
 peared in the 
 shop before 
 shipment. The 
 size can be ap- 
 preciated by 
 comparing it 
 with the men 
 standing beside 
 it and on top of it. This wheel is at work below Shawin- 
 egan Falls in Canada, and develops 10,500 h. p., when 
 supplied with water through an llj-foot pipe from above 
 
 FIG. 17 
 
36 POWER 
 
 the falls, the total effective drop being 140 feet. The 
 vanes or curved partitions, equivalent to the paddles, 
 are shown attached to the shaft in the picture of the 
 runner, Fig. 18 Precisely the same basal principle 
 or controlling idea is carried out, with suitable changes 
 of structural detail, to adapt the mechanism to use 
 steam instead of water in the steam turbine, shown in 
 Fig. 19 as installed in the Potomac Electric Co. of 
 Washington. Such machines as these are now built 
 
 in sizes approaching 
 30,000 h. p. each. 
 
 In most of the mod- 
 ern turbines, which is 
 the name applied to the 
 most highly developed 
 form of wheels designed 
 ~ " ' to rob moving fluids, 
 
 rlG. 18 
 
 like steam and water 
 
 jets, of their energy of motion, there are involved many 
 other principles or ideas, some of which are very old 
 and some of recent conception. One of these, easy to 
 understand, is concerned with the way in which the 
 steam or water may be conveniently set in motion. 
 Water, led from an elevated tank or pond by pipes to 
 a lower level, exerts a pressure tending to burst the 
 pipe, which is more powerful the greater the drop in 
 level, and the pressure tends to make water flowing 
 from a hole or nozzle move faster the greater that pres- 
 sure is. Similarly, water, steam, or air, or any other 
 fluid, confined in a chamber under pressure, will escape 
 from that chamber through a nozzle in a jet. which 
 will have a velocity determined by the pressure. The 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 
 
 37 
 
 quantity of fluid that can escape, as well as the energy 
 of the jet, will depend on the size of the hole and veloc- 
 ity of the jet together. It has always been found most 
 
 FIG. 19 
 
 convenient, because of the concentration of energy 
 that results, to devise means of getting the fluid under 
 pressure, and then allowing it to escape to give it motion, 
 
38 
 
 POWER 
 
 instead of depending on substances naturally in motion. 
 These jets of fluid may be allowed to play on vanes or 
 paddles in a great variety of ways, giving different 
 types of motors all known by the class name of impulse 
 wheels, several of which, intended for water, are shown 
 in Fig. 20. Some of these have one nozzle and others 
 
 FIG. 20 
 
 many ; the vanes have different forms and are variously 
 disposed on the wheels. It required many years of 
 study, experiment, calculation, and comparison to dis- 
 cover just what curvature and angle should be given 
 to these vanes and nozzles to secure high efficiency, for 
 while any such combination as shown will run, there is 
 only one best form for each kind, and the determination 
 of that best form is the principal problem of the designer 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 
 
 39 
 
 to-day. To such perfection has this work been carried 
 that it is now possible to predict, within one or two 
 per cent, how much of the fluid energy a turbine yet 
 unbuilt will be capable of transforming into useful 
 work. A pure impulse wheel designed to receive jets 
 of steam is shown in Fig. 21, together with four nozzles 
 
 from which the r . 
 
 steam is escap- 
 ing, striking the 
 curved vanes of 
 the wheel, and 
 in passing 
 through having 
 its direction of 
 motion changed 
 to give the im- 
 pulse or push. 
 A proper rela- 
 tion exists be- 
 tween the speed 
 of the vanes, 
 that of the 
 steam jet, and 
 the angles and 
 curvature that will allow the steam to leave with no 
 velocity at all, its original energy of motion having 
 been imparted to the wheel; and these things can now 
 be determined with precision. 
 
 When the water issues in a fast-moving jet from a 
 nozzle, the nozzle is pushed backward, just as a gun 
 recoils as its projectile moves out, and this principle 
 of reaction is used in both water-wheels and steam- 
 
 FIG. 21 
 
40 
 
 POWER 
 
 turbines, either alone or associated with the impulse 
 action. Some arrangements of mechanism working 
 on this principle are shown in Fig. 22. In the first 
 one the water flows outward through curved, hollow 
 arms fixed to a hollow shaft through which the water 
 
 FIG. 22 
 
 is supplied, escaping from ,the outer edge or nozzle 
 tangentially. The same action takes place but is less 
 clearly seen in the other forms shown ; the water is, 
 however, conducted to the working vanes or nozzles 
 in different ways. These passages are more often a 
 continuous row of slots than single nozzles, for the 
 purpose of getting as much push as possible around 
 the circumference. To all wheels in which the reaction 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 
 
 41 
 
 of the jet rather than the impulse of striking vanes 
 exerts the driving force, the class name of reaction 
 wheels is applied. 
 
 The antiquity of the reaction and impulse principles 
 is shown by the records, in which it is said that one 
 Hero, 200 B.C., or over two thousand years ago, 
 made such a steam reaction turbine, shown in Fig. 23, 
 in which a fantastic water vessel was heated by a fire, 
 making steam which, flowing up 
 two vertical standards, hollow, 
 like pipes, entered a ball arranged 
 to rotate on the ends of the stan- 
 dards. From the ball the steam 
 escaped by nozzles tangentially, 
 causing the ball to spin, to the 
 mystification of the mass of the 
 people, who believed that some 
 spirit from the other world had 
 been brought under command. A 
 later, but nevertheless old, device, 
 dating from 1629 and credited to 
 Branca, an Italian, is shown in Fig. 24. This is a pure 
 impulse steam-turbine, coupled by toothed gearing to 
 a shaft with lumps on it arranged to lift the pestles 
 for crushing corn or ore. 
 
 The simplest, oldest, and at once the most modern 
 ideas for power generation are, then : - 
 
 First, moving fluid properly directed may move 
 wheels against resistance when it strikes vanes suitably 
 formed. 
 
 Second, fluid under pressure may be made to acquire 
 motion simply by escaping. 
 
 FIG. 23 
 
42 
 
 POWER 
 
 Third, jets of fluid escaping from nozzles or suitably 
 formed passages in wheels may, by reaction of escape 
 alone, turn those wheels. 
 
 To these principles minute and painstaking investi- 
 gation, guided by progress in mathematics, mechanics, 
 physics, and chemistry, which it no doubt assisted in 
 
 FIG. 24 
 
 stimulating as well, has added a vast body of principles 
 of engineering, by means of which true design can be 
 carried out, and turbines be built of predicted efficiency, 
 of proper strength in all their parts, cheap and effec- 
 tive for all local situations. 
 
 While these three old principles of conversion of 
 energy are all used in present-day turbine water-wheels 
 and in steam-turbines, the idea underlying the more 
 common form of steam-engine and that which may be 
 said to have caused the industrial revolution referred to 
 in the last lecture, the engine still most largely used on 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 
 
 43 
 
 steamships and in factories and the sole dependence 
 for locomotives, is different. It is this idea that also 
 finds expression in all our gas, gasolene, and oil engines. 
 This idea is based on the conception of fluid pressure 
 as capable of exerting a push on pistons in cylinders. 
 It was used, though not understood, by the savages, 
 who made blow-guns, in which the hollow bamboo 
 stick acts as a cylinder and the dart as piston ; later 
 also in powder-guns, where the gun-barrel is the cylin- 
 der and the projectile acts as piston. If a close-fitting 
 but free-moving piston 
 in such a cylinder be 
 fixed to a rod, and water 
 or steam under pressure 
 be admitted to one end 
 of the cylinder, the fluid 
 pressure will push the 
 
 piston if the other end S/NGLE ACT1N6 
 
 of the cylinder be open, FlG . 2 5 
 
 and so move the rod. 
 
 When one end of the cylinder is open and the other 
 closed for a working chamber, as in Fig. 25, and the 
 closed end is fitted with two pipes, one for supplying 
 steam, with a valve or cock to open and close com- 
 munication between cylinder and supply, and the 
 other for discharge, opening to the air, the cylinder 
 is said to be single-acting. Closing both ends and 
 passing the piston-rod through a close-fitting hole in 
 one end requires the addition of another set of pipes 
 and valves, and it is then called a double-acting cylinder, 
 shown in Fig. 26. Two single-acting cylinders placed 
 side by side, receiving steam from a boiler through one 
 
 SUPPLY. 
 
44 
 
 POWER 
 
 DOUBLE. ACTING 
 
 FIG. 26 
 
 valve, are shown in Fig. 27, as built by Leopold in 1725, 
 
 the up and down or reciprocating motion of the two 
 
 piston rods working 
 water-pumps, and the 
 whole apparatus be- 
 comes a steam-pump- 
 ing-engine. This early 
 steam-pump uses steam 
 at a pressure greater 
 than the atmosphere, 
 to push the piston to 
 
 the top of the cylinder, after which the steam supply 
 
 is cut off and communication with the air opened, 
 
 allowing the steam to 
 
 escape to the air as the 
 
 weight of the piston 
 
 forces it down. 
 
 This application of 
 
 the pressure idea is not 
 
 the oldest, nor was it as 
 
 widely used in its own 
 
 time as another one, in 
 
 which the steam at a 
 
 pressure about equal to 
 
 the atmosphere was 
 
 drawn into a cylinder, 
 
 and there condensed or 
 
 converted back to water 
 
 by cooling, the result- FlG . 2 7 
 
 ing water of condensa- 
 tion occupying practically no volume compared with 
 
 the steam. The best example of the old style engine 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 
 
 45 
 
 using this idea is that of Newcomen, Fig. 28. This 
 machine had a single-acting cylinder, and the piston- 
 rod had a chain running over the curved end of a beam 
 to compel the rod to move in a straight line, the other 
 end of the beam having a weight sufficiently heavy to 
 lift the piston, and draw 
 into the cylinder steam 
 from a sort of kettle 
 having about atmos- 
 pheric pressure, and, 
 therefore, incapable of 
 exerting any push on 
 the piston, even when 
 entering. At the top 
 position of the piston 
 the cylinder is full of 
 steam which, having a 
 pressure equal to the 
 atmosphere acting on FIG. 28 
 
 the outside of the pis- 
 ton, has no tendency to move the piston one way or the 
 other. Closing the steam supply valve and opening 
 a valve in a water pipe between an elevated tank and 
 the cylinder allows water to flow into the cylinder 
 containing the steam, which is thereby condensed. 
 The pressure at once falls in the cylinder to a value 
 less than that of the atmosphere acting on the outside 
 of the piston, the lowered pressure being called a 
 vacuum. This vacuum, or deficiency of pressure within 
 the cylinder below that of the atmosphere outside, al- 
 lows the atmosphere to press down on the piston, 
 moving it, with the rod, beam, and counterweight, back 
 
46 POWER 
 
 to the starting-point. The motion against resistance is, 
 therefore, produced solely by the atmospheric pressure. 
 There are many familiar illustrations of this vacuum 
 and atmospheric pressure action, commonly called 
 suction; the ordinary act of drawing water into the 
 mouth in drinking is a mild case, the muscular move- 
 ment of the cheeks and chest producing a pressure in 
 the mouth slightly less than that of the atmosphere, 
 which forces the water inward. A still stronger suc- 
 tion or vacuum is required in drinking through a straw 
 and in filling a syringe, while the ordinary barometer 
 which measures the atmospheric pressure is only a 
 vertical tube of mercury dipping into a cup at the 
 bottom with a vacuum at its closed top. It is known 
 that the most perfect vacuum resulting from the pump- 
 ing out of a glass bulb all the air it contained will enable 
 it to suck water, as we say ordinarily, or more properly 
 enable the surrounding atmosphere to push up water 
 into it, through pipes from a level not more than thirty- 
 four feet below it at sea level, which is equivalent to 
 a pressure of 14.7 pounds on each square inch of sur- 
 face. If, then, water be led into a vacuum chamber 
 with an open pipe extending downward thirty-three 
 feet or more into water, it would not fill the chamber 
 but would run out, keeping the level always the same. 
 This engine of Newcomen, which was used first in 1705 
 and continued at work in some places for seventy years, 
 not only operated primarily on the vacuum, as engi- 
 neers would say, or by atmospheric pressure, to be more 
 scientific, but had a long pipe from the cylinder to allow 
 the injected water and condensed steam to escape with- 
 out assistance and automatically. 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 
 
 47 
 
 While Newcomen in his condensing atmospheric 
 engine made use of the excess of atmospheric pressure 
 over that of the vacuum produced by condensing steam, 
 and Leopold made use of the excess of steam pressure 
 over atmosphere, to do work in single-acting engines, 
 James Watt combined the two pressure actions, getting 
 as a result a double effect in his engine of 1784. This 
 engine, shown in 
 Fig. 29, marked the 
 beginning of the 
 building of steam- 
 engines using the 
 idea of pressure 
 acting on a recip- 
 rocating piston, 
 with mechanism to 
 change reciprocat- 
 ing motion into the 
 desired rotary mo- 
 tion, always under 
 control. In it were 
 incorporated ideas 
 basal to the modern locomotive, the standard hori- 
 zontal and vertical engines for electric light, street rail- 
 way, and factory power stations, the modern pumping- 
 engines for city waterworks, the blowing-engine for 
 supplying air to blast furnaces which extract iron from 
 the ore, and a host of others, in almost infinite variety 
 of detail in each of the several classes. Each of these, 
 while having the essential pistons in cylinders, and 
 cranks to give the rotary motion, valves and governors 
 to control the steam, and all supplied with steam made 
 
 FIG. 29 
 
48 
 
 POWER 
 
 in separate boilers from the combustion of fuel, yet 
 has differences of structure and arrangement of parts, 
 developed as time showed the necessity, to adapt the 
 common essential elements to the special service. Thus, 
 the locomotive of Fig. 30, in which the construction 
 is clear, must contain all the elements of a complete 
 plant supported on one frame, with as much weight 
 on the driving wheels as possible to give adhesion. The 
 whole machine must be rugged to stand the pounding 
 
 FIG. 30 
 
 on the rails, so all delicate mechanism must be avoided. 
 It must be reversible, so mechanism is introduced to 
 shift the valves by hand in addition to their normal 
 automatic movement, and so on. The marine engine, 
 which drives the ship, must be fairly well balanced and 
 turn regularly without jerks, so as not to shake the 
 ship, so that several cylinders, each with its own crank, 
 are set side by side and the cranks set at different 
 angles ; it must also have a light frame, so as not to 
 reduce the carrying capacity of the vessel. This con- 
 struction is well shown in Fig. 31, illustrating the 
 engines of the United States battleship Vermont in the 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 
 
 49 
 
 FIG. 31 
 
50 
 
 POWER 
 
 FIG. 33 
 
 FIG. 34 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 
 
 51 
 
 shop of the Fore River Ship Building Co., Fore River, 
 Massachusetts. The vessel herself is shown in Fig. 32. 
 Questions of weight are of little importance in station- 
 ary engines compared with steadiness and durability, 
 but sometimes floor space is valuable, in which case 
 a vertical engine of fairly heavy construction, such as 
 
 FIG. 35 
 
 shown in Fig. 33, is suitable. These engines drive 
 the factory of Walter Baker Co. at Dorchester, Massa- 
 chusetts, by electricity, the engines themselves driving 
 electric generators, the current from which is trans- 
 mitted through the factory to motors which do the 
 work. When floor space is not valuable, the annoy- 
 ance of stair climbing to reach high parts that need 
 
52 
 
 POWER 
 
 oiling can be eliminated and horizontal engines, such 
 as shown in Fig. 34, substituted. The relation of 
 engines and boilers in a large stationary electric plant, 
 having combined vertical and horizontal piston en- 
 gines, is well shown in Fig. 35, which is a cross-section 
 of the Manhattan Elevated Railroad plant, as originally 
 built, having a capacity of 50,000 h. p. It should be 
 
 FIG, 36 
 
 noted that the boilers are located on two stories to 
 economize real estate, which is valuable, and the coal 
 storage bins are placed just under the roof. Water 
 for the condensers, located in the basement of the 
 engine room, is supplied through tunnels leading to 
 the river. The external appearance of the power sta- 
 tion is shown in Fig. 36. 
 
 Two special classes of piston steam-engines, one for 
 pumping water and the other for compressing air, 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 
 
 53 
 
 and therefore called pumping-engines and blowing- 
 engines, are shown in Figs. 37 and 38. The former 
 illustrates one of five Allis-Chalmers pumping-engines, 
 for the Hackensack Water Company at New Milford, 
 New Jersey, having an aggregate capacity of 72,000,000 
 
 FIG. 37 
 
 gallons of water in twenty-four hours. The latter 
 (Fig. 38) is a blowing-engine with a capacity of 30,000 
 cubic feet of air per minute at 30 pounds pressure, for 
 the furnaces of the Republic Iron and Steel Co., and its 
 great size is shown by comparing it with the man at 
 the side. 
 
54 POWER 
 
 To produce motion of an engine shaft from natural 
 forms of energy, it has been shown that the first step 
 is to so supply that energy as to get some fluid under 
 pressure, if it is not so originally, and then to use that 
 high-pressure fluid either to push on pistons or give 
 itself a velocity by escaping from a nozzle, the jet 
 impinging on vanes or reacting on the nozzle. This 
 
 FIG. 38 
 
 is true no matter how the fluid acquires the pressure. 
 In the water-power system advantage is taken of rivers 
 in a hill country, and dams are constructed when 
 necessary to collect rainfall and store water for use in 
 dry seasons at a high level, and pipes are connected to 
 conduct the water to a low level, at which point a 
 pressure supply becomes available. On the other 
 hand, in the steam system the pressure is produced 
 by burning fuel under a boiler ; while in the gas-power 
 system, not yet examined, the pressure is produced by 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 55 
 
 explosion within the cylinder itself, and the action of 
 the hot high-pressure gases that result from it is always 
 by direct pressure of these gases on a piston. Curi- 
 ously enough, however, the high pressures obtainable 
 by explosions of suitably prepared fuel were not at first 
 directly used, but instead the heat of the combustion 
 was made the means of getting the atmospheric pres- 
 sure to act, just as the atmospheric steam-engine pre- 
 ceded that using high-pressure steam. In 1860 Huy- 
 gens exploded gunpowder in a cylinder having a piston, 
 the hot gases escaping from the cylinder through open 
 valves which were closed as soon as the internal pres- 
 sure equaled that of the atmosphere ; then the hot 
 gases were cooled and in cooling lost pressure, producing 
 a partial vacuum exactly as did the condensing of 
 steam in Newcomen's cylinder. Atmospheric pressure 
 forces the piston inward, giving motion, from the com- 
 bustion of fuel directly without any steam intervention, 
 but the effect is feeble and no successful gas-engine 
 would ever have been built if study had stopped there. 
 It required a lot of time to connect the idea of the com- 
 mon gun, using high gas pressure from the explosion 
 of solid gunpowder fuel, with the piston engine idea. 
 It did not come about until the realization that com- 
 bustible gases mixed with air would produce an ex- 
 plosion resulting in high pressure, that could be used to 
 act on a piston, and which could be controlled quite as 
 well as steam. It is probable that the old notion of 
 explosion being connected with destruction had a good 
 deal to do with the delay. After a series of proposals 
 dealing with explosive gas and air mixtures, beginning 
 about 1825, there finally was produced, but not before 
 
56 
 
 POWER 
 
 1860, an operative gas-engine, by Lenoir, a Frenchman. 
 This engine had a cylinder and piston with the usual 
 rods, cranks, and shafts that had had at this time nearly 
 a century of service in steam-engines. The cylinder 
 (Fig. 39) is fitted with valves on one side through which 
 the piston may suck in air and gas in suitable propor- 
 tions, after which the valve is closed and the mixture 
 ignited by an electric spark, which causes an explosion, 
 
 the high-pressure gases 
 from which drive the 
 piston forward. On 
 the return stroke the 
 burnt gases are pushed 
 out through a valve on 
 the other side. The 
 general appearance of 
 
 the engine is shown in 
 Fig. 40. While the 
 engine was a commer- 
 cial failure, it never- 
 
 MmiM 
 
 PlATE 
 
 FIG. 39 
 
 theless was the beginning of a development which has 
 resulted in the production of the most economical fuel- 
 burning power system the world has ever seen, the 
 prime element of which is the gas-engine itself, in which 
 suitably prepared gaseous mixtures are exploded directly 
 in the working cylinders. The first large installation 
 of gas-engines in this country, made at the Lackawanna 
 Steel Co., consisted of 40,000 h. p., some of which 
 drive electric generators, as shown in the upper part of 
 Fig. 41, while the rest drive blowing cylinders, as shown 
 in the lower half of the picture. 
 
 It is a most significant fact that although Hero pro- 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 
 
 57 
 
 duced a rotative steam-engine, that worked, in 200 B.C., 
 nearly two thousand years elapsed before the first 
 commercial rotative steam-engine was produced by 
 Watt, about 1780, and that after him the progress of 
 about seventy years in power-system development 
 resulted in advances entirely eclipsed by progress since 
 that time. There are good reasons for these things, 
 and the key is to be found, first, in the lack of demand ; 
 second, in the lack of information to enable makers of 
 
 FIG. 40 
 
 machinery to meet demand when it came. Practically 
 all the power machinery produced before the time of 
 Watt, in 1780, except special devices adapted to pump 
 water only, was more the result of accident than of 
 logical reasoning from desired results to means by 
 which they might be attained. Even after Watt much 
 that was done was prompted more by a desire to do 
 something different, a groping after something by 
 trying everything. There was no conviction based on 
 
58 
 
 POWER 
 
 FIG. 41 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 59 
 
 proof or on established principles that the means were 
 right or best. This was pure invention, without which, 
 it is true, little progress is possible; but true progress 
 based on a conception that the new thing proposed 
 must and will produce the desired result in a truly better 
 way, or produce a new result superior to the old with 
 no more wasteful means, becomes possible only when 
 there is available a body of facts and principles related 
 to each other. Such a body of related facts and general 
 principles constitutes a science, by means of which 
 existing machinery can be analyzed to reveal all its 
 faults and their causes, and the performance of new 
 machinery yet unbuilt can be predicted with reasonable 
 certainty. This latter proceeding is true design, with- 
 out which invention alone may result in nothing more 
 than interesting toys, but which when combined with 
 invention gives the engineer whose business it is to 
 do these things his command over nature. The basis 
 of engineering design is knowledge of facts and prin- 
 ciples, so that it is easy to understand why in the early 
 days of engine building no true design was possible; 
 for the machine and its processes in operation them- 
 selves supply the means for collecting the necessary 
 facts, and mental capacity, however well trained to the 
 work, cannot find the relation between the facts until 
 the facts themselves are found by tests of the machinery 
 already built. Once discovered and classified, these 
 relations constitute a body of principles having the 
 force and dignity of laws of nature, the discoveries and 
 application of which to the uses of men constitute the 
 profession of engineering. The slowness with which all 
 this developed can best be explained by lack of demand. 
 
60 POWER 
 
 Up to the time of Watt nobody seemed to have any 
 use for rotating shafts except to grind grain into flour, 
 and perhaps to pound a little ore, or blow the bellows 
 of an iron furnace. The conditions of living were very 
 simple. Most of the people lived in the country, each 
 family producing for itself by hand labor and horses 
 the necessaries of life, the men plowing and reaping, 
 the women spinning thread from the wool of sheep 
 raised on the farm, and both men and women weaving 
 thread into cloth for their own clothing during the 
 winter months. Simple tools were used, such as the 
 hoe, flail, plow, spinning-wheel, and hand loom, but 
 there were some elementary machines, such as the stones 
 for grinding or polishing, driven by simple and small 
 windmills and water-wheels, or by horses. 
 
 There were no large cities, but a good many villages, 
 which developed principally at seaports or on rivers 
 where sailing vessels called and where, as a consequence, 
 the commercial and trading elements of the population 
 congregated. Inland towns were principally head- 
 quarters for the wagon and stage-coach, or trading 
 centers, the location of the markets or fairs where, at 
 stated intervals, farmers exchanged those things of 
 which they produced more than they needed with 
 others within driving distance who produced other 
 articles in like excess. There was also a regular travel 
 to and from the mills, located principally on river dams 
 or at falls, and these were the nearest approach to power 
 manufacturing as we understand it. There was, how- 
 ever, some other manufacturing, mainly of the concen- 
 trated hand craft or trade order, such as would result 
 when one man would buy wool, employ a number of 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 61 
 
 hand spinners, and sell yarn and thread, or buy these 
 and by more or less regularly employed weavers make 
 cloth to sell. 
 
 The most important manufacture, such as it was, 
 was of woolens, and these constituted one-quarter of the 
 total export of England. Next to woolens were iron 
 and iron goods, which employed in all their branches 
 about two hundred thousand persons. There were 
 also some pottery, hardware, and cutlery, and about 
 thirty thousand people engaged in making brass and 
 copper things, also a little silk, hosiery, and glass, all 
 produced without power. 
 
 It was not until after a series of inventions in spinning 
 and weaving resulted in machines that required power 
 that the change of conditions began. This series of 
 inventions began in about 1738, when Kay invented 
 the fly-shuttle, to carry the thread across and back in 
 weaving, and enabled one hand weaver to do the work 
 of two, thus doubling the demand of weavers for thread 
 and stimulating the spinners to catch up. Then Har- 
 greaves made a spinning machine that increased eight 
 times the capacity of the spinner, thus producing more 
 thread than the weavers could use, which was followed 
 by future improvements in spinning by Arkwright in 
 1768 and Crompton in 1779, just about Watt's time. 
 This great advance in spinning by machinery was all 
 the stimulus needed to similarly develop the power 
 loom, perfected by Dr. Cartwright in 1787, when Watt 
 was building steam-engines for sale. These Watt 
 engines were put into textile factories, which could 
 be located wherever most convenient to supplies of 
 coal, or raw material, and were not limited to waterfalls 
 
62 POWER 
 
 on rivers. Thus it was demonstrated that power could 
 be produced from coal and cheaper than in any other 
 way, and could successfully operate manufacturing 
 machinery in factories. The power machinery worked 
 reliably and well, maintaining the regular, steady speed 
 needed to prevent the breaking of fine threads, and 
 directed the attention of everybody to devising other 
 ways of doing their work, or making things by machin- 
 ery, that would permit the use of these engines. One 
 of the most important industries to which power machin- 
 ery greatly contributed, and curiously enough one on 
 which it was also very largely dependent, was the iron 
 industry. By machinery ore, limestone, and fuel are 
 supplied to tall furnaces and air blown in, originally 
 from bellows; the steam-engine was applied to Smea- 
 ton's cylinder blower within ten years ; while a few 
 years before, the plan of driving large cold iron rollers 
 by the engine, to squeeze lumps of red-hot iron into 
 bars of useful shapes and improving the toughness of 
 the metal, had been adopted, thus improving the quality 
 of metal with which to build machines, greatly increasing 
 the output to meet the new demand, and at once cheap- 
 ening the product. These cases are cited merely as 
 illustrations of the almost immediate world-wide in- 
 terest in machinery of all kinds to use power. 
 
 It is impossible here to examine all the modifications 
 of power apparatus adapted to various applications, 
 but it is most interesting and instructive to notice how 
 slow men's minds work with new ideas, as demonstrated 
 by the long time it took to take, what now seems 
 obvious, the steps of applying Watt's successful engine 
 to locomotives and steamboats. Although the Romans 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 
 
 63 
 
 are reported to have used paddle-wheel boats driven 
 by horses and oxen, yet it was not until twenty-seven 
 years after Watt's steam-engine that Fulton produced 
 the first commercially successful steamboat, using an 
 engine that he bought complete from Watt ; and not 
 until 1829, about fifty years after Watt, that Stephen- 
 son produced the first commercially successful loco- 
 motive, "The Rocket." These long lapses of time 
 for so simple a 
 thing as the 
 adaptation of a 
 successful rota- 
 t i v e steam- 
 engine to the 
 moving of the 
 paddles of a 
 steamboat, and 
 to driving the 
 wheels of a loco- 
 motive, are most 
 significant, and FlG 42 
 
 doubly so when 
 
 it is remembered that both the Clermont and the 
 "Rocket" were built on the collective ideas of many 
 preceding years of trial. Even these two productions, 
 Stephenson's locomotive, the "Rocket," and Fulton's 
 steamboat, the Clermont, were extremely crude affairs, 
 as will appear on comparing Fig. 42, the "Rocket," 
 with the modern locomotive that we know, and by 
 comparing Fulton's Clermont (Fig. 43) with the modern 
 river- and ocean-going boats (Fig. 44). 
 
 No one can fail to be impressed with the enormous 
 
64 
 
 POWER 
 
 differences between the old and the new power machin- 
 ery, but this comparison cannot begin to teach a lesson 
 of value anywhere near proportional to that which 
 
 follows a study 
 of the ideas un- 
 
 i"T\ '^^^ k derlying the 
 
 \ I ' JP^Bi KJi change, or their 
 
 V I '- S 4^ M* 1^*3 ^?&L- ^ ultimate conse- 
 -*- quences. The 
 
 machines, as 
 assemblages of 
 working parts, 
 each with duties 
 
 FIG. 43 
 
 to perform, are 
 but the outward 
 and visible sign of principles discovered and classified 
 into a body of science that can never change except 
 by additions, and which is the inheritance of our 
 children, who 
 may come to 
 realize the po- 
 tency of these 
 invisible tools 
 by studying the 
 industrial, so- 
 cial, and eco- 
 nomic results 
 that have fol- 
 lowed their use 
 
 in the past. Great as have been the consequences of 
 the use of power and machinery, still greater, though 
 less easily grasped, is the contribution to the develop- 
 
 FIG. 44 
 
SUBSTITUTION OF POWER 65 
 
 ment of the natural sciences, which are to-day so 
 firmly established on unassailable foundations that 
 future development will have a guide as trustworthy 
 as the compass to the ship, pointing out clearly and 
 positively the place where effort is to be exerted, in 
 striking contrast to the methods of blind groping and 
 wild guessing that characterized these early stages 
 which, even so, were able to precipitate an industrial 
 revolution. Mathematics, mechanics, physics, and 
 chemistry have become what they are in this inter- 
 mediate period. The laws governing the strength and 
 formation of structures have been discovered and 
 codified in the modern theory of elasticity applied to 
 the materials of construction. The nature of heat and 
 its relation to work were found out only toward the 
 end of the period ; but the basal conception, once 
 reached, soon grew and produced others, until there 
 appeared that body of principles called Thermodynam- 
 ics, inclusive of all forms of energy, showing not only 
 the essential equivalence of heat, work, light, electricity, 
 and magnetism, but also revealing the laws governing 
 the conversion of one form into another. 
 
 Applications of these sciences, assisted by the modern 
 methods of producing suitable materials and working 
 them into appropriate shapes by the tools and systems 
 now prevailing in our shops, are daily producing results 
 as wonderful as anything that Watt, Stephenson, or 
 Fulton ever did. But as these productions are daily 
 occurrences and not easily understood by the mass of 
 the people, the names of these men working out of 
 sight in shops and factories will probably never be 
 handed down to posterity. 
 
Ill 
 
 ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 ALL steam-power systems, whether designed for land 
 or marine transportation or the stationary generation 
 of power contain the same essential or primary elements 
 for obtaining motion from steam under pressure. But 
 besides these essential elements there are hundreds, 
 yes, even thousands, of other parts, each put in place 
 for a definite purpose, which may be generalized under 
 the heading of better or more efficient service under 
 some special local condition. Even the essential 
 elements, similar as they are, do themselves differ 
 vastly in detail, generally with good reason, but, of 
 course, sometimes without. Because of the greater vari- 
 ety and inclusive nature of the steam-power machinery 
 designed for stationary work, principal attention will be 
 directed toward this, but not so much for the pur- 
 pose of demonstrating the variations in details as to 
 indicate the principles that, once established, lead to 
 these forms, which are, truly, ideas clothed in metal. 
 
 The essential ements of a plant whose purpose is 
 the generation of power from fuel by the steam sys- 
 tem are : first, a steam-generating part, and second, 
 a part to use that steam. The first part must make 
 as much steam as possible with a pound of coal, and the 
 second must do as much work as possible with a pound 
 of steam. The steam-generating equipment will con- 
 
 66 
 
ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER 67 
 
 sist of a boiler with means for feeding it with water and 
 supplying it with coal, a furnace adapted to burn that 
 coal, a flue to carry off the gases of combustion, con- 
 taining a damper to regulate the fire, and hence the 
 rate of steam making, and means for creating the draft 
 by which the furnace is supplied with air, together 
 with certain other trimmings or accessories such as 
 glass tubes for showing the water-level, safety-valves 
 for preventing the pressure rising too high, and con- 
 nections for removing sediment that may collect. The 
 steam-using equipment will include the engine proper 
 and means for conducting the steam by piping from 
 boiler to engine and from engine to the air, or condenser 
 if one is used. These piping systems are oftentimes 
 extremely complicated, especially when many engines 
 and many boilers are connected together and these 
 are located on different floors of the same building. 
 In some plants there are as many as sixty large boilers 
 under one roof. The engine proper consists essentially 
 of either a piston and cylinder with valves to admit 
 and exhaust the steam, or nozzles and vane wheels, to- 
 gether with mechanism to regulate speed, lubricate 
 bearings, permit of adjustment of wearing parts, and 
 prevent the leaking of steam from joints. For station- 
 ary purposes alone there are available to-day on the 
 American market hundreds of different boilers, and 
 hundreds of different engines, even of the same size, 
 and a great range of sizes, from a fraction of a horse- 
 power up to approximately thirty thousand. These 
 large engines are confined to the largest plants, are sel- 
 dom used singly, and are always supplied by a larger 
 number of boilers, that have a horse-power capacity 
 
68 POWER 
 
 seldom exceeding 500 and in a few cases 1000 h. p. 
 each, so that in the large power stations one may expect 
 a few large engines and a great many small boilers. 
 It has been found by experience that the larger a steam- 
 engine, other things being equal, the less steam it will 
 consume in an hour to maintain the horse-power. This 
 is the reason why a few large engines in places where 
 there is a great demand for power have supplanted 
 a larger number of smaller ones. But this concentra- 
 tion to get better steam economy cannot be carried 
 too far, because any engine unless it is working some- 
 where near its capacity is wasteful of steam, and at 
 certain times of the day or certain seasons of the year 
 the demand for power is less than at other times. 
 
 If there were just one engine in a large power station, 
 it would be wasteful of steam during the time of smaller 
 demand, however economical it might be during those 
 times when the demand is about equal to that for which 
 it was designed. On the contrary, with boilers there 
 appears to be little change in the economy of the differ- 
 ent sizes, and it is more convenient to fit into available 
 spaces and to maintain many small boilers than a 
 few large ones. 
 
 The controlling idea not only in plant construction 
 and operation, but in the selection and form of every 
 single part, is in every case economy economy not 
 only of coal alone, but of everything taken together, 
 each at its proper value, not forgetting suitable service; 
 and curiously enough it appears that some of these 
 conditions are contradictory. For example, if space 
 be valuable, as it is in torpedo boats, the boiler must 
 be made light, and then it is difficult to make it econom- 
 
ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER 
 
 69 
 
 ical. Similarly, if the engine must be highly economi- 
 cal, it will invariably cost more to make than one less 
 economical. When the service is to be temporary only, 
 a small first cost is warranted. When labor is diffi- 
 cult to secure or the place of operation dirty, then there 
 must be a minimum of complication and no delicate 
 parts ; when fuel is expensive, then the investment 
 for machines may be properly high if coal can be saved 
 thereby, but the apparatus may become complicated 
 and require much skilled attention, the cost of which 
 may overbalance the coal saved. These different 
 conditions and many others not noted have contributed 
 to the development of the variety of form in engines, 
 boilers, and auxiliary equipment now in existence. 
 Every separate case of power requirement must be 
 studied to find the controlling condition, which, when 
 satisfied, would yield the power with the least all-round 
 cost; and the determination of this is a problem more 
 difficult to solve than that 
 which Watt had to meet 
 when he tried to produce 
 the first rotative steam- 
 engine. 
 
 The general relations of 
 the boiler to the supply 
 and delivery of the neces- 
 sary substances are shown 
 in Fig. 45. It is supplied 
 with three things, coal 
 and water and, of course, 
 
 air; and discharges three things, ashes, which must 
 be removed, hot gases, which go generally to a stack 
 
 COAL 
 
 -ASHE! 
 
 BOILER 
 
 _ HOT 
 
 STACK 
 
 GASES 
 
 
 FIG. 45 
 
70 
 
 POWER 
 
 or chimney, and live steam or steam under high pres- 
 sure, which goes to the engine, and to the various 
 pumps and auxiliary appliances, not shown. 
 
 It would seem that there should be no difficulty in 
 constructing a vessel in which to boil water to make 
 steam, and yet there is no more difficult problem for 
 the engineer to solve, when there is added the condition 
 
 FIG. 46 
 
 that the boiler must be as economical, as small, or as 
 durable as possible, and otherwise adapted to the multi- 
 tude of different conditions under which it has to work. 
 Consider a plain tank, as shown in Fig. 46, at the upper 
 left, with heat applied to the center of the bottom. 
 The water heated immediately over the fire rises partly 
 because it is a little lighter than the rest of the water 
 and partly by reason of the steam bubbles ; the rest, or 
 
ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER 71 
 
 colder water, will come down around the sides. This 
 movement of water is called convection, and indicates 
 that whenever a mass of water is unequally heated 
 there will be currents set up. These currents in boilers 
 give what is known as circulation, or an automatic 
 flow from one part of the chamber to another, and 
 boilers are designed so as to promote and make use 
 of this circulation, and care is exercised in fixing the 
 form of boiler and the location of the fire to avoid any 
 interference with it. The next form of vessel, which 
 has an open tube submerged in the water, will permit 
 of more violent boiling with less surface agitation 
 because the currents are guided by the central tube. 
 In the third, fourth, and fifth forms shown, there is a 
 U-shaped tube element in which water is heated more 
 on one side than the other. It will rise in that side and 
 fall in the other, but may be made to flow either way 
 by changes in the point of application of the heat. 
 When, however, the construction is such as is shown 
 last, the water can flow only one way because the top 
 of the circulation tube is above the water-level. Recog- 
 nition of these principles of circulation, the discovery 
 of which took a long time in the boiler development, 
 is now considered quite essential to the making of good 
 boilers of small size yet capable of yielding great quan- 
 tities of steam without moisture. The earliest boilers 
 were just plain tanks set over grates, with flues running 
 under them and along the sides, so as to keep the hot 
 gases in contact with the shell long enough for them 
 to give up their heat to the water. It did not take 
 long to discover that in order to make very much steam 
 the tanks would have to be pretty large, and there are 
 
72 
 
 POWER 
 
 cases reported in which these tank boilers were 40 feet 
 or 50 feet long for only a few hundred horse-power, a 
 condition quite impossible when the cost of making 
 them is considered, together with the floor space they 
 would occupy. To reduce the size and still present 
 
 FIG. 47 
 
 enough surface of contact to the hot gases, large tubes, 
 or flues as they were called, were introduced into plain 
 shells, and all sorts of queer shapes of shells tried, some 
 of which are shown in Fig. 47. The use of high pres- 
 sures, necessary for economical use of steam in engines, 
 forbids irregular forms of shells, as they burst too easily, 
 so that from the time high pressures came into use we 
 
ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER 
 
 73 
 
 find nothing but cylindrical shells with flues or tubes. 
 One of the early flue boilers with its brick setting is 
 shown in Fig. 48. In this form the grate is under one 
 end, and the gases having passed down under the boiler 
 return to the front again through the flue. In an- 
 other case, however, fire is made to pass in the flues 
 down through the center, discharging back along the 
 sides. Modification of these flues by reduction of the 
 diameter makes 
 them tubes and 
 very materially 
 increases the 
 heating surface 
 and steaming 
 capacity for the 
 same size shell, 
 and such a con- 
 struction constitutes the modern horizontal return 
 tubular boiler, which is to-day the most widely used 
 type of stationary boiler. This boiler consists of a 
 plain, cylindrical shell, much the same as shown in 
 Fig. 48, but with many tubes two to four inches in 
 diameter packed in its lower part, through which the 
 hot gases return to the front, after having passed 
 from front to back under the bottom. Shell and 
 grate are built in brickwork settings. It has been 
 found necessary in marine service to avoid brick 
 settings, and this condition is met by using in the 
 lower half of the boilers large flues containing the fire, 
 the gases passing to the back and returning through 
 a bank of tubes in the upper part of the shell, and this 
 construction is that of the so-called Scotch boiler, as 
 
 FIG. 48 
 
74 
 
 POWER 
 
 shown in Fig. 49, the most widely used boiler on steam- 
 ships. It should be noted how all flat surfaces on which 
 the pressure acts are braced to prevent bulging. A 
 
 oooooooooo 
 
 oooooooooo 
 
 ooooooooooo 
 
 00000000000 
 
 oooooooooocff 
 
 OQOOOOOO 
 0000000 
 
 oooooo 
 
 FIG. 49 
 
 sort of intermediate type of boiler, adapted for loco- 
 motives, is shown in Fig. 50, in which one end of the 
 boiler is made square, to form a fire-box of metal plates 
 surrounded by water ; from the fire-box the gases pass 
 
 n 
 
 FIG. 50 
 
 through straight tubes to the stack in front. With 
 minor modifications this is almost the universally used 
 type for locomotives, its form being well adapted to 
 fit on the frame above the wheels. In these three 
 
ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER 
 
 75 
 
 classes of boilers shown the gases pass through the tubes 
 and they are, therefore, known as fire-tube boilers; 
 and in some of them, as the Scotch marine and the loco- 
 motive, the fire is also within the boiler, and they are 
 said to be internally fired. 
 
 In all of these fire-tube boilers the circulation is not 
 considered as effective as it might be. In general the 
 
 THf EN*", NTC" 
 
 FIG. 51 
 
 water is rising from all the hot tubes, the steam bubbles 
 escaping from the surface of the water all over the center 
 of the top. The water thus carried up by the bubbling 
 forms a sort of a hill in the middle, or perhaps concen- 
 trated toward one end, from which the water runs down 
 the sides of the shell or the other end, back to the bot- 
 
76 POWER 
 
 torn, to supply the tubes from which the steam has 
 escaped. With a view largely to improving the cir- 
 culation, but for other reasons as well, a different type 
 of boiler has been developed, principally in recent years, 
 known as the water-tube type. In its horizontal form, 
 as shown in Fig. 51, it consists of a top drum with two 
 narrow, flat boxes extending downward from it, one at 
 
 
 FIG. 52 
 
 each end, and a bank of inclined tubes connecting these 
 approximately vertical, narrow boxes, which are termed 
 "water headers." Water rests in the lower third of 
 the drum and fills all the tubes and headers, and as the 
 heated tubes are inclined upward toward the front, the 
 water is forced to rise through the front header, discharge 
 its steam, and descend through the rear header back 
 to the hot tubes. To insure sufficient activity of all the 
 tubes, tiles are placed between them, making baffles 
 
ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER 
 
 77 
 
 which direct the gases from the fire backward, forward, 
 and finally backward. This type of the so-called 
 horizontal water-tube boiler is built up of straight tubes, 
 which are more easily cleaned than curved ones. It 
 must be remembered that all water used in boilers 
 contains dissolved salts, which, by the continuous boil- 
 ing away of the water, are left behind in a solid state. 
 
 FIG. 53 
 
 This solid matter collects in two ways : first, as loose 
 sediment or mud which can be easily blown out; and 
 second, as a hard layer of stonelike scale sticking to 
 all the surface where the boiling is taking place and 
 interfering with the flow of heat through the tubes. 
 When tubes are straight, as they are in this boiler, 
 and holes provided with cover caps in the headers, 
 scrapers can be run through them to knock the scale 
 off, an operation which is practically impossible with 
 
78 
 
 POWER 
 
 some other constructions. Another one of these 
 horizontal water-tube boilers is shown in Fig. 52 with 
 a different system of baffling. Here, instead of a tiled 
 roof laid over the bottom row of tubes directing the 
 gases backward, they are forced to rise at once, then 
 fall, and finally rise, crossing the tube bank three times. 
 
 In Fig. 53 there is shown a 
 row of these horizontal water- 
 tube boilers in course of erec- 
 tion at the Pacolet Mills, 
 Gainesville, Georgia, which 
 will serve to make clear the 
 construction, and its relation 
 to the brick inclosing setting. 
 When there is plenty of head 
 room or a shortage of floor 
 ___^ space, a different struc- 
 ture of boiler may be 
 used. To meet this 
 condition the vertical 
 water-tube boiler in a 
 variety of forms has 
 been designed and 
 is much used, for 
 example, by the 
 large steel mills, in which will be found dozens of them 
 set in one row. One of these vertical boilers is shown 
 in Fig. 54, consisting of a bank of straight tubes between 
 two drums, the top drum having a hole in it for the 
 discharge of gases, the whole structure being surrounded 
 by brickwork ; the furnace, also of brick, is separate 
 and placed to one side. A group of these boilers in 
 
 FIG. 54 
 
ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER 
 
 79 
 
 course of erection at the Lowell and Suburban Traction 
 Company's power house at Lowell, Massachusetts, 
 is shown in Fig. 55, in which the mason building the 
 brick walls can be seen at work standing in the furnace 
 space and by whom 
 the size of the struc- 
 ture can be judged. 
 
 There have also been 
 developed a number of 
 curved-tube type 
 boilers, the construc- 
 tion of which has been 
 prompted by a desire 
 to get into a given 
 space as much tube 
 surface as can be prop- 
 erly arranged in refer- 
 ence to the flow of the 
 gases, and at the same 
 time promote vigorous 
 and positive circula- 
 tion. One of these, 
 with the tubes only 
 
 slightly curved, and the principal curvature given to 
 those tubes in which the tendency to form scale is 
 least, is shown in Fig. 56. In this system there are 
 three top drums and one bottom drum, all con- 
 nected by tubes and set in brickwork with ' baffles 
 arranged between the tubes to cause the gases to flow 
 first up and then down and finally up, passing out 
 through a damper to the flue stack at the top of the 
 back. This makes three banks of tubes. Through 
 
 FIG. 55 
 
80 
 
 POWER 
 
 the first two, water 
 and steam together 
 are rising under the 
 intense heat of the 
 fire, and the water 
 that separates out 
 from the steam in 
 the two front drums 
 runs to the back 
 drum, and then 
 down through the 
 back tubes to the 
 bottom drum, re- 
 turning upward 
 again. To show 
 
 more clearly the construction there is added Fig. 57, 
 showing a row of these boilers in the course of erection 
 and in various stages of completion at the St. Clair 
 Steel Co., Clairton, Pennsylvania. 
 
 FIG. 56 
 
 FIG. 57 
 
ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER 
 
 81 
 
 Perhaps the most severe conditions of space and weight 
 conservation are found in steamships intended to go 
 at high speeds. Both fire-tube and water-tube boilers 
 are used ; an example of the fire-tube type has already 
 been shown in connection with the Kaiser Wilhelm. 
 The water-tube 
 class is repre- 
 sented by several 
 different forms, 
 some straight 
 tube and others 
 curved tube; the 
 curved tube, 
 however, being 
 mainly confined to 
 torpedo boats, where 
 the conditions are 
 most severe with re- 
 gard to space and 
 weight limitation. 
 In every case these 
 marine boilers have 
 grates underneath 
 the entire boiler. No 
 brickwork is used be- 
 cause of its weight, 
 the boiler being in- 
 closed by sheet metal and layers of non-conducting 
 material. Special attention is paid to circulation, and 
 the same principles are followed as in land practice. 
 One special form that has been developed for this 
 service is shown in Fig. 58, in which both headers 
 
 FIG. 58 
 
82 
 
 POWER 
 
 are concentrated at the front of the steam drum, one 
 as a box within the other. The far ends of the tubes 
 receiving the heat are closed ; each such tube, how- 
 ever, has inside it another tube, so that the steam 
 when it forms runs uphill between the inner and 
 outer tube to the header, together with some water 
 that it drags along, and escapes upward through the 
 header box, issuing through a funnel into the drum. 
 
 FIG. 59 
 
 The steam and water here disengage, and the water 
 falls back and flows down through the header again, 
 but on the other side of a partition, to the central 
 tubes, then along these to their open ends, returning 
 between inner and outer tubes to be again heated. 
 Boilers of this water-tube class weigh about half as 
 much per horse-power while in operation as those of the 
 fire-tube type, and take up about half the space. One 
 of the most concentrated forms of boiler is that shown 
 in Fig. 59. The tubes are bent to peculiar curves, 
 partly to secure distribution and partly to avoid leaks 
 due to expansion, and enter the top drum above the 
 
ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER 83 
 
 water line, so that the circulation is positive. Any 
 water that is carried up in them descends to the bot- 
 tom drum through an outside large tube, shown at 
 the side. 
 
 In addition to difference in form, total space occupied, 
 floor space occupied, and weight per horse-power, boilers 
 differ in cost per horse-power fully 100 per cent between 
 the cheapest and the most expensive, the latter, of course, 
 being the kind that has the most hand work on it, the 
 greatest number of separate parts to be made and fitted 
 together ; the cheapest that which has least work for the 
 amount of surface available for heating. There are like- 
 wise some differences in efficiency, which, in the case of 
 boilers, is measured by the number of pounds of water 
 that can be evaporated or turned into steam for each 
 pound of coal burned, or the amount of heat that can be 
 put into the form of steam for each unit of heat that the 
 coal should liberate on combustion. Strange, indeed, 
 it is that enormous variations in form produce little 
 variations in best efficiency for each, so that all these 
 forms may be said to have about the same efficiency 
 if each is worked under its best conditions. These 
 efficiencies range about 70 per cent, falling to 60 and 
 rising to 80 per cent, with rare cases beyond these 
 limits, which means that the steam which leaves the 
 boiler contains on the average about 70 per cent of the 
 heat liberated by the combustion of the coal in the fire, 
 a performance which is reasonably good, but which 
 seems to be due more to the management of the fire, 
 based on an understanding of the conditions necessary 
 for proper combustion of the fuel, than to the design 
 of the boiler. 
 
84 POWER 
 
 There is scarcely time available for studying all 
 these conditions of combustion, recognition of which 
 so largely controls boiler performance, but there are 
 two important points in this connection that should 
 be mentioned. In the first place, all the fuel supplied 
 must be burned, and any furnace or fireman that does 
 not permit it all to be burned is wasteful, not only of 
 the coal, but also of time and of the investment required 
 to build the boiler. On the other hand, whatever coal 
 is burned requires air and a definite amount, different 
 for different coals. Combustion is a chemical com- 
 bination of coal and air, and in all chemical combina- 
 tions the original substances combine with each other 
 in a fixed weight ratio. Each pound of coal, then, will 
 require a definite weight of air chemically to combine 
 with it. If this amount of air is not supplied, the coal 
 does not burn ; if more is supplied, it may burn all right, 
 but even greater harm may result than when the air 
 is insufficient. The heat liberated by the fire will 
 warm anything that comes in contact with it ; if balls 
 of iron were rolled into the fire and rolled out again, 
 they would carry away heat that should have been 
 making steam. If a stream of water was turned into the 
 fire and it was not too large, it would not put the fire 
 out, but it would rob the fire of heat in just the same 
 way as did the balls of iron. And finally, if a lot of cold 
 air is drawn into the fire, not needed to burn the coal, 
 then as it escapes up the chimney it is likewise carrying 
 off some of the heat that might have found its way into 
 the water. This excess of air, as it is called, has just 
 as much harmful effect on the efficiency of a boiler as 
 a stream of water played on the fire would have; and 
 
ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER 85 
 
 it is the control of this excess of air that determines 
 whether a boiler shall be efficient or not, more than any 
 other single thing. The opening of furnace doors lets 
 this air flow in unchecked, so that attention must be 
 directed toward the reduction of this action, and it is 
 to meet this that mechanical means for feeding coal 
 continuously without opening doors have been designed 
 and used. These will be referred to in the next lecture. 
 
 Passing over those accessories of the boiler plant 
 provided merely for controlling its operation and its 
 safety, economizing labor in handling coal and ashes, 
 and conserving waste heat, together with the smoke- 
 stacks, dampers, pumps for putting the water into 
 the boiler, and devices to mechanically produce high 
 draft to make coal burn fast, as well as the steam 
 piping for conveying steam to the engine, as elements 
 of secondary importance, however essential they may 
 be to the actual running of the plant, there remains 
 the engine and its auxiliaries to be examined. 
 
 As already explained, there are in use to-day piston 
 and turbine engines, and the characteristic essential 
 elements of each are very simple and the fundamental 
 idea easily grasped. Why is it, then, admitting the 
 essential simplicity of the necessary elements, that some 
 engines can be built highly economical and others can- 
 not ? Why is it that some are complicated and others 
 simple ? Why is it that some may go either forwards 
 or backwards at will, and others only turn one way ; 
 some rotate with most amazing steadiness of motion, 
 regardless of how much work they are doing, while 
 others fluctuate in speed badly ; some are cheap, some 
 very expensive ; some capable of being built in large 
 
86 
 
 POWER 
 
 sizes and others only in small ? The answers to these 
 questions appear only when the elements of the engine 
 which are non-essential to the production of power 
 
 are studied in conjunction 
 with conditions of opera- 
 tion. They are not due 
 so much to reasons under- 
 lying the securing of power 
 from heat as to the reasons 
 underlying the way in 
 which the power is to be 
 generated. 
 
 In the case of piston 
 engines, which will be first 
 examined, most of the dif- 
 ference will be found in the 
 system of valves and the 
 control of their motion, 
 each devised to meet some 
 special condition of opera- 
 tion newly encountered or 
 not previously recognized. 
 The simplest kind of 
 valve for piston engines is 
 that known as the slide- 
 valve, which is a plate with 
 a hollow on one side or a 
 cylindrical rod having a smaller diameter along the 
 middle, the latter form called a piston-valve. A simple 
 slide-valve is shown in Fig. 60, in various positions 
 in relation to the piston, shown only in part. The 
 opening through which the steam may flow to and 
 
 &. 
 
 $> 
 
 FIG. 60 
 
ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER 87 
 
 from the cylinder ends appears white, while the valve 
 is lightly shaded and the metal of the cylinder is black. 
 The valve moves from side to side in a box or valve 
 chest, not shown, but to which the steam supply pipe 
 is attached. In the first position the steam is entering 
 the curved passage or port to the left-hand end of the 
 cylinder, while from the other end of the cylinder 
 the piston is pushing out steam through the other port, 
 then through the hollow or the bottom side of the valve 
 into the irregular-shaped space between the two ports 
 which leads to the exhaust pipe. Movement of the 
 piston rotates a shaft, not shown here, through rods and 
 a crank, and as this shaft carries another small crank of 
 special form, attached to rods, a reciprocating motion 
 is imparted to the valve. This separate, peculiar crank 
 is called an eccentric, and it and the connecting rods 
 and valve constitute the valve gear which moves the 
 valve from one position to another. The other po- 
 sitions of valve and piston shown in the diagrams illus- 
 trate how the flow of steam may be reversed from end 
 to end, and that most important fact, how the steam 
 supply may be shut off from the cylinder before the 
 piston reaches the end of its stroke. Thus (2) shows 
 the steam passage wide open to the left, (3) shows it 
 closed with the piston only about three-quarters out, 
 and all this time the right end is exhausting. At (4) 
 the valve has moved back enough to close both ends, 
 and they remain so in (5) and (6), though the valve 
 is still swinging while the piston completes its stroke. 
 The piston begins to return at (7), the valve has opened 
 at the left to the exhaust, and is just about to admit 
 fresh steam to the right. The remaining positions, 
 
POWER 
 
 (8) to (13), illustrate the return to the original position. 
 The relation of the slide-valve and its gear to the com- 
 plete mechanism of an engine is shown in Fig. 61, which 
 
 FIG. 61 
 
 is a cross-section through the important parts of a simple 
 horizontal engine. Another form of slide-valve, made 
 longer and designed to shorten the curved passages from 
 
 FIG. 62 
 
 FIG. 63 
 
 the valve face to the cylinder, and so reduce the waste 
 of steam incurred in filling this space without pro- 
 portionate work, is shown in Fig. 62; while Fig. 63 is 
 
ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER 
 
 89 
 
 the piston-form modification of the slide-valve, which, 
 being cylindrical, perfectly balances the steam pres- 
 sure, acting on both ends instead of on the top of a flat 
 plate, and has no tendency to make the valve bind on 
 the seat and cause un- 
 due friction and wear. 
 The variation of form 
 which these valves 
 take, as well as the 
 greater variation in 
 the mechanism by 
 which their movement 
 is controlled, is almost 
 inconceivable to one 
 
 unfamiliar with this 
 
 work. The objects sought by the designers of this most 
 important detail of the engine are economy and control, 
 which are accomplished by changes of form of valve 
 and its gear, and are always tending towards greater 
 
 complication and cost, 
 the simple and cheap 
 kinds being retained 
 because there is always 
 a demand for inexpen- 
 sive machines whether 
 economical or not. To 
 illustrate some of these 
 modifications of valve 
 
 form there is presented a series of sections from modern 
 American engines. Those of Figs. 64, 65, 66, and 67 
 are quite similar to those already shown. In the next 
 two (Figs. 68 and 69), however, there appears an im- 
 
 FIG. 65 
 
90 
 
 POWER 
 
 portant modification ; two sets of slides, constituting in 
 effect four separate valves, are used, the pair on one 
 
 side being for 
 steam admis- 
 sion only, while 
 that on the 
 other side is for 
 exhaust only, 
 so that the ad- 
 justment of ex- 
 haust periods 
 
 can be made 
 
 independent of steam admission, a desirable thing quite 
 impossible with a single valve. In large engines, which 
 must have very wide 
 ports, these slide- 
 valves must be 
 given considerable 
 movement to get 
 the steam passage 
 open wide enough 
 to admit the neces- 
 sarily great quan- 
 tity of steam in a 
 short time, and to 
 meet this difficulty 
 a many-slotted or 
 gridiron construc- 
 tion has been de- 
 vised, as shown in 
 Fig. 70, with twelve slots, so that full opening is secured 
 with a movement only one-twelfth of what would be 
 
 FIG. 67 
 
ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER 
 
 91 
 
 necessary with a single 
 passage of the same total 
 area, thus reducing waste 
 motion. 
 
 The exterior view of 
 two of these simple slide- 
 and piston-valve engines 
 is shown in Fig. 71, which 
 is vertical, and Fig. 72, 
 which is horizontal. 
 
 FIG. 68 
 
 FIG. 69 
 
 Nearly all engines of this class 
 are of small or moder- 
 ate size and high speed. 
 For engines of larger 
 size another type of 
 valve and gear has 
 been found better 
 adapted, as it tends 
 to keep tighter even 
 when worn, and wears 
 
 less ; it also permits of a better control of the opening 
 
 and closing pe- 
 riods, both for 
 
 admission and 
 
 exhaust steam. 
 
 This is known 
 
 as the Corliss 
 
 valve, and like 
 
 the slide-valve 
 
 it is made in 
 
 many forms and 
 
 moved in a great 
 
 variety of ways FIG. 70 
 
92 
 
 POWER 
 
 FIG. 71 
 
 by mechanism much 
 more complicated, 
 though ever so much 
 more effective. The 
 Corliss valve proper is 
 a cylindrical block of 
 metal with one side cut 
 away, and it rotates in 
 a round hole in the 
 casting between the 
 cylinder passage and 
 steam supply, or be- 
 tween cylinder passage 
 and exhaust, and there 
 are always two valves 
 for each end of the 
 
 cylinder, or four in all. In Fig. 73 is shown a cylinder 
 in cross-section, with the four Corliss valves in various 
 positions and the relation of each to the piston, main 
 crank, and valve crank or eccentric. Attached to the 
 valve at one end and projecting through the casing is 
 a small crank 
 not shown, by 
 which it is ro- 
 tated through 
 the pull of a rod 
 derived from a 
 system of rods, 
 levers, hooks, 
 and pins from 
 the valve cranks 
 or eccentrics on 
 
 FIG. 72 
 
ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER 
 
 93 
 
 the main shaft. One form of mechanism to move these 
 four valves is shown in Fig. 74, partly in section and 
 from both side and end of the cylinder, from which the 
 complexity of parts is apparent, but all of which are 
 present solely to give 
 the proper movement 
 to the valves and keep 
 them under perfect 
 control. Other forms 
 of the valve proper and 
 its location with refer- 
 ence to the cylinder are 
 shown in Figs 75, 76, 
 77, and 78. The rela- 
 tion of the Corliss 
 valve position to the 
 rest of the engine 
 mechanism is fairly 
 well shown in Fig. 79, 
 which represents a sec- 
 tion of a large vertical 
 engine. Two exterior 
 views of simple Corliss 
 valve engines, illustrat- 
 ing their varied form 
 and the mechanism by FIG 73 
 
 which the valves are 
 
 moved and controlled, are shown in Figs. 80 and 81, 
 which also indicate the tendency toward the use of this 
 class of engines in the larger sizes. 
 
 All of these various types of valves, cylinder arrange- 
 ments, and valve gears have been prompted, as has 
 
94 
 
 POWER 
 
 been said, by the desire for better control of the steam, 
 which is basal to economical operation. In no case 
 can steam be efficiently used if it is allowed to follow 
 
 FIG. 74 
 
 the piston at full pressure for the whole piston stroke. 
 This principle was discovered by Watt, but not generally 
 understood in its fullest significance for many years. 
 
 FIG. 75 
 
 FIG. 76 
 
 The force of this as a controlling idea in steam economy 
 did not really appear until innumerable tests of steam 
 consumption had been made, and the attempts made 
 
ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER 
 
 95 
 
 to explain the differences found finally resulted in the 
 creation of what has been explained as thermodynamics. 
 These tests and the thermodynamics which grew out 
 of them show that not 
 only must the differ- 
 ences between the steam 
 pressure and the final 
 pressure be as great as 
 possible, thus calling for 
 the use of high-pressure 
 boilers and good con- 
 densers for the most 
 economical use of steam, FlG 77 
 
 but also, and perhaps 
 
 more important, that the full use cannot be made of 
 this range of pressure until the admission of the steam 
 has been controlled in a certain definite way. For 
 
 every range of pressure from 
 the initial to final there is a cer- 
 tain range of volume through 
 which the steam must pass to 
 give the most results in work 
 per pound of steam. The 
 reasons for this need not be 
 gone into here, as this would 
 involve somewhat complicated 
 mathematics, but a cubic inch 
 FlG 78 of high-pressure steam may be 
 
 imagined as similar in char- 
 acter to a compressed spring. When compressed, this 
 spring exerts a certain tension in the beginning which 
 runs down to something less at the end as the spring 
 
96 
 
 POWER 
 
 is released, and at the same time is growing in size. 
 It is evident that a long spring much compressed 
 can do more work as it expands than a short spring 
 lightly compressed. The extension of the spring is 
 somewhat analogous to the stretch of expansion of the 
 steam. The most work will be obtained with the most 
 expansion for a given spring or for a given amount 
 
 and kind of steam. Accordingly 
 only a little steam is admitted to 
 a cylinder. This little bit rep- 
 resents the spring compressed. 
 The valve is then closed and as 
 the piston moves out the steam 
 expands or stretches, pushing 
 the piston throughout the 
 stroke, as would the spring as 
 it was released. If at the end 
 of the stroke the spring is en- 
 tirely released, it has done all 
 the work it can do. Similarly, 
 with regard to the steam ; if at 
 the end of the stroke its pres- 
 sure has fallen to that of the 
 condenser or atmosphere, it has 
 done all the work it can do under those conditions, and 
 when the steam has done all the work it can do, then 
 the most work has been obtained per pound of steam, or 
 the greatest economy of steam results. These conditions 
 impose on the valve and valve gear a structural condi- 
 tion, that the steam valve shall open a little bit and 
 then quickly close. With the slide-valve first examined 
 it is impossible to secure the admission and cut off of the 
 
 FIG. 79 
 
ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER 
 
 97 
 
 FIG. 80 
 
 steam supply at a proper time, independent of the open- 
 ings and closing of the exhaust, because it is a one-piece 
 affair. The use of two separate slide-valves, one for 
 exhaust and one for admission, helps matters consider- 
 
 FIG. 81 
 
98 POWER 
 
 ably; but the Corliss valve structure permits of the 
 greatest possible controlled independence. This dis- 
 cussion shows that the first step in the economic use 
 of steam is a matter of mechanism design to permit of 
 the movement of the valves in a suitable way, the suit- 
 ability of the way being dictated by the thermodynamic 
 laws governing the relations of heat and work. 
 
 Were there more time available, it would be inter- 
 esting to trace the influence of the character of service 
 on the changes of form of engines and their parts, but 
 this would require a detailed history of design, which 
 would show that greater and greater diversity is enter- 
 ing into the construction of engines to secure the best 
 possible adaptation to requirements, contrary to the 
 practice of the early days when there was only one 
 steam-engine and that put to work at all sorts of things. 
 
 As already pointed out, the steam-turbine type of 
 engine was conceived nearly two centuries before it 
 came into use: and the reason is to be found, first, in 
 the lack of demand; and second, after the demand that 
 gave Watt his chance had been created, then and for 
 nearly one hundred and fifty years, in the failure to 
 understand how to make it as economical as the piston 
 engine. Steam can do the same work expanding be- 
 tween the boiler pressure and that of the exhaust, 
 whether it happens to be in nozzles or behind pistons, 
 even though in the former case the work done is not 
 yet in available form, but exists in the form of a high- 
 speed jet of steam. Returning, for illustration, to the 
 compressed spring analogy, it is true that if the spring 
 is compressed between the fingers and a table, it will 
 jump up when released; the energy of the compressed 
 
ELEMENTS OF STEAM-POWER 99 
 
 spring, measured by the work it can do as it is released, 
 is expended in giving itself a velocity. This is pre- 
 cisely what happens in the steam nozzle. The diffi- 
 culty in respect to economy in the turbine is, however, 
 different from that in the piston engine, where the 
 problem is to admit a small amount of high-pressure 
 steam and let it completely expand without interfer- 
 ence. There is no difficulty in getting complete ex- 
 pansion of steam in nozzles ; the really great difficulty 
 lies in the relations of the wheel and vanes to the steam 
 jet. If the vanes move too fast, the steam from the 
 nozzle may never catch up, and so cannot exert any 
 push or do any work. Similarly, if the vanes move 
 too slowly, the steam jet will bounce off with nearly 
 as much velocity as it had before and, therefore, carry 
 away nearly all its original energy. It appears, then, 
 that the vanes must have a velocity neither too low 
 nor too high, but definitely related to the jet velocity 
 in order to secure best economy. It does not appear, 
 however, what the jet velocity will be for any given 
 steam pressure, or what the relation of the two veloc- 
 ities should be. This determination can be made 
 mathematically to-day, and it is only within a score or 
 so of years that it could be made. Without this knowl- 
 edge, properly applied, the steam-turbine may be enor- 
 mously wasteful; for example, one machine that was 
 built by guess consumed over a thousand pounds of 
 steam per hour for one horse-power, about one hundred 
 times as much as a properly proportioned machine 
 would use under the same conditions. It is a fact that 
 for ordinary pressure conditions the steam jet will have 
 a velocity running into thousands of feet per second, 
 
100 POWER 
 
 and approximately equal to that of a rifle bullet, so 
 that to get suitable velocity relations for good steam 
 economy the vanes must either rotate too fast for 
 safety, or their speed must be held down to some safe 
 low value that will necessitate waste of energy, or some 
 new means of treatment must be devised. 
 
 This last step, the devising of new means of treating 
 jets and vanes in turbines to permit of safe and other- 
 wise desirably low speeds, with properly good economy 
 in the use of steam, will be taken up later, together 
 with a new treatment of the piston engine similar in 
 kind and effect to give higher economies than are pos- 
 sible with the simple piston machines already discussed. 
 
IV 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 IT has required far more effort, and effort of a far 
 higher order, to make the steam system of power gen- 
 eration as economical as it is to-day, than was required 
 to produce the first successful rotative engine. With- 
 out the study of efficiency and reduction of heat waste 
 it is safe to say that but little progress would have been 
 made in comparison with that which has been made. 
 Even up to the year 1870, ninety years after Watt's 
 successful engine, the use of the steam-power system 
 in this country for stationary work was less extensive 
 than the use of the water-power, and the reason is to 
 be found chiefly in the relative costs of power by the 
 two systems up to that time. Although improvements 
 in water-power machinery since then have decreased 
 its cost somewhat and have made it possible to develop 
 more difficult waterfalls, and through electric trans- 
 mission to increase the areas over which water-power 
 might be used, yet these advances are as nothing com- 
 pared with the advances in the steam-power system. 
 All advances in the steam-power system have come 
 from improved shop methods and from analysis of 
 losses through the methods of thermodynamics, a 
 science which itself grew out of the earlier engines, which 
 furnished means for getting test data which thoughtful 
 
 101 
 
102 POWER 
 
 men have compared, and in the comparison discovered 
 the general laws. 
 
 Even with the best boilers and engines of the so- 
 called simple type, such as have been shown and 
 described, the economy is poor. The boilers give to 
 the steam on an average 70 per cent of the heat of the 
 fuel or, what is roughly equivalent, produce 10 pounds 
 of steam per pound of good coal, or less per pound of 
 poor coal. The engines, even of the better sort, ex- 
 hausting to the atmosphere use 30 or 40 pounds of 
 steam per hour per horse-power, so that such boilers 
 and engines together would require 3 to 4 pounds of 
 coal per hour per horse-power, which amount will rise in 
 the small and less well-constructed units to as high as 
 6 and 8 pounds. A coal consumption of 1 pound 
 per hour for each horse-power corresponds to a plant 
 efficiency of approximately 17 per cent ; 3 pounds to 
 about 5.6 per cent ; 4 pounds to about 4.2 per cent ; 
 8 pounds to 2.1 per cent, so that these non-condensing 
 steam plants with simple engines burning from 3 to 
 8 pounds of coal per hour per horse-power, which is the 
 range they cover, are capable of converting into useful 
 work only from 5 to 2 per cent of the heat the coal 
 contains. Improvements in the apparatus and methods 
 of working have raised this value to about 15 per cent 
 in the best modern plants, which seem extremely com- 
 plicated compared with the simple non-condensing 
 ones. Great as is this improvement, the efficiency still 
 seems small, but it is difficult to realize the cost of 
 time, material, money, and brains that have been ex- 
 pended in making even this advance. 
 
 Such improvements as have been made are of two 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 103 
 
 general classes: first, those belonging strictly to the 
 engine to increase the work obtainable per pound of 
 steam; and second, those relating to the efficiency of 
 steam generation to increase the weight of steam made 
 per pound of coal. Most of those which have been 
 applied to the generation of steam have been directed 
 toward the reduction of direct heat losses, and the 
 return to the boiler water of some of the waste heat. 
 For example, while the hot gases leaving the boiler 
 must be hot when they reach the chimney to produce 
 a proper draft, they may carry more heat than is neces- 
 sary for the draft, so that some heat is wasted. Also 
 the exhaust steam from the engine carries much heat 
 away to be dissipated in the atmosphere, or given to 
 condensing water. If, therefore, the cold water on the 
 way to the boiler be brought in contact with the exhaust 
 steam or flue gases, it will become warm, and therefore 
 require less of the direct coal heat to make it boil. 
 As the heat for boiling the water is more and more 
 derived from waste sources and less from the coal 
 directly, the efficiency of steam generation will rise and 
 more steam will be made per pound of coal. Appara- 
 tus designed to save waste flue-gas heat is called an 
 economizer, and consists of a bank of tubes through 
 which the water passes on its way to the boiler, gen- 
 erally set behind a row of boilers and a little above. 
 This is shown in Fig. 82, which represents a set of econ- 
 omizers being erected behind a row of horizontal in- 
 clined water-tube boilers in the plant of the Public 
 Service Corporation, Newark, New Jersey. To secure 
 the advantage of heating the boiler feed-water by 
 exhaust steam, an apparatus called a feed-water heater 
 
104 
 
 POWER 
 
 is used, and of this there are two general classes. In 
 that shown in Fig. 83 the water passes through a bank 
 
 FIG. 82 
 
 of small tubes set m> a cast-iron casing through which 
 the exhaust steam passes. As there is no physical 
 contact between the steam and the water, the water 
 remains unchanged except as its temperature rises. 
 This is not the case with feed-water 
 heaters of the other class, in which 
 the water and steam mingle, one of 
 which is shown in Fig. 84. Here the 
 cast-iron casing through which the 
 exhaust steam flows is fitted with a 
 number of cast-iron trays over which 
 the water falls and becomes heated. 
 Steam that condenses, together with 
 any oil that it may have carried 
 / over from the engine, falls with the 
 
 r feed-water to the bottom, where 
 
 filtering material is added to remove 
 FIG. 83 the oil. These feed-water heaters 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 
 
 105 
 
 and economizers are only two of many means of 
 returning heat waste to the boiler that are now im- 
 portant subjects of study in plant economy. 
 
 As has already been explained, improperly controlled 
 air supply to the furnace means heat waste of the most 
 direct sort, either by 
 failing to burn all the 
 fuel, when the air is in- 
 sufficient, or through 
 using more air than is 
 needed, carrying away 
 to the chimney too 
 much heat in the form 
 of hot gases. Much 
 work is being done to 
 reduce these losses, 
 and in this part of the 
 problem perhaps the 
 most important piece 
 of apparatus devel- 
 oped is the mechanical FlG 84 
 stoker and its furnace. 
 
 These stokers are intended to maintain proper furnace 
 condition continuously, by feeding coal mechanically 
 to furnaces fitted with properly controlled air openings. 
 The use of these stokers is likewise associated with 
 some saving in labor in handling the coal, which is 
 mechanically elevated from boats or cars to bins over 
 the boiler room, from which it runs down to each boiler 
 through pipes. The elaborate nature of some of this 
 coal-handling equipment is well shown in Fig. 85, 
 illustrating the river side of the New York Edison 
 
106 
 
 POWER 
 
 Power Station. Each stoker has a hopper supplied 
 with coal from the overhead bins by pipes, as shown 
 
 in Fig. 86, which illustrates the fronts of a row of boilers 
 mechanically fired by that form of stoker known as 
 the chain grate. This chain grate is like a wide belt 
 of cast-iron links, as shown in Fig. 87, receiving the 
 
 coal at one end 
 from the hopper 
 and continu- 
 ously carrying 
 it back into the 
 fire at a proper 
 speed, so that 
 when the coal 
 reaches the end 
 there is nothing 
 FIG. 86 but ash to drop 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 
 
 107 
 
 off. In the picture the stoker is shown pulled out for 
 
 inspection or repairs. Another form of stoker, con- 
 
 sisting of a set 
 
 of moving bars 
 
 on an incline, is 
 
 shown in Fig. 
 
 88 in cross-sec- 
 
 tion, in which 
 
 the agitation of 
 
 the coal is pos- 
 
 sible, a thing 
 
 very desirable 
 
 for some sticky 
 
 kinds of coal. _ 
 
 r IG. o/ 
 
 These illustra- 
 
 tions tell only the smallest fractions of the story of 
 attempts to reduce heat waste and get more steam 
 
 per pound of coal, and 
 will serve to demon- 
 strate the nature and 
 direction of the efforts. 
 Their effect has been 
 not so much the im- 
 provement of boiler 
 efficiency, comparing 
 the best stoker per- 
 formance with that of 
 the best hand-fired 
 furnace, as to enable a 
 better average condi- 
 
 tion to be maintained than is possible with intermittent 
 hand-firing, with all the variations of fire condition and 
 
 F IG . 
 
108 POWER 
 
 air supply entirely subject to the judgment of the fire- 
 man, for the stoker maintains steady conditions and 
 reduces the evil that a poor fireman may do. 
 
 It is in the engines and their auxiliaries that the 
 greatest advances have been made, but improvements 
 directed toward the fullest utilization of the work 
 capabilities of steam can be understood only when some 
 of the important quantities are known. It is these 
 quantities that show plainly the difficulties to be en- 
 countered in designing apparatus to carry out the 
 processes to the fullest extent. It has already been 
 explained that steam will do all the work it is capable 
 of doing only when permitted to expand or stretch as 
 much as it is capable of stretching, in just the same way 
 as a compressed spring may stretch or expand to do 
 work. It is important now to consider how much 
 steam, under the ordinary conditions of initial and 
 final pressure employed, may stretch or expand. A 
 boiler pressure of 150 pounds per square inch is not 
 considered high to-day, as pressures going up to 250 
 pounds are in common use; but even with the moderate 
 pressure of 150 pounds to start with, one pound of 
 steam would occupy a volume of 2{ cubic feet. That 
 is to say, one pound of water when turned into steam 
 at 150 pounds pressure would occupy a volume of 2| 
 cubic feet. If this steam, which may be likened to a 
 compressed spring, be allowed to stretch until its pres- 
 sure has come down to that of the atmosphere, then it 
 will occupy a volume of 23 cubic feet, or it will have 
 expanded 8.1 times, or, as it is often said, it will have 
 suffered 8.1 expansions. If, however, it be allowed 
 to continue to stretch by the enlargement of the cham- 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 109 
 
 ber in which it is working, until its pressure has fallen 
 below atmosphere to about 96 per cent of a perfect 
 vacuum at sea-level, such as is obtainable in our best 
 modern condensers, then it would occupy a volume 
 of 401 cubic feet or would have expanded 150 times 
 its original volume. This means that one cubic foot 
 of steam at the high initial pressure of 150 pounds per 
 square inch becomes 150 cubic feet when its pressure 
 has been brought down to about 96 per cent of a perfect 
 vacuum. The more a spring is allowed to stretch, the 
 longer will it continue to push against whatever is 
 restraining it and so the more work it will do. Sim- 
 ilarly, the more the steam is allowed to stretch or 
 expand, the more work it can do. It appears, therefore, 
 that steam expanding from this high pressure to the 
 vacuum can do more work than if it expanded only to 
 the atmosphere, and it is interesting to note just how 
 much more. The laws of thermodynamics indicate 
 that when expanding from the high pressure to atmos- 
 phere, steam can only do about 54 per cent of the work 
 it could have done had it expanded to the vacuum. 
 This is equivalent to saying that the work of expansion 
 from the high pressure to the vacuum nearly doubles 
 the work it could do if the expansion stopped at the 
 atmospheric pressure. As a consequence, the more 
 complete expansion nearly doubles the efficiency of 
 its use and so reduces the waste in its use to nearly 
 one-half. This being the fact, it appears that to make 
 the best use of steam from 150 pounds to 96 per cent 
 vacuum in a piston engine, the piston should start at 
 the beginning of its stroke (assuming it to be working 
 with one pound of steam) with 2| cubic feet of steam 
 
110 POWER 
 
 in one end when the supply is cut off, and the piston 
 movement should continue until the space within the 
 cylinder occupied by the steam has become 401 cubic 
 feet, or 150 times as much as it was in the beginning. 
 If this is done, then as much work will be obtained as 
 the steam is capable of doing, provided none of it is 
 lost by leakage or is condensed by cooling during the 
 process. This seems a simple requirement which, if 
 carried out, would yield a high efficiency piston engine, 
 yet as a matter of fact it is absolutely impossible to do 
 it at all in a single cylinder. 
 
 Attention has already been called to the existence 
 of a series of spaces in the end of a cylinder. There 
 is a steam-passage space between the valve and the 
 cylinder, and another space between the end of the 
 piston and the cylinder head to avoid the possibility 
 of the piston striking the head. The sum of these 
 spaces together is called the clearance volume. About 
 the smallest clearance volume, that even the best 
 arranged valves will permit, may be set at 2 per cent 
 of the cylinder volume, and even this is almost dan- 
 gerously small. To carry out such expansion as has 
 been discussed, the volume of steam at the beginning 
 of the expansion should be only about .7 of 1 per cent 
 of the volume at the end of expansion, or less than the 
 dead clearance space itself. If steam were admitted 
 to the cylinder for only ^ of the stroke of the piston 
 and then cut off, it could expand only 14 times. If 
 steam were admitted only to fill up the waste space and 
 did not follow the piston in its movement at all, then 
 it might expand only 51 times instead of the 150 
 which is necessary to get all the work it is capable of 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 111 
 
 giving. These figures show the absolute impossibility 
 of carrying out this expansion process in a single cylin- 
 der and why single-cylinder or simple engines are nec- 
 essarily wasteful. 
 
 When, however, the work is done in two cylinders 
 in succession, or even three or four, the conditions are 
 changed. This process of successively working the 
 steam in several cylinders in series, called multiple 
 expansion, will permit of more expansion in such cylin- 
 ders as we can construct than is possible in a single 
 cylinder. Suppose, for example, the first of the series 
 to be just large enough to hold the pound of steam 
 when full, then if the largest cylinder have a volume 
 150 times this, the expansion would be possible. This 
 would call for a low-pressure cylinder diameter about 
 fifteen times that of the first or high-pressure cylinder. 
 These so-called multiple expansion engines are, there- 
 fore, capable, for this, as well as for some other reasons, 
 of making better use of the steam than the simple 
 engine. 
 
 When several cylinders use the steam in succession, 
 permitting the pressure to fall in steps and producing 
 the work of the steam in stages, the cost of the engine 
 increases. A two-cylinder or compound engine will 
 cost about 50 per cent more than a simple single-cylin- 
 der engine, while the third and fourth cylinders for 
 triple and quadruple expansion add still more initial 
 expense, which is the price to be paid for increased 
 steam and coal economy. Evidently a limit will be 
 reached somewhere, beyond which successive expan- 
 sion cylinders will cost more than the fuel saving will 
 warrant, and this limit is found with the two-stage or 
 
112 
 
 POWER 
 
 compound engine in stationary, and the three-stage 
 or triple engine in marine practice. 
 
 When the two cylinders of a compound or two-stage 
 expansion engine are in line with each other and both 
 
 pistons are on the same 
 piston rod, the engine 
 is called a tandem com- 
 pound. Fig. 89 shows 
 a cross-section of a 
 tandem compound ar- 
 rangement with two 
 FIG. 89 slide-valves, and Fig. 
 
 90 a similar arrange- 
 ment with a piston-valve on the high-pressure cylinder 
 and a slide-valve on the low-pressure. The exhaust 
 from the high pressure is led to the steam chest of the 
 low. The external appearance of a tandem compound 
 engine with 
 slide-valve is 
 shown in Fig. 
 
 91, and another 
 tandem com- 
 pound of larger 
 size with Cor- 
 liss valve is 
 shown in Fig. 
 
 92. It is per- 
 haps more com- 
 mon to arrange the cylinders of compound engines side 
 by side, with separate rods and cranks, and this 
 arrangement is called a cross-compound. A vertical 
 cross-compound engine, having a piston-valve on its 
 
 FIG. 90 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 
 
 113 
 
 FIG. 91 
 
 FIG. 92 
 
114 
 
 POWER 
 
 high-pressure cylinder 
 and on the low-pressure 
 a slide valve, is shown 
 in Fig. 93. Another 
 larger horizontal one 
 with slide valves is 
 shown in Fig. 94, and a 
 still larger cross-com- 
 pound slide-valve en- 
 gine with gridiron valve 
 is shown in Fig. 95. 
 Two larger Corliss com- 
 pounds, one vertical 
 and the other horizon- 
 FlG 93 tal, are shown in Figs. 
 
 96, 97. One cylinder 
 
 placed vertical and the other horizontal gives what 
 is called the angle-compound construction, such as is 
 used in many larger railway and central station power 
 houses in pairs, as shown in Fig. 98. 
 
 
 FIG. 94 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 
 
 115 
 
 FIG. 95 
 
 No piston en- 
 gines are made 
 with cylinders 
 enough in num- 
 ber and size to 
 be capable of 
 utilizing the full 
 expansion of the 
 steam, because 
 the increased 
 cost of the 
 larger cylinders 
 more than overbalances the saving of fuel. It has 
 remained for the steam-turbine to supply a cheaper 
 means of taking full advantage of high initial and 
 low final pressures than indefinite multiplication of 
 
 large cylinders. 
 The steam- 
 turbine prob- 
 lem, however, 
 is not so simple 
 as it seems, 
 for, as already 
 pointed out, it 
 is necessary 
 but difficult to 
 arrange wheels 
 and vanes cap- 
 able of moving 
 fast enough to 
 make the best 
 FIG. 96 use of the high 
 
116 
 
 POWER 
 
 velocity steam jet. It is easy, however, to get complete 
 steam expansion in the nozzle forming the jet and to 
 
 FIG. 97 
 
 form jets having such a velocity as will represent all the 
 work the steam is capable of doing. To get a clear idea 
 
 FIG. 98 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 117 
 
 of the difficulty to be met it is necessary to know the 
 velocities of steam jets, which the thermodynamic laws 
 supply means to calculate. For example, steam expand- 
 ing from 150 pounds per square inch boiler pressure to 
 atmosphere would acquire a velocity of 3000 feet per 
 second or 2000 miles per hour, about forty times as 
 fast as the average express train; and if it expanded 
 to a vacuum 96 per cent perfect, its velocity would be 
 4100 feet per second or nearly 3000 miles per hour. 
 Perfectly executed expansion of the first sort would give 
 to the jet energy of motion equal to 15 per cent of the 
 heat put into the steam, and perfectly executed expan- 
 sion from boiler pressure to the vacuum would make jets 
 having energy of motion equal to about 28 per cent of 
 the heat content of the live steam. No higher efficien- 
 cies than these would be possible, no matter how perfect 
 the mechanism. Just in proportion as the velocities of 
 wheels and these fast steam jets are correctly adjusted, 
 and leakage and friction losses reduced, so may these 
 efficiencies be produced, otherwise not. Single vane 
 wheels should run at speeds a little more or less than 
 half the jet velocity, so that for the complete expansion 
 to a vacuum the speed of the wheel should be such as 
 to give about 2000 feet per second vane velocity, at 
 which value the wheel would burst. To prevent 
 blowing up the wheels, governors are used to keep the 
 speed down to a safe value, at which speed only a part 
 of the energy of the steam jet can be taken up by the 
 wheel, so that all such single-wheel turbines are neces- 
 sarily wasteful. Small turbines are, however, made, 
 and being cheap find some useful fields. One of these 
 machines carries little cups on the circumference of 
 
118 
 
 POWER 
 
 FIG. 99 
 
 the wheel and a number of nozzles are spaced around, 
 as shown in Fig. 99; while another has curved slits 
 cut in its edge to form the vanes, 
 as shown in Fig. 100. In the latter 
 case the steam passes through the 
 wheel and this is the more com- 
 mon form. Another way of mak- 
 ing vanes on the edge of wheels 
 for the steam to pass through 
 from .side to side is shown in Fig. 
 101, in which .they are dovetailed 
 
 into a groove. The external appearance of a single- 
 wheel turbine, constructed as shown in Fig. 100, is 
 illustrated in Fig. 102, as built to 
 drive two electric generators by 
 two gear-wheels, which reduce the 
 speed to a safe value for the electric 
 generator. The two large central 
 boxes contain these gears, while 
 the narrow chamber at the right 
 end is the wheel chamber, the nozzle valves appearing 
 plainly on the circumference. The problem of correct 
 adjustment of wheel speed to steam 
 jet speed necessary for high economy, 
 yet allowing the wheels to rotate slow 
 enough to avoid bursting, or slow 
 enough to be adapted to drive stand- 
 ard machinery, most of which does 
 not rotate very fast, has been solved 
 only within the last ten years. The 
 method applied to this solution is similar to, but more 
 perfectly carried out than, that used in the piston 
 
 FIG. 100 
 
 FIG. 101 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 
 
 119 
 
 FIG. 102 
 
 engines, that of division of the duty into stages. 
 Economical low-speed steam turbines must be multi- 
 stage machines, and the staging may be carried out 
 in two characteristic ways. In the first way, called 
 pressure stag- 
 ing, the full 
 velocity due to 
 the final and 
 initial pressures 
 is never real- 
 ized, but only 
 a part, then a 
 little more, and 
 so on. Thus, 
 if a series of 
 
 chambers be arranged in a row, as in Fig. 103, with a 
 steam supply pipe leading to the first, and nozzles leading 
 from chamber to chamber of appropriate size to reduce 
 the pressure in the successive chambers by say 50 pounds 
 per nozzle, the last chamber being connected to a con- 
 denser, Siiid in addition a vane 
 wheel be placed in each chamber, 
 then, instead of one jet with a 
 velocity equal to the whole drop 
 in pressure, there are five jets in 
 series, each with a velocity due to 
 50 pounds pressure, a very much 
 smaller amount. When many nozzles are placed be- 
 tween stages, the partition begins to resemble the 
 vanes ; differences, however, exist in shape and area 
 of opening. A view of a casing for a multistage tur- 
 bine in which the nozzles look like the vanes them- 
 
 FIG. 103 
 
120 
 
 POWER 
 
 selves is shown in Fig. 104. The other way of meeting 
 the velocity difficulty, and the second method of solu- 
 tion, is to use the principle of successive impulse, or a 
 series of bounces, the steam being given its full velocity 
 in one nozzle, all the wheels rotating in a chamber of 
 the same low pressure, maintained by the condenser, 
 
 FIG. 104 
 
 and the steam jet striking one wheel after another, being 
 guided between by openings in fixed partitions. Each 
 time the steam strikes a vane it gives it a push and 
 loses some velocity, so that finally it emerges with no 
 velocity, having given up its energy to the wheels in 
 many velocity stages, the process being termed velocity 
 staging. Modern turbines are built for both methods 
 of staging, using the jet both by impulse and reaction, 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 
 
 121 
 
 and with all sorts of structural details, but in every 
 machine there are great numbers of fixed guides and 
 moving vanes differing more in curvature and areas of 
 passages than in general external form. In Fig. 105 
 is shown a cross-section of a four-stage turbine through 
 the nozzle and guides. The complete machine, de- 
 
 FIG. 105 
 
 FIG. 106 
 
 signed for about 15,000 h. p., is illustrated partly in 
 section in Fig. 106, which shows the electric generator 
 above mentioned, rotating on the same vertical shaft 
 as the wheels. The interior of the power station of the 
 Commonwealth Electric Co., containing machines of 
 this type, is shown in Fig. 107. This station is designed 
 for about 150,000 h. p. One of the most interesting 
 
122 
 
 POWER 
 
 FIG. 10, 
 
 installations recently made is that for the new battle- 
 ship, North Dakota, built by the Fore River Co., and 
 which is equipped with about 30,000 h. p., shown in 
 Fig. 108, and which on trial made a record for economy. 
 
 FIG. 108 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 
 
 123 
 
 This turbine complete, as it appeared in the shop, is 
 shown in Fig. 109, and the upper half of the casing, 
 
 FIG. 109 
 
 in which the guide vanes are clearly seen, in Fig. 110, 
 while the wheels with successive rows of vanes fitting 
 between the rows of 
 guides are shown in 
 Fig. 111. 
 
 These steam-turbines 
 can be built at about 
 one-half the cost of com- 
 pound piston engines 
 or less, so that they 
 offer a cheaper means 
 of developing into use- FIG. no 
 
124 
 
 POWER 
 
 ful work the work capabilities of expanding steam. 
 
 This fact has led to their adoption in place of additional 
 
 cylinders to compound 
 engines, the exhaust 
 from the compound 
 running the turbine 
 instead of passing to 
 a third or fourth cyl- 
 inder of triple and 
 quadruple engines. 
 One such installation, 
 just completed in the 
 
 
 New York Subway 
 power house (Fig. 112), was able to develop as much 
 power in the turbine as did the large compound engine, 
 the waste steam from which supplied the turbine, and 
 
 FIG. 112 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 
 
 125 
 
 so brought down the coal consumption to a trifle over 
 one pound per hour for each horse-power, the most 
 economical record for a steam-power station in daily 
 service. 
 
 The reduction of the pressure in the exhaust passage 
 of the engine, such as happens when condensers are 
 used, and which may be made lower and lower as the 
 condensing equipment is better and better, increases 
 primarily the work that the expanding steam may do, 
 and that may be 
 realized if the en- 
 gine is of suitable 
 type or construc- 
 tion. Condensing 
 equipment may, 
 therefore, be con- 
 sidered as appara- 
 tus designed pri- 
 marily for economy 
 in the use of steam 
 by engines, and 
 there have been 
 great advances in 
 
 recent years in the attainment and maintenance of a 
 good vacuum for just this purpose; but space will not 
 permit of a consideration of condensing equipment, 
 however desirable that might be, beyond a few pictures 
 to illustrate the nature of modern condensers. Passing 
 the exhaust steam through a cast-iron casing filled with 
 small tubes through which water is pumped, is the 
 surface condensing method. One very large surface 
 condenser, such as might be used with steam turbines, 
 
 FIG. 113 
 
126 
 
 POWER 
 
 FIG. 114 
 
 is shown in Fig. 113, with one end plate removed to 
 
 show the tubes starting from the inner partition plate. 
 
 Another condenser of smaller size is shown in Fig. 
 
 114. Surface condensers of this class require two 
 
 pumps at least to oper- 
 ate them, one to send 
 the circulating water 
 through the tubes, 
 which water is often 
 taken from a near-by 
 river and need not be 
 especially clear or pure, 
 
 a fact that prompts the location of plants on water 
 
 fronts, and the other to pump out from the vacuum 
 
 chamber all the water of condensation. This latter 
 
 type of pump is called an air-pump, vacuum-pump, 
 
 or hot-well 
 
 pump. One 
 
 common type of 
 
 vacuum - pump 
 
 used for this 
 
 purpose is 
 
 shown in Fig. 
 
 115. ft has a 
 conical piston 
 which is moved 
 up and down in 
 its cylinder by a 
 vertical steam- 
 engine above. The cylinder has slits in the side, and 
 the casing surrounding the cylinder into which the 
 water from the cylinder runs has a curved guide. The 
 
 FIG. 115 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 
 
 127 
 
 piston in its descent strikes the water in the bottom. 
 By reason of the conical head and the curved guide 
 this water is projected through the slits into the cylinder 
 above the piston, which immediately after rises, closing 
 the slits and pushing out the water through the valves 
 shown. Sometimes a simple direct-acting steam-pump 
 is used, placed below the condenser, so that the water 
 of condensation 
 can run into its 
 cylinder easily; 
 and one of these 
 surface con- 
 densers so 
 equipped is 
 shown in Fig. 
 116, on which 
 there also ap- 
 pears at the 
 right-hand side 
 a centrifugal 
 pump for cir- 
 culating water. 
 These centrifugal pumps are much like fans which are 
 fairly common and easily understood. A wheel runs 
 in the casing, and this wheel has vanes or radial or 
 curved arms on it, and by the mere act of rotation 
 the water which enters at the center is thrown off 
 to the circumference, escaping tangentially through 
 the pipe. Centrifugal pumps are commonly used for 
 this purpose because they contain no valves, and 
 permit the use of water that may contain floating 
 matter, such as always occurs when it is taken directly 
 
 FIG. 116 
 
128 
 
 POWER 
 
 FIG. 117 
 
 from rivers. 
 Another con- 
 denser of similar 
 form, having 
 the two pumps 
 connected to a 
 single steam- 
 cylinder and lo- 
 cated on oppo- 
 site sides of it, 
 is shown in Fig. 
 117. A surface 
 condenser with an extension at the bottom for catching 
 water, and provided with an independent pump for 
 removing the water alone, is shown in Fig. 118, while 
 another surface condenser of the vertical form is shown 
 in Fig. 119. This one has a centrifugal pump to re- 
 move the water 
 of condensa- 
 tion, but driven 
 by a directly 
 connected elec- 
 tric motor. 
 Some surface 
 condensing 
 equipment set 
 beside steam- 
 turbines for 
 handling their 
 exhaust is 
 shown in Fig. 
 120, illustrating 
 
 FIG. 118 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 
 
 129 
 
 their relation, and showing, especially in the upper 
 picture, the addition of another or third pump in the 
 operation of these condensers. This is called a dry 
 vacuum-pump, and its business is to pump out of the 
 vacuum chamber all substances collecting there that 
 are incapable of condensing by contact with the cold 
 water tube. All water contains uncondensable gases 
 dissolved in it, such as air, carbonic acid, or the gases 
 generated by decaying 
 animal matter. When this 
 water enters the boiler, the 
 gases are driven off and 
 pass through the engine 
 with the steam, but when 
 the steam condenses, these 
 gases do not enter the water 
 again, but, on the contrary, 
 collect in the condenser 
 vacuum chamber, tending 
 to destroy the vacuum as 
 they collect. When, as in 
 the case of turbines, an 
 
 extremely high vacuum is desirable, then an additional 
 pump to draw off these gases as they collect is added, 
 and this dry air-pump sucks the gases out, compresses 
 them up to the atmospheric pressure, and discharges 
 them into the air. In the upper part of the figure at 
 the left hand is clearly shown a steam-driven, dry 
 vacuum-pump for removing these gases from the hori- 
 zontal condenser, which receives the exhaust from the 
 steam-turbine. Another view of a turbine condensing 
 equipment of the same general character is shown in 
 
 FIG. 119 
 
130 
 
 POWER 
 
 Fig. 121, representing the Port Morris power station of 
 the New York Central Railroad, supplying current for 
 operating electric trains from the Grand Central to 
 Croton-on-the-Hudson. The vertical turbines dis- 
 charge their steam 
 into horizontal sur- 
 face condensers, 
 and centrifugal 
 pumps, one of which 
 is shown in the fore- 
 ground, circulate 
 water from the 
 East River through 
 the condenser ; a 
 vacuum or hot-well 
 pump, not shown, 
 removes the con- 
 densation, while a 
 dry vacuum-pump 
 for each condenser, 
 shown at the left, 
 removes the non- 
 condensable gases. 
 When circulating 
 water is not avail- 
 FIO. 120 able in large quan- 
 
 tities, as is the case 
 
 in many localities, either the engines must be operated 
 non-condensing, which is wasteful, or a small supply of 
 water may be conserved by cooling it after the con- 
 denser has heated it, and so make it available for use 
 over and over again, of course with some evaporation 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 
 
 131 
 
 losses. When water is scarce, it is always a question 
 whether or not the saving in coal consumption due to 
 condensing operation is warranted by the extra cost of 
 water-cooling equipment, but there are many cases 
 where the cooling equipment is entirely justified. To 
 illustrate the nature of this apparatus there is presented 
 
 FIG. 121 
 
 Fig. 122, showing a cross-section of part of a power 
 house, on the roof of which is placed a cooling tower ; 
 the water from the surface condenser below is pumped 
 to this tower and trickles down through it over the 
 surface of wood or tile or metal, as the case may be, 
 while a fan, shown at the side of the tower, blows air 
 up over the wet surface to cool the water to a tempera- 
 ture even lower than the air itself. The cooled water 
 runs down and is used over again in the condenser. 
 
132 
 
 POWER 
 
 The diagram also shows a vacuum or hot-well pump, 
 returning the condensed steam to the boiler, and the 
 dry vacuum-pump for removing non-condensable gases. 
 This principle of cooling is merely the passing of water 
 in thin sheets over solid surfaces in a tower. Another 
 method is illustrated in Fig. 123, which represents 
 
 the spray nozzle 
 system. The water 
 issues through 
 specially designed 
 nozzles, forming a 
 fine spray which 
 drops into tanks 
 after cooling while 
 suspended in the 
 air. With many 
 large reciprocating 
 engines, more 
 especially those of 
 the vertical type, 
 another form of 
 condenser is often 
 used, in which the 
 steam and water 
 *mix and to which a long tail pipe is added to avoid 
 the necessity for pumping out from the vacuum space 
 the water of condensation mixed with the injection water. 
 This pipe is long enough to resist the barometric pres- 
 sure, and so is somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 
 feet high, and at the bottom dips into the discharge 
 water canal. Such a condenser is shown in Fig. 124. 
 The large pipe on the right is the engine exhaust-steam 
 
 FIG. 122 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 
 
 133 
 
 pipe leading to the condenser, with a branch to the 
 roof in case the condenser becomes inoperative. The 
 pipe at the left nearest the condenser supplies the cir- 
 culating or injection water, which escapes from the 
 tail pipe at the bottom of the condenser. The pipe 
 leading from the condenser at the top and descending 
 farthest to the left is 
 the dry air pipe. A 
 cross-section of one of 
 these condensers is 
 shown in Fig. 125. 
 Water enters near the 
 top, runs through ori- 
 fices and over the edges 
 of plates in cascades, 
 dripping through the 
 chamber receiving the 
 steam, condensing it. 
 The waters of conden- 
 sation and injection 
 together run down the 
 tail pipe. At the top FlG 123 
 
 of the chamber the 
 
 non-condensable gases collect and are pumped out by 
 the dry vacuum-pump. An external view of another 
 form of the barometric type of condenser is shown out- 
 side the power house in Fig. 126. This is a very large 
 one, the size of which can be judged by comparing it 
 with the man standing on the ladder at the side. A 
 large vertical engine equipment, with barometer con- 
 denser, is shown in Fig. 127, which is a diagram of a 
 cross-section of that part of the house near the engine, 
 
134 
 
 POWER 
 
 showing the basement and engine floors. In the base- 
 ment, it will be noted, there is a small steam-engine 
 driving a centrifugal pump which supplies water to two 
 
 barometric condensers, 
 which can be recog- 
 nized by their bulblike 
 form. From these the 
 water runs down 
 through a long curved 
 tail pipe. 
 
 Careful tests of 
 engines have indicated 
 
 
 I 
 
 FIG. 124 
 
 FIG. 125 
 
 that a good deal of the steam that enters them does not 
 do any work at all; and this part that does not work is 
 itself divisible into two parts : first, the part which con- 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 
 
 135 
 
 denses in the cylinder as it enters ; and second, the part 
 which leaks past piston or valves into the exhaust 
 before it has a chance to work. Improved machine 
 work and more perfectly designed valves and pistons 
 have reduced the leak- 
 age losses a good deal, 
 but it seems to be im- 
 possible ever to elimi- 
 nate all. The reduction 
 of the condensation 
 loss has been a subject 
 
 FIG. 126 
 
 FIG. 127 
 
 of study for a good many years. It is greatest when 
 the cylinder is most cold, at the time when the steam 
 enters, and this is the case when the expansion in that 
 cylinder has been greatest, because by expansion the 
 
136 
 
 POWER 
 
 temperature of the steam falls, making the walls colder 
 than they were, and promoting condensation at the 
 next admission of steam. All sorts of devices have 
 been tried, including steam-jackets, but about all that 
 have survived are the use of superheat and multiple ex- 
 pansion. A multiple expansion engine keeps the range 
 of temperature in any one cylinder less than it would 
 be in a single cylinder carrying out the same total ex- 
 pansion. This 
 type of engine, 
 therefore, suf- 
 fers less from 
 cylinder con- 
 densation loss. 
 It has also been 
 found that 
 steam heated 
 more after it is 
 made, or super- 
 heated, as it is 
 called, may im- 
 prove condi- 
 tions to the extent of 10 per cent or thereabouts, and 
 superheating is being more and more practised for this 
 reason. In Fig. 128 is shown a cross-section of one of 
 the horizontal water-tube class of boilers to which 
 a superheater has been added. This is nothing more 
 than a double row of U -tubes placed in the path of the 
 hot gases at the top of the first pass. Steam passes 
 from the regular drum through these tubes and gets 
 further heated or superheated before it enters the 
 steam-pipe on its way to the engine. 
 
 FIG. 128 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 
 
 137 
 
 ANALYSIS OF THE AVERAGE LOSSES IN THE CONVERSION OF ONE 
 POUND OF COAL INTO ELECTRICITY 
 
 
 % 
 
 % 
 
 1. B. T. U. per pound coal supplied . . . 
 2. Loss in ashes 
 3. Loss to stack .... 
 
 100.0 
 
 2.4 
 227 
 
 4. Loss in boiler radiation and leakage . . 
 5. Returned by feed-water heater .... 
 6. Returned by economizer .... 
 
 3.1 
 
 6.8 
 
 8.0 
 
 7. Loss in pipe radiation .... 
 
 
 02 
 
 8 Delivered to circulator 
 
 
 1 6 
 
 9 Delivered to feed pump 
 
 
 1 4 
 
 10. Loss in leakage and high-pressure drips 
 11, Delivered to small auxiliaries 
 
 
 1.1 
 04 
 
 12 Heating building 
 
 
 02 
 
 13. Loss in engine friction 
 
 
 08 
 
 14. Electrical losses 
 
 
 03 
 
 15. Engine radiation losses 
 16. Rejected to condenser 
 
 
 0.2 
 60 1 
 
 17. To house auxiliaries 
 
 
 02 
 
 
 
 
 Heat supplied and waste returned . . 
 Heat lost in various ways 
 
 109.9 
 99.6 
 
 99.6 
 
 
 10.3% 
 
 j of heat 
 supplied 
 
 After all these improvements of engine, boiler, and 
 auxiliary equipment, and many others of minor im- 
 portance, each of which is the result of a great amount 
 of patient study, there is yet required on the part of 
 the engineer good judgment to decide whether the 
 expense incurred in saving heat will be warranted by 
 the saving of money, as true economy is measured by 
 lowest net cost of power. This judgment must in 
 
138 POWER 
 
 every case be based, however, on the heat waste that 
 is to be reduced; and while the various wastes are 
 differently distributed in every plant, yet a fair average 
 of the best is of value. 
 
 A comparatively recent analysis of the distribution 
 of the energy supplied in a pound of coal in a large 
 central power station, about as highly efficient as any, 
 is that made by H. G. Stott, superintendent of motive 
 power of the Interborough Railroad, quoted above, 
 and which will show just where the heat goes after the 
 exercise of best skill and judgment in the selecting and 
 managing of the apparatus. 
 
 From this it appears that 60 per cent of the heat of 
 the coal is finally discharged in the condensing water 
 and nearly 23 per cent to the stack for the maintenance 
 of draft, these two together aggregating about 83 per 
 cent of the heat in the coal. No way has ever been 
 found to reduce this heat that must be delivered to 
 the condensing water. It is an essential characteristic 
 of the steam system; and the fact that steam in con- 
 densing, at however low a pressure, does give up to 
 the condensing water so large an amount of heat, con- 
 stitutes a final limit of efficiency inherent to this sys- 
 tem. If the system were non-condensing, a larger 
 per cent would have been discharged into the air than 
 is received by the condensation water. With regard 
 to the stack loss, this can be entirely eliminated, but 
 this elimination would mean the substitution of some 
 other means of producing draft and no means has as 
 yet been found that is as cheap as the loss itself. In 
 other words, the operation of fans or any other devices 
 for maintaining draft has been found to cost more 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 139 
 
 in the long run than to build a chimney and allow this 
 23 per cent of the coal heat to escape up it to produce 
 the draft needed to burn the coal at a suitable rapid 
 rate. 
 
 It is not so much the object of engineers to reach 
 high economy in the use of coal ; it is not so essential 
 that the greatest amount of coal energy be turned into 
 work or that in the use of coal for power the heat wastes 
 be reduced to a minimum. The question is really 
 far broader than this. The problem to be met is strictly 
 and properly that of minimum waste, but minimum 
 waste of everything, not only coal or water, but labor 
 and investment. It would not pay to build a power 
 plant costing four times as much as existing plants, 
 even if the coal consumption could be reduced to a 
 half of what it is, and this fact can only be appreciated 
 by some figures. According to the last census report 
 the average output of the central power stations of 
 the United States was about 25 per cent, or one-fourth 
 of their capacity. Suppose that these stations cost, 
 as the better ones do, $120 per horse-power to build, 
 and that there be set aside each year a certain sum 
 for depreciation, from which worn-out apparatus is 
 to be renewed and the plant perpetuated, and another 
 sum yearly representing the interest on the investment ; 
 another sum for the salaries of officers and superin- 
 tendents ; still another for insurance and taxes and 
 for similar items, altogether amounting perhaps to 
 12 per cent per year on the first cost. Then if this 
 plant worked all day and every day at full load 
 there would be charged against the cost of power a 
 fixed sum of $14.40 per year per horse-power. If the 
 
140 POWER 
 
 plant, on the contrary, worked on the average to only 
 one-fourth of its capacity, then this fixed charge per 
 horse-power would be four times as much as before, or 
 $57.60. It may be assumed that in stations of the 
 kind under consideration this fixed investment charge 
 is fully as large as the cost of coal and labor and other 
 supplies put together, from which it appears that a 
 saving of 10 per cent or 15 per cent in coal will affect 
 the cost of power not as much as 5 per cent, even if 
 no additional apparatus were required; but if the fixed 
 and operating charges on needed additional apparatus 
 were to be included, there might actually be a loss 
 incurred and power cost more than without the addi- 
 tional equipment when wasting some coal. This 
 would more surely be the case if much more additional 
 labor were required to take care of the additional 
 apparatus. In a comparatively recent discussion of 
 this point, Mr. F. G. Clark, superintendent of the 
 Pennsylvania and Long Island R. R. power station 
 in Long Island City, gave the following figures for 
 various average outputs of power stations from 100 
 per cent down to 20 per cent of their capacity, the figures 
 applying to a steam-turbine station in which the fixed 
 charges are less than for a piston-engine station, be- 
 cause the turbines are themselves considerably cheaper 
 than piston engines. The power is here measured in 
 kilowatts, an electrical unit equivalent to one and 
 one-third horse-power. 
 
EFFICIENCY IN STEAM-POWER 141 
 
 POWER COST DISTRIBUTION WITH AVERAGE STATION OUTPUT 
 
 Average output of station 
 
 100% 
 
 80% 
 
 60% 
 
 40% 
 
 20% 
 
 Total cost per K.W. year 
 
 $35 
 
 $40 
 
 $49 
 
 $65 
 
 $100 
 
 Investment charges . . 
 
 26% 
 
 29% 
 
 31% 
 
 36% 
 
 46% 
 
 Coal charges .... 
 
 53% 
 
 54% 
 
 53% 
 
 49% 
 
 39% 
 
 Labor 
 
 12% 
 
 9% 
 
 9% 
 
 9% 
 
 9% 
 
 Miscellaneous .... 
 
 9% 
 
 8% 
 
 7% 
 
 6% 
 
 6% 
 
 
 100 
 
 100 
 
 100 
 
 100 
 
 100 
 
 It will appear quite evident, from what has been 
 said above, that not only has the scientific study of 
 the reduction of heat waste in steam-power systems 
 been put upon a firm and substantial basis through the 
 assistance of thermodynamics, and that engineers are 
 engaged in patiently calculating, predicting, testing, 
 and recalculating possible improvements, but that their 
 attention is also directed toward the broader questions 
 of net economy. Its attainment is a combination of 
 strictly technical with business problems, and involves 
 the use of methods that permit of intelligent judgment 
 of what should be done before it is done, and of the true 
 economical value of new proposals for doing old things. 
 
 Such inventors as those whose work caused the in- 
 dustrial revolution have no equally important place in 
 the modern social organization. Their knowledge was 
 confined to the wheels, rods, and cylinders referred to 
 by the historian, whereas to-day, while we are still 
 somewhat dependent on such men, real progress can 
 be attained only by a far higher order of direction, 
 requiring trained engineers who must be at once prac- 
 tical mechanics, scientists, economists, financiers, and 
 managers of men. 
 
PROCESSES AND MECHANISM OF THE GAS-POWER 
 SYSTEM 
 
 IT was not until the establishment of the relations 
 of heat to work, and the conditions for transforming 
 the former into the latter, as embodied in that body 
 of the principles of physical laws known as thermo- 
 dynamics, that the great possibilities of the gas-power 
 system were recognized. In the steam system of secur- 
 ing work from heat, the heat is added to water, turning 
 it into high-pressure steam; the steam then acting 
 like a compressed spring can either give itself a velocity 
 as in the turbine, or push on a piston as in the piston 
 engine. No matter which way it acts in doing work, 
 much of the heat put into the steam in making it is 
 carried away by the exhaust steam, estimated at about 
 60 per cent even when working with a good vacuum, 
 and considerably more when the exhaust steam is 
 discharged into the atmosphere without condensing. 
 No matter how perfect the steam-engine mechanism, 
 these conditions, together with others noted, impose 
 a low limit on the efficiency or a high limit on the waste 
 heat. As a matter of fact, no matter what the system 
 of changing heat into work, there will be limits to the 
 possible performance of even a perfect mechanism, 
 but the limit is different for different systems. The 
 gas system has a much higher possible efficiency limit 
 
 142 
 
MECHANISM OF GAS-POWER 143 
 
 than the steam system, and one of the greatest con- 
 tributions of thermodynamics is the determination of 
 this fact, and the establishment of a method of cal- 
 culating the limit of efficiency, or the maximum pos- 
 sible amount of heat that may be transformed into 
 work by adding the heat of the fuel to gases instead of 
 to steam, using the springlike action of gases to do 
 work on pistons, much the same as does steam in piston 
 engines. 
 
 A mass of any gas, such as air, or the gaseous prod- 
 ucts of combustion, will, if confined in a chamber and 
 there heated, suffer a rise in pressure; and this gas of 
 increased pressure may be used to push a piston, ex- 
 panding as the piston moves and continuing the push 
 as long as the pressure lasts. Similarly, if the heating 
 be continued as the piston advances, the pressure may 
 be maintained higher or longer and the push augmented. 
 Early attempts, and even such comparatively recent 
 ones as were made by Captain John Ericsson during 
 our Civil War period, to embody such gas heating and 
 expanding processes in mechanisms to constitute a 
 gas or hot-air engine, based on the heating of air in- 
 closed in and between cylinders by a fire outside, 
 amounted to very little because only a small portion 
 of the heat of the fire actually reached the inclosed 
 air, and of this small amount only a fraction was con- 
 verted into work. A still more serious difficulty, how- 
 ever, was encountered in the rate of working, as air 
 can be heated only very slowly through plates, so that 
 the engine had to be enormously big to give a little 
 power and prohibitively expensive as a consequence. 
 After many trials, most of them unsuccessful, two basal 
 
144 POWER 
 
 principles were finally recognized: first, that some 
 faster method of heating was necessary; and second, 
 that air or other gas previously compressed by a piston 
 before heating is capable of yielding more work for 
 the heat it receives than without compression. Heat 
 must, therefore, be added directly to the gas without 
 passing through plates; and by compressing the gas 
 higher and higher before heating, the efficiency, or work 
 per unit of heat, may be extremely high, approaching 
 even 80 per cent, and this may be realized if no mechan- 
 ical difficulties are encountered in carrying out the 
 process. Unfortunately there are such difficulties, but 
 35 or 40 per cent has actually been realized by one of 
 these gas engines. 
 
 Means for securing the rapid heating needed are found 
 in the process of combustion itself, for there is no more 
 rapid method of making cold gases hot than by choos- 
 ing such gases as will combine chemically or burn, 
 heating themselves as the combustion proceeds. 
 Early attempts were made to use coal fires ; air pumped 
 through a fire inclosed in strong, tight chambers be- 
 came very hot almost instantaneously, and the problem 
 seemed to be solved. However, the difficulty of regu- 
 lating the fire, feeding coal, and removing ash when 
 the furnace was bolted inside of thick metal vessels, 
 and the cutting action of the ash dust on the cylinder 
 walls, soon showed that the mechanical difficulties of 
 this process were too serious. Attention was then 
 turned to an older combustion process, which, for some 
 unexplainable reason, except perhaps an unfounded 
 fear of destruction, had not received much attention, 
 the process of explosive combustion or just explosion. 
 
MECHANISM OF GAS-POWER 145 
 
 All fuel, whether solid coal, liquid oil, or gas, consists 
 of only a few primary combustible substances or chem- 
 ical elements, which when combined in various ways 
 give to natural fuels their special form. The two 
 important combustible elements are : first, solid black 
 carbon, familiar in a variety of forms itself, as lamp- 
 black, charcoal, or diamond ; and second, gaseous hy- 
 drogen, the lightest gas known and so used for inflating 
 balloons, making them able to float in air. All sorts 
 of carbon and hydrogen compounds are known, several 
 hundred in number, some existing as gases, some as 
 liquids, and others as solids, but all useful as fuel, - 
 fuel in the sense that when heated in the presence of 
 gaseous oxygen they will combine chemically, giving 
 out heat very rapidly and turning into two other gases : 
 first, carbonic acid gas, the gas used in charging soda 
 water ; and second, water vapor. In the formation of 
 carbon dioxide one particle of solid carbon unites with 
 two particles of gaseous oxygen, making one particle 
 of gaseous carbon dioxide ; and in the formation of water 
 vapor two particles of gaseous hydrogen combining 
 with one particle of gaseous oxygen make one particle 
 of very hot water vapor, or superheated steam, which, 
 when cooled, may become liquid water. If hydrogen 
 be mixed with oxygen before igniting in just the right 
 proportion, so that after combustion no hydrogen 
 remains unburnt and no oxygen is left unused, then 
 this combustion will take place in that peculiar way 
 described as explosive. This explosive property is 
 possessed by a substance or mixture when after lighting 
 it at one spot the flame will itself travel quickly through 
 the whole mass. A room filled with such a mixture 
 
146 POWER 
 
 and ignited at the center would exhibit a beautiful 
 phenomenon if it could be observed without danger ; 
 the flame would start from the central or starting 
 point and move with equal speed in all directions so 
 that there would be formed a true ball of fire rapidly 
 increasing in size until all the mixture had been burned. 
 Of course, this rapid heating would raise the pressure, 
 blowing out windows and possibly also the walls, as 
 they are not constructed to resist such pressure; but if 
 carried out in strong iron chambers, the only effect 
 would be a mass of high-pressure hot gas formed in 
 almost the wink of an eye. This explosive property 
 is peculiar to any sort of intimate mixture of fuel and 
 oxygen if the proportions are right, and as air is one- 
 fifth oxygen, the property also applies to any intimate 
 mixture of fuel and air. It makes little difference 
 whether the fuel be in the form of fine coal, charcoal 
 dust, or even flour dust, fine liquid fuel spray such 
 as an atomizer may produce, or a combustible gas 
 such as is used for lighting, produced in any convenient 
 way, or the vapor of a liquid fuel such as might be 
 obtained by heating gasolene. In every case, however, 
 the proportions of fuel to air must be kept within proper 
 limits. It is explosive mixtures of air and gaseous 
 fuel, or air and oil spray, or air and oil vapor, that are 
 now used in gas engines to produce the rapid heating 
 of confined gases, and these gases are always com- 
 pressed in cylinders by pistons before ignition, the hot 
 high-pressure gases resulting from the explosion push- 
 ing on the same piston to do the work on the return 
 stroke. 
 
 The modern gas-engine, no matter whether its fuel 
 
MECHANISM OF GAS-POWER 147 
 
 supply be primarily gas, oil, or coal, will involve ap- 
 paratus whose principal function is to create from the 
 fuel as it exists an appropriate explosive mixture for 
 use in cylinders. The explosive mixture that actually 
 exists in the gas-engine cylinder consists of air mixed 
 with gaseous fuel, or with the vapor or mist of liquid 
 fuel, in certain proportions, with which active mix- 
 tures there will be certain neutral substances like car- 
 bonic acid or water vapor derived from a previous 
 explosion. The first essential process in the operat- 
 ing of a gas-engine is, then, the making of a mixture of 
 appropriate sort, and this process in turn involves many 
 secondary processes, some of which will be traced, 
 When the mixture is made, it must be introduced into 
 a cylinder and there treated or subjected to certain 
 processes, the first of which is compression. By the 
 movement of a piston the mixture is forced into a 
 small space at one end of the cylinder, causing the pres- 
 sure to rise, and at some high compression pressure, 
 thus developed by the piston alone, the fuel, intimately 
 mixed with all the air it needs for its combustion and 
 no more, will be ignited by either hot metal or an 
 electric spark. The result of the ignition of this highly 
 compressed and confined explosive charge will be not 
 a noise, not a disruption, nothing more complicated 
 than a rapid heating of the entire mass as the flame 
 passes through it, accompanied by a rise of pressure. 
 That the flame will pass through the whole mass of 
 the confined mixture is the prime characteristic of 
 explosive mixtures, whether they be of this gas-engine 
 sort or of the gunpowder sort. Gunpowder is a mix- 
 ture of fuel and the oxygen it needs to burn it, all in 
 
148 POWER 
 
 the solid form. There are rapid-burning powders 
 and slow-burning powders, and we have learned how 
 to apply powder of varying rates of combustion to 
 projectiles of different weights, sizes, and shapes, to 
 secure the most effective driving of the projectile, 
 by giving it the highest muzzle velocity with the least 
 tendency to smash the gun or to dissipate energy. 
 Compared with most gunpowder, explosive gaseous 
 mixtures, such as are used in engines, are very slow- 
 burning indeed; and the rate at which they burn, or 
 the rate at which the flame travels through them from 
 particle to particle, is technically called the rate of 
 propagation. As a consequence of this rapid heating 
 of the confined gases, the pressure very materially 
 rises to perhaps twice what it was before, occasionally 
 4^ times, rarely 5 times, reaching maximum values of 
 from 150 to 600 pounds per square inch, and the ex- 
 plosive combustion has performed its useful function. 
 The explosive combustion has rapidly caused the 
 pressure of the gases to double, quadruple, or more, and 
 in a short time after compression. This high gas 
 pressure acts on the same piston that originally com- 
 pressed the charge into the confined space, technically 
 called the cylinder clearance, or explosion chamber, 
 or breech end. On the return stroke following com- 
 pression, the high-pressure gases will drive the piston 
 back, and in so doing ever so much more work will be 
 done by the hot gases than was required to compress 
 the cold gaseous mixture, and the difference is the 
 useful work. The burnt gases, when the piston has 
 reached the end of the stroke, must be expelled, and 
 the whole series of operations of making the mixture, 
 
MECHANISM OF GAS-POWER 
 
 149 
 
 introducing it, compressing, exploding, expanding, and 
 expelling it will proceed automatically by means of 
 mechanism designed with this end in view. The gas- 
 engine is then primarily a cylinder with a piston and 
 certain means for making proper mixtures, getting 
 them into the cylinder, treating them properly after 
 they arrive, getting the burnt gases out, and doing it 
 
 FIG. 129 
 
 as often as may be necessary, as fast or slow as may be 
 necessary, and using as much mixture as may be neces- 
 sary to do the required work. There must also be 
 some element of control, so that if much work is required 
 of the engine much work will be done on the piston 
 by the use of much mixture, while if little work is re- 
 quired by the engine only a little mixture will be used. 
 Now all the complicated mechanisms that are seen 
 
150 
 
 POWER 
 
 about gas engines, and which are well indicated by 
 Fig. 129, are there for just these things, as well as per- 
 haps for a few others, such as lubrication, cooling of 
 the hot walls to prevent them twisting out of shape 
 and to prevent the lubricating oil from burning up, 
 but not much more. It is hard to believe that there 
 is not much more than this when first viewing a large 
 gas-engine, which seems to be a mass of complicated 
 parts, the duty or function of which is by no means 
 clear or apparent. 
 
 Before proceeding to study more in detail the ele- 
 ments of t|ie essential processes of making mixtures 
 
 FIG. 130 
 
 from natural fuels, proper in kind and amount, it will 
 be better to trace the succession of processes most 
 intimately associated with the cylinder, piston, and 
 valves, afterwards returning to the making of the mix- 
 ture before it reaches the cylinder. 
 
 A diagram of a piston and two valves, one for ad- 
 mission and the other for exhaust, is shown in Fig. 130. 
 The piston is attached direct to the usual connecting 
 rod, crank, crank-pin, and crank-shaft. It appears 
 from the upper left-hand diagram that the piston is 
 moving outward, drawing the mixture into the cylinder 
 
MECHANISM OF GAS-POWER 151 
 
 through the open inlet valve, which is formed much 
 like a mushroom and is called a poppet valve. Just 
 how the proper mixture is made is a matter of no im- 
 portance at this time. The drawing in of the mixture 
 occupies the whole of this suction or charging stroke. 
 Under the influence of the fly-wheel the piston returns 
 as is indicated in the lower left-hand diagram, com- 
 pressing the mixture with all the valves closed. This 
 compression continues for this entire stroke, which is, 
 therefore, called the compression stroke, and at the end 
 of this stroke ignition takes place with a resultant 
 pressure rise, previously described. This is followed 
 during the next out stroke by the expansion of the gases, 
 as shown in the upper right-hand diagram, all valves 
 still remaining closed for this entire expansion stroke. 
 Toward the end of this expansion stroke the exhaust 
 valve is opened and the gases begin to rush out. The 
 piston then returns, expelling the rest of the burnt 
 gases or nearly all of them, through the exhaust valve, 
 which is^open. Of course, some burnt gases must be 
 left behind, as much as will fill the explosion chamber 
 or clearance space. Thus, the succession of processes 
 occupies four strokes, giving to such an engine the name 
 of four-stroke-cycle or four-cycle engine, which may 
 be examined again with a little more detail in Fig. 131. 
 Here both valves have vertical stems. A water-jacket 
 is shown surrounding the cylinder ; a more usual form 
 of piston is shown with the pin at the middle of its 
 hollow interior, it being itself a cylinder open at one 
 end and closed at the other. The diagram shows 
 eight positions of the piston and valves, two for each 
 stroke, one illustrating the relation of the parts at the 
 
152 
 
 POWER 
 
 beginning and one at the end. Thus, starting at the 
 upper left-hand corner and passing down, the suction 
 stroke is shown beginning with the inlet valve open 
 and ending with it closed, the valve remaining open 
 all the intervening time. The compression stroke is 
 
 FIG. 131 
 
 shown with both valves closed, both at the beginning 
 and end and for all the time between. The expan- 
 sion stroke is shown with both valves still closed at 
 the beginning, remaining closed until the crank has 
 reached the angle shown, at which point the valve opens 
 so as to completely relieve the cylinder pressure before 
 the piston starts back. The exhaust, therefore, really 
 
MECHANISM OF GAS-POWER 
 
 153 
 
 occupies more than a full stroke because it begins before 
 the completion of this remaining part of the expansion 
 stroke and occupies the whole of the next stroke. In 
 still greater detail some of the mechanism is shown 
 in Fig. 132, representing a cross-section through one 
 of these four-cycle horizontal single-acting engines. 
 Here it appears that the piston has webs under its head 
 to strengthen it. It has spring rings around part of 
 
 FIG. 132 
 
 it, so formed as to prevent the high-pressure gases 
 leaking out. There is water all around the cylinder 
 and around the valve chambers. The valves are shown 
 with springs to close them and keep them closed all 
 the time that some other piece of mechanism is not 
 pushing them open, and between the valves is shown 
 the igniter at F, which is nothing more than a device 
 for making an electric spark at the proper time ; besides 
 these features there are, of course, a frame, crank, 
 crank-shaft, a counterweight, oil-cups, oil guards, and 
 fly-wheel. A small vertical high-speed engine is shown 
 in Fig. 133, in which there is the usual piston with 
 piston rings, two valves, one above the other, the upper 
 
154 
 
 POWER 
 
 one being for inlet and the lower one for exhaust, both 
 provided with springs to keep them closed, but the 
 bottom one having in line with its stem a push rod 
 against which a cam may strike, the cam being only 
 a lump on the small auxiliary shaft. When the cam 
 does strike the push rod, it will rise and the valve will 
 open. Both valves might be so operated, and in most 
 
 large engines are operated by 
 such cams, but in some small 
 engines, such as this, to simplify 
 the engine the inlet valve has 
 no cam to operate it. It is 
 just held to its seat with a 
 light spring. When the pres- 
 sure in the cylinder due to the 
 suction stroke of the piston 
 becomes less than atmosphere, 
 or less than in the mixture 
 chamber, that difference in 
 pressure on the two sides of 
 the valve forces the valve 
 open. At the end of the suc- 
 tion stroke the difference in 
 
 pressure is relieved ; in fact, it would reverse on com- 
 pression so that the valve promptly closes. The frame 
 here shown is of different form from the previous one, 
 being intended for attachment to the frame of an auto- 
 mobile. The cylinder has no water-jacket, but has in its 
 place a number of ribs. The heat from the cylinder will 
 be conducted out along these ribs and radiated in all 
 directions from them ; air blast fans are sometimes 
 added to facilitate the cooling of these ribs and the 
 
 FIG. 133 
 
MECHANISM OF GAS-POWER 
 
 155 
 
 cylinder. This is the characteristic of the air-cooled 
 type of motor, which is only useful in small sizes, because 
 even the most effective ribs cannot produce good enough 
 cooling for large cylinders ; in them water is always 
 used. In the next figure (Fig. 134) there are shown 
 three views of a large horizontal engine in which the 
 operations take place on both sides of the piston, 
 
 FIG. 134 
 
 making it a double-acting engine. The piston in this 
 case is fastened to a piston rod, which passes through 
 holes in the heads of the cylinders, these holes being 
 packed by stuffing boxes to prevent the leakage of gas. 
 Such piston rods and pistons would get red-hot in a 
 short time if not cooled, as explosions take place regu- 
 larly on both sides of them, so they are made hollow 
 and water is circulated through them just as water 
 
156 
 
 POWER 
 
 is circulated around the cylinders and valve chambers. 
 Valves are shown as in the previous cases, always of 
 the poppet form and moved by cams through rods and 
 levers. Inlet valves are on the top and exhausts at 
 the bottom ; but here, the engine being double-acting, 
 there are two sets of valves, one for each end of the 
 cylinder, and all of more complicated structure to give 
 the necessary strength and avoid cracking from the 
 severe internal heat. When two cylinders are set in 
 
 FIG. 135 
 
 line, the engine is technically known as a tandem double- 
 acting engine, and Fig. 135 illustrates a section of one 
 of these engines of large size, the piston and rod of one 
 cylinder being also shown in section while the other 
 is not. Two sets of double-acting cylinders, side by 
 side, and working on the same crank-shaft, constitute 
 the standard arrangement for large engines and is 
 called the double-acting tandem twin engine. Two 
 
MECHANISM OF GAS-POWER 
 
 157 
 
 such engines of about 1700 h. p. each are shown in Fig. 
 136, as installed in the power plant of the Milwaukee 
 
 FIG. 136 
 
 Railway. A closer view of one cylinder of another 
 
 large engine of this type is shown in Fig. 137, showing 
 
 clearly the valve 
 
 gear and the 
 
 auxiliary side 
 
 shaft from 
 
 which it derives 
 
 its motion. At 
 
 the new steel 
 
 plant at Gary, 
 
 Indiana, there 
 
 will be provided 
 
 over a hundred 
 
 thousand horse- 
 
 - ,1 FIG. 137 
 
 power of these 
 
 large gas-engines, one group of which, consisting of a 
 
 row of three thousand horse-power units, is shown in 
 
158 
 
 POWER 
 
 Fig. 138. The man standing on one of the cylinders 
 will serve as a scale by which the size may be judged. 
 All of these engines described are four-cycle engines, 
 that is to say, for every stroke used in drawing in a 
 charge, three other complete strokes are necessary, 
 one to compress, one to expand, and one to exhaust, 
 so that with such large double-acting tandem engines 
 as have just been examined, there is an explosion in 
 each chamber every fourth stroke, or with the four 
 
 FIG. 138 
 
 chambers of a double-acting tandem engine each stroke 
 of the piston is a working stroke, and for a twin engine 
 there will be two impulses forward and two impulses 
 back, or four total impulses for each revolution of the 
 fly-wheel. 
 
 Engines are made to operate under other cycles so 
 far as the cylinder functions are concerned. For 
 example, Fig. 139 illustrates an engine that does not 
 have as many valves as the others so far examined, 
 but it has something in place of them. It is a two-cycle 
 
MECHANISM OF GAS-POWER 
 
 159 
 
 engine, so called because it can carry out all the neces- 
 sary series of cylinder operations in two strokes instead 
 of four. This is done by utilizing the other end of the 
 cylinder, which in a single-acting four-cycle engine is 
 idle, or, what is the same thing, by utilizing a closed 
 crank case, or, what is likewise equivalent, in very large 
 engines by adding pumps, one for air and one for gas. 
 The function of these pumps, or the crank case, if it is 
 
 FIG. 139 
 
 closed, or the forward end of the cylinder, if it be closed 
 up, is to get ready the mixture so that it can be puffed 
 into the cylinder during a portion of the stroke with- 
 out using up a whole stroke. Referring to Fig. 139, 
 it will appear that the piston is fitted with a lip G, 
 which, in the position shown, is just underneath a slot 
 or port in the cylinder marked /, communicating with 
 the passage B, C, D to the forward end of the cylinder 
 and communicating likewise at the bottom of B with 
 an inlet valve A. This inlet valve is of the automatic 
 
160 POWER 
 
 sort, having no cam to open it. Just at the bottom 
 of the cylinder there is another slot E, connecting 
 with the exhaust pipe. Imagine the piston to move 
 to the left, then whatever is in the cylinder when the 
 piston covers the ports / and E will be compressed. 
 At the same time there will be a suction in the cham- 
 ber B and C, lifting the valve A and allowing the mix- 
 ture to follow in behind the piston in the chamber Z), 
 while the compression is going on to the left. When 
 this compression is all over, the igniter, placed at F, 
 will fire the charge, the piston will move to the right, 
 the hot gases on the left-hand side expanding, and 
 compressing the mixture on the right-hand side. When 
 the piston has reached the point of uncovering E, the 
 high-pressure hot gases will rush out through the ex- 
 haust pipe, as indicated by the arrow. Immediately 
 after, the top of the piston will uncover the port 7, 
 communicating with the fresh mixture at J3, which will 
 rush in because it is compressed and the pressure in 
 the cylinder is now low, having been relieved through 
 E. As the mixture rushes in it will be deflected by 
 G, the lip on the piston, and will so be deflected sidewise 
 to the end of the cylinder and there be reflected back 
 towards E, pushing out in this way much of the burnt 
 gases that may be left. Thus, exhaust is accomplished 
 and a new charge fed in during the time it takes for the 
 piston to uncover the port E and get back again so as 
 to cover it up. The whole working series of operations 
 is accomplished in two strokes, which fact gives the 
 two-cycle engine its name. 
 
 All modern gas-engines subject the mixture after 
 it goes to the cylinder to essentially the same series 
 
MECHANISM OF GAS-POWER 161 
 
 of processes, however much they may differ in other 
 ways structurally. The principal differences are to 
 be found in the means for making the mixture, ad- 
 justing the quantity of mixture needed each stroke, 
 and preparing natural fuels by vaporizing liquids and 
 gasifying coal. The first vital function of any gas- 
 engine mechanism is to make proper explosive mix- 
 tures, and special apparatus is designed with this in 
 view ; for the mixture is to the gas-engine what the 
 steam pressure is to the steam-engine and the water 
 pressure to the water-wheel. Chemically speaking, a 
 mixture is proper when it contains exactly the amount 
 of oxygen necessary to burn the fuel, no more and no 
 less, and when at the same time, by reason of perfect 
 mingling, each particle of fuel is in direct contact with 
 its own share of oxygen. Since the oxygen must be 
 derived from the air, such perfect mixtures cannot be 
 obtained, because each particle of oxygen carries with 
 it, roughly, five times its own amount of nitrogen, which 
 is neutral or inactive. The effect of this nitrogen is 
 not, however, serious, as it only retards the rate of 
 propagation or increases the time of explosion. Much 
 neutral will make a mixture too slow-burning to be use- 
 ful, but fortunately there are conditions which acceler- 
 ate the combustion so that even very weak mixtures 
 are still useful in engines. As already explained, ex- 
 plosive combustion is spherical in character, inasmuch 
 as with the flame moving at a fixed speed in all direc- 
 tions the fire exists at any moment on the surface of 
 a sphere. This in itself results in accelerated com- 
 bustion, because as the surface of a sphere grows 
 faster than its diameter, more mixture will be burnt at 
 
 M 
 
162 POWER 
 
 \ 
 
 each succeeding moment than the preceding, even if 
 the rate of propagation or increase of diameter of the 
 sphere is constant. 
 
 This spherical sort of regular acceleration of the rate 
 of combustion is of great importance in engines, but 
 the uniform flame propagation with which it is asso- 
 ciated does not maintain for long. There is an even 
 greater tendency to accelerate, due to the elastic nature 
 of gases. It is plain that with the first little burst 
 of flame the pressure will momentarily rise at that spot 
 higher than at neighboring spots, and so a sort of pres- 
 sure impulse or wave will be transmitted through the 
 mass much as sound travels through the air. It is 
 found in actual observations on mixtures that while 
 at first the flame movement seems to be uniform, it 
 shortly becomes oscillatory. This may be due to the 
 fact that in mixtures of high pressure the flame travels 
 faster, so that at the crest of the little wave started from 
 the first burst of flame there will be a momentary accel- 
 eration of combustion followed by a retardation as 
 the crest changes into a hollow, and then as at the point 
 where a hollow existed a crest appears, there will be 
 alternately slow and fast flame movement. The wave 
 thus formed will meet a returning wave, a wave that has 
 been sent to the limits of the chamber and reflected 
 back. It seems at times as if such old reflected and new 
 advancing waves superimposed their crests, producing 
 localized spots of very high pressure and very fast com- 
 bustion. Such localized fast combustion is detonating 
 in character and its condition is designated as the 
 explosive or detonating wave. 
 
 While the addition of neutral to a mixture will cause 
 
MECHANISM OF GAS-POWER 163 
 
 the whole combustion to proceed more slowly and 
 too much neutral will prevent an explosion taking place 
 at all, yet very weak mixture can be successfully 
 burned at a proper rate by previous compression. A 
 mixture so weak that it will not burn in the open air 
 will, if compressed enough, burn quite readily, so that 
 a mixture that contains so much neutral as to be non- 
 explosive may be made explosive if it is previously 
 compressed, and engines may successfully use gases 
 so weak as to be otherwise useless. 
 
 If there is more air present than the fuel needs, all 
 the excess may behave the same as a neutral, because 
 it is inactive. As a consequence, mixtures with more 
 air than is chemically needed are explosive, as well 
 as those chemically correct, up to a certain limit, of 
 course. On the other hand, mixtures that contain 
 more gas than the air present can burn are likewise 
 explosive up to another limit, the extra gas behaving 
 as neutral because it is inactive. Mixtures, then, may 
 be explosive through quite a wide range of proportions 
 of air to fuel, or quite a wide range of proportions of 
 active and inactive diluent materials. The range of 
 proportions of explosive mixtures is greater the richer 
 the original fuel. Thus, for kerosene, gasolene, natural 
 gas, and similar rich substances, the range of propor- 
 tions of air to fuel is very great; while with blast furnace 
 gas, which is a very weak gas, the range is not so great. 
 In every case, however, the range of explosive propor- 
 tions becomes wider and wider the more the mixture 
 is compressed. Whenever fuel is in excess, it is entirely 
 wasted, but excess air can do little harm if the mixture 
 will still explode. 
 
164 POWER 
 
 The piston speed of the engine is zero every time the 
 piston is at the end of the stroke, because it comes to 
 a dead stop ; the speed rises to a maximum somewhere 
 about mid stroke and falls again to zero, so that it is 
 constantly and regularly changing. It is found in prac- 
 tice that the best results are obtained when the com- 
 bustion is completed as nearly as possible before the 
 piston begins its working stroke. It would seem from 
 this that complete combustion should take place be- 
 tween the time when compression is completed and 
 when expansion should begin, that is to say, it would 
 seem as if the explosion should be completed in zero 
 time or be instantaneous. Now, as a matter of fact, 
 the conditions are not quite so severe, for it is found 
 that by igniting the charge a little before compression 
 is finished, the flame acceleration which is natural to 
 the mixture will be in most cases quite enough to prac- 
 tically complete the combustion before the expansion 
 stroke begins. If ignition were delayed much, the 
 piston speed would have increased so much that in 
 a certain sense the combustion would never catch up 
 with it, and instead of getting high explosion pressures 
 at the beginning they would be low ; instead of getting 
 most work from the heat by expanding after complete 
 combustion, there would be obtained a less amount of 
 work because expansion would be proceeding during 
 combustion. The time of ignition, therefore, must 
 be carefully adjusted, first with respect to the piston 
 speed, and second with respect to the natural rate of 
 combustion of the mixture. A mixture which is too 
 slow burning for a given piston speed may be accel- 
 erated by increase of compression, and to a certain 
 
MECHANISM OF GAS-POWER 165 
 
 extent this adjustment can be made. There is, how- 
 ever, a limit to this increase of compression. The limit 
 is imposed by the natural temperature of ignition of 
 the mixture. As the mixture is more and more com- 
 pressed, so does it become hotter throughout its entire 
 mass; sometimes it will get hot enough to ignite itself, 
 independent of the spark. This is called self-ignition 
 or preignition. It is found in actual work that, while 
 a weak mixture can be made faster burning by com- 
 pression, it cannot be made as fast burning as a rich 
 mixture because the compression cannot be carried 
 far enough. It ignites itself before as much compres- 
 sion as might be desired has been attained. 
 
 It might seem from these arguments that it was 
 desirable to highly compress only weak mixtures so 
 as to make them burn fast enough, but as a matter of 
 fact it is desirable that we should compress all mix- 
 tures as much as possible, as much as the tendency 
 to self-ignite will allow. One of the principal proposi- 
 tions concerning engines of this class, solved by the 
 mathematics of thermodynamics, is that the more the 
 compression the higher the efficiency and without 
 limit. An engine, then, using a mixture that permits 
 of high compression, whether it be rich or poor, should 
 by reason of the high compression alone give a high 
 efficiency, and within certain limits this is found to 
 be true in practice. It is also found that our desire 
 for high compressions and high efficiency is limited 
 only by the temperature of ignition for the mixture, 
 and in general, though not always, the richer mixture 
 will stand the least compression. More particularly 
 is it true that certain hydrocarbon fuels, such as kero- 
 
166 POWER 
 
 :* 
 
 sene and gasolene, will stand the least compression 
 before ignition, and likewise mixtures with free hydro- 
 gen will stand less as a rule than mixtures without 
 hydrogen, other things being equal. The limit of com- 
 pression, then, is set in practice by the temperature of 
 ignition, and this in turn depends upon the nature of 
 the fuel, so that with different fuels it is not possible 
 to get quite the same efficiency, because equally high 
 compressions are not permissible. 
 
 So far as the engines themselves are concerned, these 
 physical properties of explosive mixtures are valuable 
 in two ways: first, in dictating how the mixtures 
 may be treated in cylinders ; and second, in explaining 
 things which happen but which were not foreseen. A 
 knowledge of such mixtures is quite essential to a correct 
 understanding of the gas-engine. We are, however, 
 concerned principally with one part of the application 
 of this subject. The engine will run properly and best 
 when its mixture is most constant, when the engine 
 gets the proper quantity of this mixture, and when the 
 mixture received is compressed as highly as possible 
 without forcing it beyond control. 
 
 As previously stated, by far the greatest variation 
 in the mechanism of engines, and by far the greatest 
 complication in their mechanism, is found in that part 
 of the valve gear which is concerned with the propor- 
 tioning of mixtures, the actual mingling of the parts of 
 the mixture, and with the adjustment of the quantity 
 in proportion to the work to be done. 
 
 Mixtures are proportioned in engines as they are 
 drawn in. In other words, they are proportioned as 
 they are made. The suction stroke of the piston starts 
 
MECHANISM OF GAS-POWER 
 
 167 
 
 a movement of gases towards the cylinder, and as there 
 will be two sources from which to satisfy this displace- 
 ment, one the atmospheric air and the other the fuel 
 gas-pipe, it is plain that if a valve in the fuel gas-pipe 
 be closed and the air opening be free, nothing but air 
 will enter; or if the air valve be closed and the gas 
 valve opened, nothing but gas will enter; and so if a valve 
 be opened in both the air and the gas ports, both air 
 and gas will enter and the proportions will depend upon 
 the relative openings. This is 
 the primary principle of pro- 
 portioning used, two openings, 
 one for air and the other for 
 gas, and means for adjusting 
 these openings so that the rela- 
 tive amount of air and gas can 
 be adjusted. These valves for 
 adjusting the proportions are 
 generally independent of the 
 valve controlling the mixture 
 admission to the cylinder, and 
 may themselves or in conjunc- 
 tion with some other device be called the mixing valves 
 or proportioning valves of the engine. In Fig. 140 is 
 shown an inlet valve attached to the cylinder casing, 
 with gas and air ports, the upper one being for gas, 
 each port provided with a damper valve. On the 
 suction stroke of the engine the sliding sleeve attached 
 to the valve stem will be pushed down with the valve, 
 and the holes in the casing and sleeve will register. 
 In this position the gas drawn past its damper will 
 pass through the port from the inner to the outer 
 
 FIG. 140 
 
168 
 
 POWER 
 
 chamber, meeting air from the other port, and the mix- 
 ture will enter the cylinder by passing the poppet 
 valve. This sliding sleeve is added to the inlet valve 
 stem to prevent the ga&, which is generally under some 
 pressure higher than atmosphere, from flowing into the 
 air passage when the piston suction ceases between 
 changing strokes. If this were omitted, there would 
 be a tendency for the mixture to become too rich at 
 
 low loads or at intervals 
 between suctions, be- 
 cause gas would collect 
 in the air passage. This 
 slide, therefore, serves 
 to overcome this ten- 
 dency of the gas to catch 
 up on the air by reason 
 of different pressures. 
 
 As the atmospheric 
 air has no tendency to 
 flow except during suc- 
 tion, the air damper 
 valve might be done 
 away with and in many engines actually does not exist. 
 Similarly, the slide attached to the valve stem to 
 prevent the gas flowing over to the air passage is often 
 omitted, but other devices are substituted in its place. 
 In Fig. 141 is shown a mixing valve of a different sort, 
 forming part of the main inlet valve, a second disk 
 attached to the main valve-stem opening and closing 
 the gas passage. These latter mixing valves are all 
 mechanically opened and closed, whether attached to 
 the main valve-stems or independent, whereas some of 
 
 FIG. 141 
 
MECHANISM OF GAS-POWER 
 
 169 
 
 the good mixing valves of the independent class are 
 automatic. One of this kind, shown in Fig. 142, is a 
 sort of check- valve arrangement. Any reduction of 
 pressure in the upper chamber m and T lifts the peculiar 
 shaped check-valve which has two seats a and g, so that 
 gas passes out into the reduced pressure mixing cham- 
 ber from the gas-pipe through port g } at the same 
 time that air passes up 
 through slot a, the two 
 streams crossing and so 
 mixing. Later, by pass- 
 ing upward through 
 other slots m, the air 
 and gas are further 
 mixed or stirred. In 
 the mixture chamber 
 there is a damper con- 
 trol valve T to fix the 
 amount of mixture that 
 may reach the engine. 
 The relative advantages 
 of all these ways of 
 making mixtures and 
 proportioning them, together with perhaps hundreds 
 of other different ones in use, are, of course, beyond 
 the province of such lectures as this. The examples 
 shown will serve as an indication of the guiding prin- 
 ciples used to carry out the functions of mixing and 
 proportioning, which are of prime importance. It is 
 a fact that the success of gas-engines, especially large 
 ones, depends very largely upon the perfection with 
 which the details of these devices are worked out. 
 
 FIG. 142 
 
170 POWER 
 
 When the proper sort of mixture is made by means 
 such as have been examined, the next thing necessary 
 is to adjust the quantity of mixture that the engine 
 may receive. From the last figure it appeared that 
 there was a damper valve between the mixing valve 
 and the main inlet valve. This is one of the simplest 
 and most effective means of controlling the quantity 
 of mixture. The main inlet valve is opened the same 
 amount every time by the mechanism, but the engine 
 can get no mixture if this damper is shut ; if it is opened 
 wide, a full charge will be taken. The amount of this 
 damper opening is, therefore, a measure of the quantity 
 of mixture the engine can get, while the mixing valve 
 makes automatically as much as is required, and of the 
 proper kind. It is the function of the governor of the 
 engine to fix the position of this damper. At light 
 loads the speed rises and certain free weights of the 
 governor move, fly out, and actuate the damper through 
 rods, moving it to the closed position. At heavy 
 loads the speed reduction moves it to the open posi- 
 tion and such sensitiveness can be secured as is 
 surprising to a stranger. This device is an example 
 of the principle of controlling the quantity of mixture 
 by a throttle valve, independent of both the mixing 
 valve and of the main inlet valve. There are other 
 ways of doing the same thing, and many of them, 
 and one or two examples of typical methods will be 
 illustrated. 
 
 Instead of having a mixture control valve, or throttle 
 valve, between the mixing valve and the main inlet 
 valve, and all three independent, the throttle effect 
 can be secured at the main inlet valve by varying the 
 
MECHANISM OF GAS-POWER 
 
 171 
 
 lift of that valve, at light loads letting it open just 
 a little, and at full loads permitting full movement, 
 as controlled by the governor. Such a device is shown 
 in Fig. 143. The cam shaft is shown at the side carry- 
 ing a cam which strikes the roller, and through a guided 
 push rod causes the lever L to move upward. The 
 other end of the lever L at the left is fixed to the valve- 
 stem by a pin shown at , and on the top this lever is 
 curved to an arc of a circle, having its center at 2. 
 Along this curved portion may 
 be swung the shaded point 
 attached to the bell-crank. 
 This point is the fulcrum of 
 the lever L. When the point 
 of the fulcrum is close to the 
 valve-stem, that is to say, at 
 the left, the constant lift of the 
 outer end of the cam will move 
 the valve but little, whereas if 
 the lever point is at the outer 
 end of L, the valve will move a good deal. The gov- 
 ernor shown above the cam fixes the position of this 
 movable fulcrum so that at high speeds it is in one 
 position, and at lower speeds in another position, thus 
 varying the quantity of the mixture by varying the 
 extent of the main valve lift through which all mixture 
 must pass. This is known as the variable lift inlet 
 valve type of mixture control, independent of the 
 mixing valve. Another type controls the quantity 
 of mixture at the mixing valve itself, independent of 
 the main valve and with no separate throttle. Such 
 a device is shown in Fig. 144. Here the governor 
 
 FIG. 143 
 
172 
 
 POWER 
 
 H, 
 
 moves a cylindrical sleeve up and down, thus varying the 
 opening of the slots in the sleeve A, which communicate 
 with the air and gas passages C and D. This up-and- 
 down sleeve movement will close both air and gas pas- 
 sages at the same time and in proportion, independent 
 of the main inlet valve. It is the function of the gov- 
 ernor to fix the vertical position of this sleeve, which 
 
 will, therefore, have a 
 position for each speed 
 and remain there until 
 the speed changes. 
 
 There are several hun- 
 dred different systems 
 for controlling the quan- 
 tity of mixture admitted 
 to the cylinder while 
 maintaining its quality 
 constant, and others for 
 varying the quality in- 
 tentionally, with all con- 
 F ^ ceivable combinations 
 
 of these functions .of 
 making mixtures and admitting them to the main 
 cylinder; but from what has been said the nature of 
 the problem should be clear. 
 
 In all modern engines the mixture that is formed, 
 admitted, and compressed is ignited by electric sparks 
 except in a few types of oil engines that will be dis- 
 cussed later. These electric sparking arrangements 
 are of two general classes, but all have the same effect. 
 In the class known as the make-and-break spark two 
 metal parts are brought together within the cylinder 
 
MECHANISM OF GAS-POWER 173 
 
 so that an electric current, generated either by batteries 
 or little dynamos outside, may flow through the point 
 of contact. When the point of contact is broken, the 
 electric current, especially if it is assisted by a coil, the 
 details of which need not be described here, will not 
 immediately cease flowing, but will have a tendency 
 to jump the gap, forming a little stream of flame, which 
 will, of course, break off when the gap gets wide enough. 
 The best practical illustration of this action is the or- 
 dinary arc light used in the streets for illumination. 
 Here the two parts are carbon pencils which originally 
 rest together in contact, but when the current flows 
 through them they are drawn apart by means of mecha- 
 nism in the body of the lamp and maintained at a cer- 
 tain distance so that the electric flame or arc can 
 continue to pass. In the gas-engine igniter of the make- 
 and-break type, metal parts are used in place of these 
 carbons and are brought together and sprung apart at 
 the proper point of the stroke by suitable mechanisms. 
 This short electric flame or arc ignites the mix- 
 ture in contact, after which its own property of self- 
 propagation will suffice to inflame the whole mass. 
 In the other system of ignition two fixed points, both 
 of metal, are used, projecting into the cylinder. Cur- 
 rent of very high electrical pressure or voltage is led 
 to these two fixed points, the ends of which are separated 
 only about T V inch. When the electrical pressure 
 is high enough, the current will jump the intervening 
 space and thus make a sudden flash. This is known 
 as the jump spark system and a common illustration 
 of jump sparks is lightning. The jump spark is really 
 nothing more than a little flash of lightning, differing 
 
174 POWER 
 
 from it only in the fact that its path and the time when 
 it is to pass are also controlled mechanically. 
 
 This review of the principal processes underlying 
 the obtaining of power by the explosion of gaseous fuel 
 and air mixtures has been based more on the ideas 
 involved than on the mechanism because, as was the 
 case with the steam-power system, the mechanism may 
 have great variety of form and detail and still be essen- 
 tially the same in what it is able to do. By these 
 processes, embodying any one of the standard forms 
 of mechanism, it appears that we are able to transform 
 the heat of combustion almost instantly into useful 
 work, or at least part of it. Both combustion and 
 work generation take place within the same cylinder 
 chamber, and the second immediately follows the first. 
 There is no intermediate substance introduced, like 
 water and steam as in the earlier systems, involving 
 losses of heat in making the steam and controlling its 
 flow. Such losses as occur take place right in the same 
 chamber where everything else happens. By means of 
 this direct procedure, and it is to the method that at- 
 tention should be directed, it is possible to transform 
 more of the heat of combustion into work than by using 
 steam between the fire and actual working chamber, so 
 that gas-engines are essentially capable of higher thermal 
 efficiency than steam plants. Cases are on record in 
 which there was generated into work over 30 per cent 
 of the heat of the fuel, about twice what our best 
 steam-engines are capable of doing, and it is a common 
 every-day practice to secure efficiencies of from 25 to 30 
 per cent. Of course, it must be remembered that the 
 gas-engine cannot do this unless the fuel is in the proper 
 
MECHANISM OF GAS-POWER 175 
 
 gaseous or equivalent form, and coal is not in that 
 form naturally. When coal is transformed from its 
 solid, natural condition to the gaseous form, a perfectly 
 feasible process, there will be involved a loss, so that 
 when gas-engines are to operate on coal fuel something 
 must be subtracted from these efficiencies, but not a 
 great deal. Another very remarkable fact concerning 
 the efficiencies of these engines, which must not be for- 
 gotten, is that the little engine of 25 h. p. has almost 
 as high an efficiency as the large ones of 2500 h. p. 
 This is another striking contrast to steam-engine per- 
 formance, in which to get a high efficiency the engine 
 must be large. It has already been pointed out that 
 the average horse-powers of engines used in manu- 
 facturing operations is small, less than 100. In such 
 sizes these gas-engines are ever so much more efficient 
 than steam-engines, being built to convert from two 
 to four times as much of the heat of the fuel into work 
 as the corresponding steam-engine can do. It, there- 
 fore, seems reasonable to expect that, as the use of these 
 gas-engines becomes wider as they become better 
 known, there will result for the general average of 
 conditions throughout the country a very material 
 reduction in fuel consumption for the same power, 
 or a large extension of the total power for no increase 
 in fuel consumption. They, therefore, are likely to 
 be found the greatest fuel conservation means that the 
 country has yet seen. Their construction and ex- 
 tended use may be expected to improve with time, 
 and their reliability of operation and popularity with 
 power users will depend upon the perfection with which 
 their details are worked out structurally. The struc- 
 
176 POWER 
 
 tural developments which have led to the modern 
 gas-engines are scarcely 10 or 15 years old. Much 
 more may we expect of the system when it has been 
 in use for 160 years, which is the case with the steam- 
 engine. No one familiar with the subject would dare 
 to predict the possibilities, but that great progress will 
 be made is absolutely certain. 
 
VI 
 
 ADAPTATION OF SOLID AND LIQUID FUELS FOR THE 
 USE OF INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES 
 
 ALL early gas engines were operated on illuminating 
 gas used as a fuel, so that their use was confined to cities 
 where such gas was available ; and the sizes that could 
 be economically so operated were limited also, because 
 this kind of fuel is very expensive. To illustrate this 
 latter point, assume that illuminating gas is sold at 
 $1 per 1000 cubic feet, each cubic foot yielding on 
 combustion 600 heat units. Under these conditions 
 the purchaser receives for his dollar 600,000 heat units. 
 Compare this now with bituminous coal at $3 per ton 
 of 2000 pounds, each pound yielding about 15,000 
 heat units, thus giving to the purchaser 30,000,000 
 heat units for $3 or 10,000,000 for one dollar. Under 
 these conditions it appears that such gas fuel is nearly 
 17 times as costly as the coal, so that power users can- 
 not afford to use such gas in competition with this coal 
 unless there is a corresponding difference in the amount 
 of heat that can be converted into useful work in favor 
 of the gas. In other w^ords, unless a gas-engine using 
 this fuel is capable of transforming into work 17 times 
 as much of the heat it gets in the gas form as a steam 
 power system can convert from the heat in coal form, 
 there would be no advantage in the use of gas-engines. 
 Enormous as this difference may seem, fully this much 
 N 177 
 
178 POWER 
 
 exists when the units are very small, a few horse-power, 
 for example, so that in installations requiring only a 
 few horse-power it is found to be more economical to 
 use a small gas-engine even with the expensive illumi- 
 nating gas fuel than to use the same size of steam-engine 
 with the cheaper fuel. This situation is helped by the 
 lower first cost of a small gas-engine compared with 
 the same capacity of steam-engine and boiler together. 
 When, however, the size of the unit increases to several 
 hundred horse-power the situation is quite different. 
 In these sizes illuminating gas as fuel can never com- 
 pete with coal used directly. 
 
 If other and cheaper sources of gas supply, or means 
 of adapting coal and oil fuels for the use of gas-engines, 
 had not been discovered, the gas system of power gen- 
 eration, in spite of its inherently higher possible effi- 
 ciency, could never have competed with the steam 
 system in the larger sizes. In the development of the 
 gas-engine mechanism up to the time when it had been 
 demonstrated that it was a commercial machine, two 
 sources of cheaper gas appeared. The first was the 
 natural gas which issues from the earth, but in only a 
 few localities, the most notable of which are the middle 
 Central States, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, 
 and West Virginia. This fuel is ideal and in some 
 places can be produced and sold as low as 5 cents per 1000 
 cubic feet. As this gas yields about 1000 heat-units per 
 cubic foot, this price is equivalent to 5 cents per 1,000,000 
 heat-units, or 20,000,000 heat-units for SI, a decidedly 
 cheap fuel for use in gas-engines, when it is considered 
 that these engines can convert into useful work 25 or 
 30 per cent of the heat in the gas. One other source 
 
ADAPTATION OF FUELS 179 
 
 of cheap gas supply is the blast-furnace in which iron 
 ore is converted into pig-iron. To these furnaces, 
 which are almost the same in general character as tall 
 chimneys, alternate layers of coke, iron ore, and lime- 
 stone, in measured quantities, are fed at the top ; 
 heated air is blown into the bottom and the whole 
 interior becomes a white-hot mass. The heat causes 
 the limestone to combine with the rock which binds 
 the iron in the ore form, thus setting free metallic iron, 
 all through the influence of the heat of combustion of 
 the coke. From the top of the furnace there is dis- 
 charged a rather weak but combustible and useful 
 gas, which is mainly nitrogen from the air, about 70 
 per cent. The other 30 per cent is principally carbon 
 monoxide gas, which is the result of combining one 
 particle of carbon with one particle of oxygen, and 
 which is combustible when one particle of the gas takes 
 up another particle of oxygen. This combustible gas, 
 always consumed in stoves, is used to heat the air-blast, 
 and under boilers to make steam, the steam being used 
 to run blowing engines to supply the air which the fur- 
 nace requires. This gas-generated steam is also used 
 to supply power for rolling the iron into bars, operat- 
 ing hoists, pumping water for electric light, and a 
 variety of other purposes. When the gas-engine ap- 
 peared, this same gas was burnt directly in cylinders, 
 yielding twice as much power as before, making avail- 
 able for sale an amount of power equal to what the 
 small plant itself used. Each blast-furnace, more 
 especially in Germany, where questions of economy 
 receive most attention, became then a source of power 
 for the community, much the same as a waterfall. 
 
180 POWER 
 
 Because the gas-engine is able to convert so much more 
 of the heat of the blast-furnace gas into work than the 
 steam-engine it displaced, the work of the plant was 
 done as before, and about an equal amount of power 
 was left over to be sold to neighboring factories, to 
 operate street railways, and to light neighboring towns. 
 The really important developments, however, were 
 not possible without the adaptation of the more common 
 natural fuels, oil and coal, and this adaptation has now 
 been carried to fair success, though much improve- 
 ment is yet to be accomplished. To understand the 
 apparatus by which coal and oil are rendered available 
 for gas-engines, requires, first, an understanding of the 
 peculiarities of the fuels themselves. Perhaps the 
 earliest attempts to get a combustible gas from coal 
 involved the use of roasting processes, of which there 
 are two important classes: one in which the gas that 
 is driven off in baking is wanted, and the other in which 
 the residue or coke is wanted ; in either case the other 
 product is considered a waste or by-product. In the 
 making of coke from bituminous coal the standard 
 method for a great many years has been to put a layer 
 of crushed material in the bottom of a circular chamber, 
 having an arched roof and more or less resembling a 
 beehive, as shown in Fig. 145, and hence called a bee- 
 hive oven. This coal is ignited from the top and 
 side, and air is allowed to enter the first door slowly. 
 The heat, driving off the gas which the coal yields by 
 the roasting process, is derived from slowly burning the 
 former in the upper part of the domelike chamber 
 until the whole bed has been equally roasted. In these 
 beehive ovens the flame and burnt gases escape from 
 
ADAPTATION OF FUELS 
 
 181 
 
 the top through a hole. The coke which is left, and 
 which weighs about 50 or 60 per cent of the original 
 coal, is drawn out and used in blast-furnaces where coke 
 is needed; but in the formation of the coke a peculiar 
 thing happens. At a certain stage of the heating the 
 whole mass may be said to be practically melted, each 
 small particle of the original coal entirely losing its 
 identity and merging with the rest, much the same as 
 broken molasses candy will melt together in hot weather. 
 
 FIG. 145 
 
 From the molten mass gas continuously escaping 
 punctures it full of holes, and in time, the gas being all 
 driven off, the rest of the mass solidifies into a single 
 piece of hard, porous coke. It would be a single piece 
 if the mass did not shrink in the process, but it does 
 shrink, producing a series of fissures or cracks, so that 
 the coke consists of large pieces, sometimes as large 
 as a man's body, but generally smaller, bearing no 
 resemblance whatever to the original shape or size of 
 the particles of coal from which it was made. This 
 beehive oven method of roasting coal produces gas 
 
182 
 
 POWER 
 
 which is allowed to go to waste, the heat of which is 
 partly used to maintain the temperature for the rest 
 of the process. Thus, gas is the waste material and 
 coke the desired product. 
 
 An almost exactly similar process of roasting is 
 carried out in the manufacture of coal-gas, one kind 
 of illuminating gas, in which gas is the desired product 
 
 FIG. 146 
 
 and the coke the waste product. In this system coal 
 is fed to earthenware chambers open at one end and 
 closed at the other, called retorts, shown in Fig. 146 ; 
 a number of them, in this case nine, being placed side 
 by side in the same brick setting and a fire maintained 
 below to heat them from the outside. The heat from 
 the fire below roasts the coal in the retorts, driving off 
 the gas, which is caught, and after purification is 
 finally pumped through pipes in the streets of cities 
 
ADAPTATION OF FUELS 183 
 
 for illumination, for gas-stoves or small gas-engines. 
 After the roasting has proceeded for a time sufficient 
 to drive off all the gas, the coke that is left is drawn 
 out and sold, a large part going to bakers for their 
 ovens. 
 
 In these coal-roasting processes there is driven off 
 from the coke what we are pleased to call gas. It is, 
 however, a most complex mixture of gases and vapor- 
 ized liquids, consisting of various compounds of car- 
 bon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, with occasionally 
 some sulphur. As carbon and hydrogen are the main 
 fuel constituents, it is very common to regard all these 
 distillation substances as hydrocarbons, and these 
 hydrocarbons are all in the gaseous form as driven off 
 because they are very hot at that time. When they 
 are cooled, however, it is discovered that some of them 
 will condense into viscous or thick liquids of bad smell 
 and brownish black in color. These are called by the 
 general name of gas-tar, coal-tar, or just "tar," and it is 
 this tar which is responsible for the melting previously 
 referred to. 
 
 The adaptation of coal for gas-engine purposes 
 should leave no by-products. All the coal should be 
 converted into gas, so that mere roasting is not sufficient, 
 for even though it yields a gas there is also left over the 
 coke, and means must be found for gasifying this coke, 
 which means will also be found to serve for the gasi- 
 fying of anthracite coals, which themselves yield little 
 or no gas on roasting. 
 
 The process by which coke or anthracite coal may 
 be completely gasified involves no such simple treat- 
 ment as roasting, but chemical combination of the 
 
184 POWER 
 
 carbon, which is the main constituent of both these 
 fuels, with oxygen of the air, much the same in kind 
 as takes place in the blast-furnace itself in the making 
 of iron from its ore. When air is supplied to a fire 
 of coke, charcoal, or anthracite coal, it is believed that 
 one particle of carbon will combine with two particles 
 of oxygen of the air, the nitrogen being carried along 
 as inactive and neutral, so that the resulting gas, called 
 carbon dioxide, or CO 2 , and which is incombustible, 
 is called the product of complete combustion of carbon 
 and oxygen. If this particle of carbon dioxide, which 
 is one particle of carbon and two particles of oxygen 
 combined, be passed through more hot coke or carbon, 
 then a further reaction is believed to take place. An- 
 other particle of carbon will be taken up, making two 
 particles of carbon monoxide, which gas consists of 
 one particle of carbon combined with one particle of 
 oxygen, and which is combustible because it is capable 
 of taking another particle of oxygen if it is available. 
 To carry out this double chemical reaction, air is sup- 
 plied to a very thick bed of fuel, from 3 to 8 feet thick, 
 and there is produced a combustible gas. All the coke 
 or fixed carbon is consumed or converted into combus- 
 tible carbon monoxide gas. This is the basal principle 
 for the gasifying of solid carbon. It, together with 
 the roasting process, constitutes the means for adapting 
 coal fuel to gas-engine service, or the means, in other 
 words, of changing any kind of coal completely into 
 combustible gas with no residue and no by-products. 
 The apparatus in which these double processes are 
 carried out is called a gas producer, and by the invention 
 of gas producers solid fuels became available for gas- 
 
ADAPTATION OF FUELS 
 
 185 
 
 engines. However, differences in fuels and differences 
 in the desired kind of gas have led to very great differ- 
 ences in the forms of gas producers. A simple gas 
 producer is shown in Fig. 147. It is a chimney-like 
 structure, not very high compared with chimneys, 
 containing a grate at the 
 bottom through which air 
 is blown, ashes on the grate, 
 coal fed from the top, and 
 the various steps in the pro- 
 cess of gasification indicated 
 by lines drawn across, mak- 
 ing zones in the fire. In the 
 first zone above the ashes 
 the temperature is highest, 
 this being the place where 
 carbon is completely burned 
 into carbon dioxide. The 
 next zone above being 
 less hot, the carbon dioxide 
 is here reduced to carbon 
 monoxide ; the top zone 
 is the roasting or distilla- 
 tion zone, through which all 
 the gases pass, and where 
 the gases made in the lower zones mix with those dis- 
 tilled from fresh coal in the top, the whole gas mixture 
 passing over through pipes preparatory to being sup- 
 plied to engines. Just as hydrogen in burning com- 
 bines with oxygen to form water vapor, so will water 
 vapor when brought into heated chambers decompose 
 into hydrogen and oxygen; and, similarly, when brought 
 
 FIG. 147 
 
186 
 
 POWER 
 
 into contact with hot carbon the oxygen that comes 
 from the decomposition of the water combines with 
 the carbon, leaving the hydrogen free. If water vapor 
 be supplied with the air, the gas produced in such a 
 producer will, therefore, consist first of the hydrocarbon 
 products of distillation or roasting; second, of carbon 
 monoxide, the result of combination of fixed carbon with 
 oxygen; third, of hydrogen, the result of decom- 
 position of water vapor or moisture carried in the air, 
 or of steam supplied with the air; fourth, of nitrogen 
 carried in with the oxygen ; fifth, of various other things 
 in quite small quantities, such as some free oxygen that 
 has escaped, some carbon dioxide that failed to reduce, 
 or some sulphurous gases. 
 
 If such a producer is supplied with air by a fan or 
 blower, there will be a tendency for the lower part to 
 
 get very hot, hot enough 
 to melt or flux the ash 
 and make clinker, stop- 
 ping up the air supply. 
 The most effective way 
 known of meeting this 
 trouble is to supply 
 steam with the air. As 
 hydrogen and oxygen in 
 combining liberate heat, so will the water vapor on de- 
 composition absorb heat, and steam supplied to the fire 
 will in decomposing in the hot part cool it sufficiently 
 to prevent the formation of clinker. Continuous opera- 
 tion with coals that tend to clinker demands means 
 for clinker prevention, and this led to the application 
 of a steam-jet blower, such as is shown in Fig. 148, 
 
 FIG. 148 
 
ADAPTATION OF FUELS 
 
 187 
 
 in which the steam-jet drives along the air. This 
 blower not only supplies the steam necessary to pre- 
 vent clinker, but the air for combustion with the coal. 
 All the earlier producers used to drive gas-engines were 
 operated with these steam- jet blowers. One of these 
 producers, of American design, 
 very largely used, is shown in 
 Fig. 149, in which, however, 
 the blower is omitted. It 
 would be attached to the 
 blast-pipe at the left. The 
 end of the blast-pipe has a 
 cap which serves to throw the 
 air and steam mixture more 
 or less uniformly across the 
 whole bed and to keep ashes 
 out of the pipe. On the 
 grates, which are inclosed in 
 a tight chamber to prevent 
 the escape of the blast, a 
 considerable amount of ash 
 is left at all times to avoid 
 burning them. A crank out- 
 side enables the shaking down 
 of ash to maintain a proper level without opening the 
 ash chamber, but once a day this is opened to remove 
 collected ash. Another style of the same producer 
 without any grates is shown in Fig. 150. Here the 
 ashes simply rest in a water trough at the bottom, and 
 the edge of the casing dips into the water far enough 
 to prevent escape of air from the interior. Ashes may 
 be removed from this water-seal bottom by raking 
 
 FIG. 149 
 
188 
 
 POWER 
 
 under the water at any time. Producers such as have 
 just been shown, operated with the draft upward and 
 under pressure, are called up-draft pressure producers. 
 These had not been in use for many years in Germany, 
 where they had their most vigorous development, 
 before it was realized that the suction stroke of the 
 engine in drawing in its charge of air and gas might be 
 
 made to also draw 
 the air and steam 
 through the coal- 
 bed of the produ- 
 cer. This seemed 
 especially desirable 
 because the steam- 
 jet blower type of 
 producer required 
 the addition of a 
 steam-boiler to pro- 
 duce the high- 
 pressure steam re- 
 quired, and, more- 
 over, considerable 
 variation in the proportion of air to steam, with conse- 
 quent variable quality of gas, could not be avoided. 
 This boiler, if the blast were to be produced by the 
 engine suction alone, would not be necessary, nor would 
 a separate engine-driven blower be necessary as a sub- 
 stitute for the jet blower. The new combination became 
 known as the suction gas producer, one style of which 
 is shown in Fig. 151 in section and externally in 
 Fig. 152. The gas on leaving the producer proper is 
 shown at the left passing through a chamber fitted 
 
 FIG. 150 
 
ADAPTATION OF FUELS 
 
 189 
 
 with tubes which are surrounded by water. The gases 
 leaving the producer warm this water, producing water 
 
 FIG. 151 
 
 vapor or steam, which is drawn into the bottom of the 
 producer with the air through a connection not shown. 
 The hot gases from the producer make all the steam 
 
 FIG. 152 
 
190 
 
 POWER 
 
 necessary to prevent clinkering and without any high- 
 pressure boiler. After leaving this vaporizer the hot 
 gases pass through a tower chamber full of coke or any 
 other similar porous substance kept continuously wet 
 by a water spray at the top. This serves the double 
 purpose of cooling the gas and removing from it most 
 of its coarser particles of dust carried from the fire. 
 Finer particles of dust, together with particles of tar 
 which may have come from the roasting of the green 
 
 FIG. 153 
 
 coal, are removed later by passing the gas through 
 layers of sawdust and wood shavings in a sort of tar 
 extractor or purifier. From this last cleanser the gas 
 passes directly to the engine, the entire flow through 
 the apparatus being caused by the suction of the engine 
 itself. A slightly different design of the same type 
 of producer is shown, together with the engine, in Fig. 
 153. With a view to simplification, some of these 
 suction producers are arranged with the vaporizer 
 around the top of the producer chamber itself, thus 
 making a separate vaporizer chamber unnecessary. 
 
ADAPTATION OF FUELS 
 
 191 
 
 Such a producer as this is shown in Fig. 154 without 
 any of the additional parts. The air is drawn over the 
 top of the warm water before entering the ash-pit, and a 
 float-valve chamber is provided to keep the water- 
 level constant. A 
 small blower is pro- 
 vided at the bottom 
 to supply the air. 
 With a view to ad- 
 justing the quantity 
 of steam to the air 
 a little more posi- 
 tively, special de- 
 vices have been 
 designed, in which 
 water is fed to a 
 pipe dipping into 
 the hot discharge 
 gases so that it is 
 warmed almost to 
 the boiling point, FlG . 154 
 
 It then drops into 
 
 a funnel that guides it to a narrow cast-iron trough 
 running around the producer top casting and which is 
 hot enough to vaporize all such water before it gets to 
 the end. Air drawn into a hot gas heater and warmed 
 by ribs passes over to the vaporizer casting, so that 
 the steam there formed mixes with it. By this means 
 the mixture proportions of air to steam can be con- 
 trolled at will. If nothing but air be supplied to 
 these producers, there will be no hydrogen in the gas. 
 If nothing but steam be supplied, and, of course, this 
 
192 POWER 
 
 is only possible for a short time, as it will put out a 
 fire if continued too long, there will be a great deal of 
 hydrogen. Therefore, as the quality of the gas varies 
 quite rapidly with the amount of hydrogen it contains, 
 the quality will in turn vary every time the proportion 
 of steam to air supplied is varied. Steam- jet blowers 
 are unable to maintain this proportion correctly. 
 Separate vaporizers on suction producers, or other 
 contained vaporizers on the producer bed, are better, 
 but still not quite satisfactory, so there has been made 
 a series of attempts to maintain this proportion constant 
 automatically by mechanical means. These are so 
 numerous and so different that it would be quite im- 
 possible to examine them, but it should be noted that 
 this is a very important matter and one now receiving 
 a good deal of attention. Another matter receiving 
 attention at this time is the means of keeping the bed 
 compact, for if the bed should not be compact and holes 
 should form in it, the chemical processes that should 
 be carried out will not take place, and there will result 
 a considerable loss of efficiency and bad or unsteady 
 gas will be produced. 
 
 All of these producers shown work quite well with 
 coke or anthracite coal in spite of tendencies to make 
 variable gas, if skilfully operated, but most of them 
 work quite badly with bituminous coal because of the 
 coking and tar tendencies. Bituminous coal may or 
 may not cake, but always contains much tar. This 
 tar, if it lodges on the engine valves or moving parts, 
 will make them stick ; if it gets into the interior of the 
 cylinder, it will make deposits of carbon which are very 
 bad on the action of the engine. The tar must, there- 
 
ADAPTATION OF FUELS 193 
 
 fore, be eliminated or means be provided for preventing 
 it reaching the engine. Naturally, the first idea to 
 be applied was that of removal after formation. Tar 
 was allowed to form in the producer and extractors 
 were made to get it out of the gas. The means first 
 employed were very similar to those adopted for re- 
 moving the dust from gas, which means are most elab- 
 orately carried out and applied to the gas from blast 
 furnaces, as it is most dirty. 
 
 There are a great many processes and apparatus avail- 
 able for removing dirt more or less completely, most of 
 them quite simple in idea. One of the most common is 
 the spray tower already referred to, n which the gas 
 enters the bottom, passing upward through wet coke, over 
 which water is sprayed from the top and runs downward to 
 keep the coke wet. The primary object of this sort of 
 cleaning tower is to catch dust, and this it does pretty well. 
 It also, however, . cools the gas and so causes a certain 
 amount of tar vapor to condense in small, liquid tar 
 drops which the coke is ineffective in removing. Other 
 forms of tower involve all sorts of systems for extend- 
 ing to the gas a great number of square feet of wet sur- 
 face by allowing the water to fall over piles of wood or 
 through series of metal bars or over plates. All cleaners 
 of this class may be called static cleaners of the contact 
 sort. By narrowing the spaces through which the gas 
 must pass, especially when the substance is absorbent, 
 there results the filter type of cleaner. In this the gas 
 is forced through spaces between finely divided material 
 such as sawdust, cheese-cloth, excelsior, or wood-chips. 
 Such a cleaner is shown in Fig. 155, in which the fibrous 
 or filter material rests on pans, arranged for convenient 
 
194 
 
 POWER 
 
 removal when dirty. As tar is greasy and most of the 
 
 static cleaners and filters get wet, they soon cease to 
 
 absorb, as the water repels the oily tar. A third class 
 
 of cleaner, which has 
 proved more effective 
 for tarry substances, 
 but which is also effec- 
 tive for dust, is me- 
 chanical in action. 
 Rotating blades dip- 
 ping into water throw 
 a continuous spray 
 across the chamber 
 through which the gas 
 must pass, at the same 
 
 time exerting a churning action to concentrate the tar 
 
 drops, much the same as a butter churn collects particles 
 
 of butter fat. Such a cleaner is shown in Fig. 156. 
 
 The ribs on the drum D , 
 
 catch up water in the 
 
 bottom of the casing 
 
 and throw it out by 
 
 centrifugal force, the 
 
 gas meanwhile passing 
 
 through the veils of 
 
 mist at right angles 
 
 and suffering a beating 
 
 by the ribs and the 
 
 heavy drops of water. FIG 156 
 
 These few examples will 
 
 serve to show the typical means employed to solve this 
 
 most important part of the problem of the preparation 
 
ADAPTATION OF FUELS 195 
 
 of gas, made from bituminous coal and containing tar, 
 for engine use. Tar extractors have been based on 
 practically every plan ever proposed for dust removal ; 
 the passing of the gases over wet surfaces, which did 
 not work very well because tar is greasy and slips past ; 
 the filtering method likewise; and finally all sorts of 
 elaborate churns, and these churns are now the main 
 dependence. 
 
 Even if separation is complete, an additional diffi- 
 culty in operation is encountered in bituminous pro- 
 ducers, in which the volatile gases are allowed to mix 
 with the gasified coke, as is done in all these systems 
 that depend on tar removal later, and this is the fluc- 
 tuation in the quality of the gas. The volatile gases 
 driven off in roasting have about six times the heating 
 power of the gasified coke, so that any change in the 
 proportion of these gases makes a considerable change 
 in the quality of the final gas mixture. 
 
 Belief is growing at the present time that it is not 
 sufficient merely to attach to bituminous producers 
 tar extractors, nor advisable even though it were suffi- 
 cient, as the primary trouble is in the fire itself, and 
 means are being sought for changing conditions in the 
 fire so that the tar will not be formed at all, or if formed, 
 be destroyed. Various plans have been tried and 
 others are being proposed every day ; some of them are 
 in the experimental stage, others no more than pro- 
 posals for overcoming the difficulties of caking, tar 
 formation, and the fluctuating amounts of volatiles 
 from the rich, bituminous coals. One principle for 
 the destruction of the tar involves the reversal of the 
 draft, so that coal fed to the top would be supplied with 
 
196 POWER 
 
 air at the same point which would pass downward 
 through the bed instead of upward. The passage of 
 the volatiles of the coal downward through the bed is 
 expected to decompose the tarry hydrocarbons, break- 
 ing them up into permanent gases and fixed carbon 
 soot that is more easily filtered out than greasy tar, 
 and this plan is fairly effective. One example of this 
 system is illustrated in section in Fig. 157, in which 
 there are two gas generators used alternately. Air 
 is drawn through the bed downward by a suction 
 
 FIG. 157 
 
 blower shown about the center of the picture. The 
 hot gases first pass through a tubed steam-boiler and 
 then are cooled in a wet tower. After cooling, the gas 
 passes through a blower to a soot filter and finally to a 
 gas-holder. This operation makes the bed very hot ; 
 when it gets as hot as is permissible the air is shut off 
 and switched to the other producer, and steam from 
 the boiler is blown through the first, making a gas rich 
 in hydrogen, until the bed has cooled. The alternately 
 made rich and poor gases are mixed to get a uniform 
 gas for the engine. 
 
 In this system practically all tar is destroyed, but 
 
ADAPTATION OF FUELS 
 
 197 
 
 soot is found instead. A producer, based on a com- 
 bination of up-and-down draft and continuously operat- 
 ing, is shown in Fig. 158, together with the cleaner and 
 suction blower. Coal fed at the top passes downward 
 and some air with it, the volatiles perhaps partly de- 
 composing. Air also passes upward from the water- 
 sealed bottom and the gases formed in both the upper 
 
 FIG. 158 
 
 and lower chambers mix and pass out at the middle. 
 Around this central zone is placed a ring trough con- 
 taining water, over which all entering air passes and 
 takes up steam enough to keep the bed cool. 
 
 By this plan there might be expected both tar and 
 soot in proportion, depending on the adjustment of 
 top and bottom blast and bed temperature, such vola- 
 tiles as are only slightly heated yielding tar, the rest 
 that are highly heated yielding soot. Should the coal 
 cake much while roasting, both these producers would 
 
198 
 
 POWER 
 
 require much poking to prevent the stoppage of air. 
 A still more radical plan, toward which the latest 
 thought seems to be directed, involves the elimination, 
 not only of all the tar and soot, but also all the rich 
 volatiles of the coal, making a larger amount of weak 
 gas but very constant in quality. The basal idea un- 
 derlying the accomplishment of this object is well illus- 
 trated by a combina- 
 tion of the beehive 
 oven and the blast 
 furnace. The bee- 
 hive oven roasts the 
 coal, burns up the 
 volatile, and makes 
 coke; the blast fur- 
 nace completely gasi- 
 fies this coke 
 and is capable 
 also of causing a 
 combustion be- 
 tween its coke 
 and the waste 
 gases of the bee- 
 hive. If, then, the top of the beehive oven be con- 
 nected to a blast-furnace air supply, the products of 
 combustion of the volatile from the oven can be made 
 to combine with the coke of the furnace and the supply of 
 coke will likewise be maintained by the oven. In Fig. 159 
 one form of producer embodying this idea is shown. 
 There are two parts to the fuel bed, the first or upper part 
 resting on a grate /, through which the air can pass, 
 burning some of the coal just as it burns under a boiler, 
 
 FIG. 159 
 
ADAPTATION OF FUELS 199 
 
 but roasting out the volatiles. As the coal passes down 
 and across the grate, all the tarry substances may be 
 driven off and in burning fill the upper chamber with 
 a long flame. At the bottom of this grate most of the 
 volatiles will have roasted out and burned as in the 
 beehive oven, leaving coke for the lower chamber. 
 Through this main coke bed the burnt products of 
 the volatiles will pass and be reduced to combustible 
 carbon monoxide gas and hydrogen by chemical com- 
 bination with the coke. No producer of this class is yet 
 in use, and this one is shown merely to illustrate another 
 idea for meeting the difficulties of securing a suitable 
 gas for engines from bituminous coal. That there are 
 real difficulties in the complete gasification of bitumi- 
 nous coals and other special grades of coal, such as 
 peat, was not originally realized; but now, as the prob- 
 lem is more completely understood, great progress is 
 being made, so that before long it will be possible to 
 gasify every grade of fuel as well as can now be done 
 with anthracite and coke. When this happens, the gas- 
 power plant will become a universal competitor of the 
 steam-power plant so far as the fuel supply is concerned, 
 and in competition with steam will make it possible 
 to secure more power from coal than we now get. 
 In plants of large size 20 per cent excess efficiency 
 over steam may now be secured, while in small ones of 
 about 100 h. p., the steam plant will burn four or five 
 times as much coal per horse-power hour as the gas 
 plant consisting of producers and gas-engines. This 
 is especially interesting and important when it is re- 
 membered that the average power plant is small, - 
 less than 100 h. p. in the manufacturing industries, 
 
200 POWER 
 
 according to the last census, so that for the country 
 as a whole, it is of far more importance to improve 
 fuel consumption in small plants than in those great 
 ones familiar to New York, used for the trolley roads 
 and central stations. The gas producer and gas-engine 
 may, therefore, be regarded as important factors in 
 the future of power development and most effective in 
 saving coal in those plants which represent the average 
 power 'requirements of individual users. 
 
 What these small producer gas plants are doing for 
 the average power user with solid fuels, the oil or 
 gasolene engine is doing in even greater degree for other 
 fields that it has made especially its own, and in which 
 it has in some cases absolutely no rivals. Liquid oil 
 fuel as obtained naturally is a mixture of many things, 
 and when heated in retorts or stills will yield those 
 substances in a certain order. Substances like gasolene 
 begin to boil out first, are condensed, and sold under a 
 trade name. As the temperature rises in the retort or 
 boiler, when the gasolene is nearly gone, a heavier sub- 
 stance is obtained called kerosene ; after this has all 
 passed over, the residue may be sold as fuel oil, or from 
 it lubricating oil, vaseline, paraffine, or asphalt may 
 be obtained. Thus, a great variety of substances may 
 be obtained from natural oils, differing, so far as their 
 use in engines is concerned, chiefly in the temperature 
 to which they must be heated to vaporize them. In 
 any case overheating will produce the same effects as 
 the heating of the volatiles from coal ; it will cause 
 decomposition into other lighter vapors or fixed gases 
 and soot. 
 
 Another sort of liquid fuel has recently become 
 
ADAPTATION OF FUELS 201 
 
 available in this country, known as denatured alcohol, 
 and sometimes sold under trade names, such as Pyro. 
 This is made in much the same way as is whisky, 
 by fermentation and distillation of any substances 
 containing starch or sugar, the substances most com- 
 monly used being corn and potatoes. This alcohol 
 is very useful for engines, vaporizing more easily than 
 kerosene, but not so easily as gasolene. It is nearly 
 pure alcohol, to which is added, to prevent evasion of 
 the liquor tax, substances like wood alcohol and ben- 
 zine in small quantities which do not affect its fuel 
 value. 
 
 Liquid fuels are adapted to engine use in two char- 
 acteristic ways, one direct and the other indirect. The 
 indirect method is used with all fuels easily vaporized, 
 while the direct system is used for the heavy oils diffi- 
 cult to vaporize. With the lighter and more volatile 
 fuels a mixture is made external to and independent 
 of the engine by apparatus corresponding to the mixing 
 valve of gas-engines, whereas the heavy oils are most 
 often injected directly into the explosion chamber. 
 The more volatile forms of fuels are treated by devices 
 termed carbureters, which perform a variety of func- 
 tions at once: they automatically control the feed of 
 the fuel, vaporize it, mix it with the air, and maintain 
 the correct proportions of vapor to air. Thus, in Fig. 
 160, if gasolene is supplied to a float chamber through 
 the little valve in the top, controlled by the float, the 
 supply will be shut off when the float in the chamber 
 reaches a certain height and opened if the level falls 
 below this point. If, now, there be a nozzle connected 
 with the gasolene from the constant level float chamber, 
 
202 
 
 POWER 
 
 the end of the nozzle just a little above the level in 
 the float chamber, and there be a needle valve in the 
 nozzle to adjust the effective opening, no gasolene will 
 flow out except when the movement of the piston creates 
 a suction at the nozzle, and the amount that will flow 
 under suction will depend on the amount of suction 
 and the needle valve adjustment. To facilitate ad- 
 
 FIG. 160 
 
 justment of the suction in the nozzle chamber a valve 
 may be provided in the air-pipe, as shown at the 
 right, and the proportions between the gasolene and 
 the air be maintained by the needle valve and the 
 air-valve, just about the same as was done with the 
 mixing valves for the gas-engines previously described. 
 It is found by experience that there is a tendency for 
 the gasolene to increase faster than the air when the 
 
ADAPTATION OF FUELS 
 
 203 
 
 suction increases, and for that reason an auxiliary air 
 valve is often provided, either hand adjusted or auto- 
 matic. Such a combination of parts constitutes a 
 carbureter. Vaporizing in it is quite automatic, as 
 the air is hot enough to vaporize the gasolene spray 
 by contact alone, or vaporize enough of it to permit the 
 cylinder to complete the process in compression. In 
 
 FIG. 161 
 
 place of the float chamber there may be a pump-sup- 
 plied cup with an open overflow, as shown below, to 
 keep the level constant. It would be easy to show 
 perhaps 300 different combinations of mechanisms all 
 constituting carbureters, operating on about the same 
 ideas, but the standard adopted principle is well in- 
 dicated by this diagram. In Fig. 161 is shown a car- 
 bureter from an automobile engine, as an example of 
 one actual form in which the air may enter through 
 two passages, one the spray chamber B, and the other 
 ports C. These ports constitute the auxiliary air inlet 
 previously mentioned, and the adjustment of propor- 
 tions is accomplished by the needle valve. 
 
204 POWER 
 
 Carbureters operating on these principles and using 
 gasolene fuel, to which they are adapted, made the 
 light-weight self-contained engine a possibility, and were 
 fundamental to the creation of the automobile, motor 
 boat, and the aeroplane. They also supplied means 
 for providing the small power user, like the farmer or 
 operator of the small isolated country shop, with a 
 machine to do the work formerly done by man or 
 horses. 
 
 For farm, country residence, and small shop use, 
 there are sold in this country yearly close to 100,000 
 of these small gasolene engines for application where 
 practically no other source of power would be avail- 
 able. Over 280,000 automobiles are built annually, 
 approximating in value $400,000,000, and giving em- 
 ployment in more than 200 factories to 120,000 
 workmen, not counting those who are also given 
 employment in running these machines and keep- 
 ing them in repair after they are sold. The engines 
 of these automobiles aggregate 80,000 h. p., and 
 their value is equal to that of 17,000 consolidation 
 locomotives, which is about three times the yearly 
 demand on the railroads, so that the value of the auto- 
 mobile output is in a fair way to exceed that of all the 
 locomotive construction in this country. The small 
 gasolene engine has produced industrial effects of enor- 
 mous magnitude, out of all proportion to the machine 
 itself. The little engine that is responsible for such 
 a far-reaching influence is decidedly insignificant in 
 comparison with the big central station and steamship 
 engine. In its own field this little engine has no rivals, 
 and this is especially significant, for it must be re- 
 
ADAPTATION OF FUELS 205 
 
 membered that without it hundreds of thousands of 
 men would be doing work by hand, or with horses, in 
 shops and on farms, that is now done by power, and 
 which steam is absolutely incapable of doing, or that 
 work would remain undone. As a matter of fact there 
 is no known system of power capable of doing these 
 same things, except possibly the same engine adapted 
 to use the other liquid fuels such as kerosene, alcohol, 
 or the residue of crude oil distillation. 
 
 These other fuels, however, are not so easily adapted 
 to the use of the engine as gasolene because of the greater 
 difficulty of vaporizing them. They must all be pro- 
 vided with a source of heat, which the gasolene does 
 not need. By feeding alcohol or kerosene to such a 
 carbureter as has been described, there will be formed 
 a spray, but before an explosive mixture can be pro- 
 duced and introduced into the cylinder, some heat 
 must be applied. This heat is applied in a variety of 
 ways. Perhaps the simplest to understand is that in 
 which the sprayed air mixture is led through iron 
 chambers on its way to the engine, which chambers 
 are heated first by a lamp and later by the exhaust 
 gases after the engine begins to operate. In other 
 devices the heated part is internal to the engine, and 
 the spray obtained from the carbureter is introduced 
 into the cylinder, there to be heated by contact with 
 hot iron parts which were warmed by the last explosion. 
 When these parts that are to heat the spray and vapor- 
 ize it are internal, then the engine must be started on 
 gasolene or some equally volatile substance, such per- 
 haps as ether. Another plan involves the use of a 
 heater for the oil alone with a view to converting it 
 
206 POWER 
 
 into a gas or vapor. According to this plan the oil is 
 fed to hot chambers, by the heat of which some of it is 
 converted into a reasonably fixed gas, while the rest 
 is decomposed into a sooty residue. This fixed gas can 
 then be supplied to the engine as would any other gas. 
 Still another plan, which is confined to the use of dis- 
 tillates, involves the feeding of the fuel to a little boiler 
 where it is vaporized by a lamp or exhaust gases. The 
 vapor thus produced is mixed with air as a gas would 
 be. Of course, all these devices have limitations. 
 When vapor is formed in boilers, means must be adopted 
 to prevent its subsequent condensation and to regulate 
 the amount produced. When the oil is dropped on 
 to hot plates, means must be provided to prevent them 
 getting too hot, otherwise the decomposition and soot 
 formation will be excessive. When the oil is heated 
 by itself, the device is generally termed a separate 
 vaporizer, which must be used in connection with a 
 mixing valve similar to those used on gas engines to 
 adjust the proportions of vapor to air as required by 
 the engine. When, however, a spray is formed and 
 that spray is subsequently heated, then the device is 
 called a carbureting vaporizer or just a carbureter, 
 or sometimes just a vaporizer. Practice in this regard 
 is not yet standardized. 
 
 For very heavy oils, such as the residue oils, a differ- 
 ent plan has been adopted. The oil is injected directly 
 into the combustion chamber, generally by means of a 
 pump. The chamber into which the oil is thus sup- 
 plied is hot, the heat being obtained in some cases en- 
 tirely by compressing air alone, and in other cases 
 entirely by metal parts such as plates and bulbs, and 
 
ADAPTATION OF FUELS 
 
 207 
 
 in still others by a combination of these two. One of 
 the most famous heavy oil engines, and one that holds 
 the record for thermal efficiency, approaching almost 40 
 per cent on test and averaging over 30 per cent in daily 
 use, draws in a charge of air in the usual gas-engine way, 
 compresses it to between 500 and 600 pounds per square 
 inch, which makes the air about red-hot. Into this 
 red-hot air the oil is squirted by a pump in carefully 
 regulated amounts, assisted by a small jet of compressed 
 air from a tank under about 1000 pounds pressure. 
 These engines 
 are expensive 
 to build and 
 somewhat diffi- 
 cult to main- 
 tain, so that 
 the other de- 
 vice of using 
 hot plates has 
 been more 
 widely used. 
 One of the most 
 
 common forms of these hot plates is the bulb form. 
 Such a vaporizer is shown in Fig. 162, forming part 
 of an ordinary four-cycle engine. It is ordinary in 
 all respects except one, for it has in place of the 
 regular head a bulblike chamber connected to the 
 cylinder by a neck. This bulb chamber at its outer 
 end gets red-hot in operation and in the beginning is 
 heated by a lamp placed under it. Heavy oil, even as 
 thick as molasses, when pumped into this chamber will 
 vaporize, but some of it is apt to decompose by over- 
 
 FIG. 162 
 
208 
 
 POWER 
 
 heating. The compression stroke of the piston will 
 force air into the chamber and in passing the neck at 
 high speed the air will whirl around inside the bulb, 
 mixing with the vapor. Ultimately, as the compres- 
 sion is carried on, the mixed vapor and air become 
 heated enough to cause an automatic or self-ignition, 
 but usually not until the whirling stops, about the end 
 of the compression stroke. Another form of this hot 
 
 bulb vaporizer, 
 which, of course, 
 is always fed by 
 a pump of vari- 
 able capacity 
 under governor 
 control, is shown 
 in Fig. 163 in 
 connection with 
 a two-cycle en- 
 gine. Here a 
 lamp is shown 
 under the hot 
 
 bulb B, which has a lip L projecting into the cylinder. 
 The pump P discharges oil from the tank downward 
 through a nozzle on to the lip, lip and bulb being red- 
 hot. Compression of the piston forces air over the lip 
 L into the bulb 7, carrying all vapor and unvaporized 
 oil with it. At the end of the compression stroke all the 
 oil is vaporized, and the mixture warmed up enough to 
 be ignited by the red-hot metal, but as some of the oil 
 is sure to be overheated before it burns, a little residue 
 will form. The rest of the operation is substantially 
 the same as that for a two-cycle gas-engine, previously 
 
 FIG. 163 
 
ADAPTATION OF FUELS 209 
 
 described. Still another and more recent plan for 
 handling these very heavy oils seeks to avoid entirely 
 a dependence on the vaporizer. It has already been 
 pointed out that a fine spray of oil when uniformly 
 distributed through air will make just as good an 
 explosive mixture as the vapor and air. Of course, 
 the spray must be very fine! In one recent type of 
 oil-engine this is secured by pumping the oil into a 
 little cartridge connecting with the explosion chamber 
 by a small valve. This cartridge is also supplied with 
 highly compressed air, and at the time when an ex- 
 plosion is wanted the connecting valve is opened, air 
 and oil rushing into the explosion chamber together; 
 the expanding air spatters the oil into a very fine mist, 
 blowing it more or less uniformly into a charge of warm 
 compressed air that has been prepared by the engine 
 piston on its compression stroke. By this arrange- 
 ment an explosion can be obtained instantly, even 
 from oil that is very sticky and thick, the combustion 
 and efficiency being quite as good as with the red-hot 
 air previously noted, and without using over a third 
 of the compression the latter requires. These heavy 
 oil engines, while they have a limited field of application 
 because of the localized and limited supply of oil, do 
 nevertheless fill a most useful gap in the power field, 
 for in many places the fuel oil is far cheaper than coal, 
 and in others, such as California, far from the coal fields, 
 oil is comparatively plentiful. They are more costly 
 than gasolene engines to buy, but their fuel is much 
 cheaper, and as they are not so readily started as the 
 gasolene engine they divide the liquid fuel field. 
 
 The gas producer operating on solid fuel, the light 
 
210 POWER 
 
 oil carbureter, and the heavy oil vaporizer constitute 
 the means by which the natural fuels have been and 
 are being adapted to the use of the gas-engine, the 
 most efficient machine for deriving power from the heat 
 of combustion. So constantly high is the efficiency of 
 these engines for all types and sizes, that, in spite of 
 higher investment costs, they offer to the small power 
 user means of generating power as cheaply as the largest 
 and most highly refined steam plant can do it. 
 
 As centralization of small steam plants has been 
 practised in the interest of economy, the single large 
 plant being more economical than the many small 
 ones it displaces, so does the constant efficiency in all 
 sizes, characteristic of the gas-engine plant, tend toward 
 decentralization, offering to the factory owner, or small 
 power user, a means of making power cheaper than 
 the best large central station can sell it, and placing 
 the isolated country power user in as advantageous a 
 position as the city man who can get central station 
 power if he wants it. The gas-engine, therefore, is the 
 great leveler in the power generation field, its small 
 and insignificant representative playing a part as im- 
 portant and independent as its more aristocratic large 
 steam or water-power rivals. It is in point of efficiency 
 the aristocrat of all fuel burners, surpassing in its few 
 years of development the one hundred and sixty years' 
 steam product, even though no attempt has yet been 
 made to save or return waste heat in any way. 
 
VII 
 
 WATER-POWER SYSTEMS AND BASAL HYDRAULIC 
 PROCESSES 
 
 WHEREVER rain falls streams will form, the water 
 of which represents the concentrated drainage of all 
 the land sloping toward that particular valley at the 
 bottom of which the stream flows. This stream flow 
 consists of the rainfall over the whole watershed less 
 the amount absorbed by the earth, or evaporated from 
 the surface, and every such stream is a potential source 
 of power. The possible water-power of a country or 
 district is, therefore, primarily dependent on rainfall, 
 but also, of course, on absorption and surface evapora- 
 tion. In places where the land is approximately flat, 
 the tendency to concentrate rainfall into streams 
 would be small, as the water would tend to lie rather 
 in swampy low pools, or form innumerable tiny, 
 slowly moving brooks. On the contrary, if the coun- 
 try were of a rolling or mountainous character, there 
 would be two important differences introduced. First, 
 water would concentrate in a few larger and faster- 
 moving streams, the water of which would represent 
 the collection from perhaps thousands of square miles; 
 and secondly, it would be constantly falling from 
 higher to lower levels on its way to the sea. While, 
 therefore, all streams are potential or possible sources 
 of power, and water-power might seem to be available 
 
 211 
 
212 POWER 
 
 all over the earth, yet, as a matter of fact, only those 
 streams that are large enough or in which the fall of 
 level is great enough, are really worth while to develop; 
 and only in those districts where the rainfall is great 
 enough and the earth not too flat or too absorbent, 
 or the air too dry, may any streams of useful character 
 at all be expected. The power represented by all the 
 water of a stream, and its entire fall from the source to 
 the sea, is likewise only partly available. No one would 
 think of trying to carry water in pipes from the source 
 of a stream a thousand miles to its mouth for the sake 
 of running some water-wheels. 
 
 It is seldom worth while to carry the water more than 
 a mile or two, and frequently even this would not pay, 
 so that only portions of streams may be considered as 
 available sources of power. The power represented 
 by any part of a stream is directly proportional to the 
 product of the quantity of water flowing per second, 
 and the difference between the levels at the beginning 
 and end of that part of it under consideration, which 
 difference in level is called the " hydraulic head." Any 
 portion of a stream, then, in which there is a difference 
 of head may be considered as available for power, the 
 amount of which is measured by the quantity of water 
 flowing and the head itself. Accordingly, a large stream 
 carrying a great quantity of water, which falls only a 
 little in level, may offer only a small power possibility 
 because the head is so small, whereas a comparatively 
 small stream, perhaps no larger than a brook across 
 which a boy may jump, if it runs down the side of a 
 high mountain, may make available at the foot thou- 
 sands of horse-power due principally to the head. How- 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 213 
 
 ever the water may exist naturally, so long as it is 
 in the form of a stream with a flow from a high level 
 to a low, it offers an opportunity for power generation 
 by concentrating the flow on wheels of suitable form; 
 but it may easily happen that the returns from the 
 development may not be worth the cost, while in other 
 cases the cost of development may be richly repaid. 
 Even though the water itself is regarded as costing 
 nothing, and therefore as offering a certainty of cheap 
 power, it must be remembered that it is not merely 
 water that is needed for power, but water concentrated 
 on to wheels, sufficient in volume and sufficient in pres- 
 sure when it reaches the wheel. The cost of the water 
 at the wheel where it becomes available for power will, 
 therefore, be measured by the cost of the concentration 
 process. Whether it will be worth while or not to carry 
 out a development will depend entirely on the ulti- 
 mate cost of the power produced, on the market for 
 that power, and the cost of competing power generated 
 from fuel. No one would be justified in concentrating 
 the water of a waterfall into wheels if the cost of the 
 power exceeded that produced from fuel by the steam 
 or gas systems, nor would it be a sane thing to develop 
 a power in the heart of Africa, where there is no demand 
 for power within five hundred miles, no matter how 
 cheaply that power could be produced at the spot. 
 In every case the largest item in the cost of power per 
 horse-power hour or per horse-power year is the fixed 
 investment rate, representing the interest on the first 
 cost of development or the cost of diverting the stream, 
 concentrating its flow on to wheels, and providing means 
 of control, so that floods, floating ice, and logs cannot 
 
214 POWER 
 
 injure the works. The definite yearly per cent of this 
 development cost divided by the power produced 
 gives a yearly, monthly, or hourly charge, which is 
 the largest item in the cost of water-power, and may 
 even be larger than the fuel and labor cost in steam 
 plants, but, of course, may likewise be lower. It there- 
 fore appears that, assuming the stream to be available, 
 representing possible power, it will be worth while to 
 get that power only when the flow is large with perhaps 
 moderate head, or when the flow is small with large 
 head, and when, in addition, the cost of diversion and 
 concentration is small enough, when there is a sufficient 
 power demand or selling market available, and finally, 
 when the cost of steam or gas power is high enough 
 in that particular locality. 
 
 It usually happens that the cost of development 
 does not stop merely with diversion and concentration 
 of the water at the wheels, because rainfall is irregular, 
 and so, of course, is the resulting stream flow, which 
 fact introduces a necessity for storage reservoirs. The 
 size and cost of these storage reservoirs will, of course, 
 depend on the extent of the fluctuation of stream flow 
 and on the time intervals. A district in which there 
 is a very heavy stream flow for a few days, followed by 
 a month of no flow, would require a reservoir large 
 enough to hold practically the whole flood water so 
 that it could be supplied uniformly to the wheels all 
 the rest of the time. Such conditions as these might 
 be found in tropical countries, where there are heavy 
 rains extending over a season, followed by long periods 
 of no rain, or might also be found in cold countries 
 where during the winter all rainfall is frozen into ice 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 215 
 
 or snow, and where in the spring there comes a great 
 rush of water representing the concentrated rainfall 
 of a large part of the winter, as the snow and ice melts. 
 No two streams, representing power sources, offer 
 quite the same problem of power development, the first 
 step in which is the reaching of an intelligent judgment 
 as to whether it would be worth while to develop at 
 all or not, which judgment must be based on the most 
 painstaking investigation of a multitude of conditions 
 involving rainfall, stream flow, water storage, and 
 power demand or market, together with estimates of 
 the probable cost of the power to be produced and the 
 cost of competing steam or gas power. Assuming that 
 it has been found to be worth while, and it must be 
 remembered that this step always contains an element 
 of speculation, the next step is to decide how best to 
 carry out the project of diversion, concentration, and 
 storage of the water-power and the protection of the 
 works from the unused or flood water, from ice or 
 floating debris. 
 
 Seldom does it prove worth while to attempt to 
 develop all the power available at a given section of 
 a stream, because the cost of the works is always large ; 
 and if the installation is made large enough to use the 
 maximum stream flow, then in time of drought or 
 freeze-up, less power being available, a part or perhaps 
 all of the investment will be idle and earning nothing; 
 but even worse than this, those industries dependent 
 on the power will be unable to proceed, and all the men 
 employed by those industries will be thrown out of 
 work, thus rendering the capital invested in the indus- 
 tries also useless. To protect dependent industries 
 
216 
 
 POWER 
 
 it will be safe to develop only so much power as is 
 represented by the minimum stream flow, and to 
 waste all the rest when there is no storage. In cases 
 where the industry-demand for power exceeds this 
 minimum supply, then the resource of a storage reser- 
 voir is available to a limited degree, after which aux- 
 iliaries, steam or gas power, must be installed, further 
 complicating the problem. For when auxiliary fuel- 
 burning power is used, it naturally is idle in times of 
 
 FIG. 164 
 
 heavy stream flow, which fact increases the cost of the 
 power delivered. Furthermore, it might easily be 
 far better for dependent industries to have their own 
 steam or gas plants that could be worked all the time, 
 instead of depending on a combined water and fuel 
 plant, part of which must certainly be idle some of the 
 time. Such difficulties as these all arise, of course, 
 from fluctuating stream flow, which is violent in some 
 places and practically non-existent in others, but gen- 
 erally present to a sufficient degree to make a good 
 deal of trouble. Streams are studied by engineers and 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 217 
 
 government officers with regard to their flow, and the 
 results are made public records, either in the form of 
 tables or curves, as shown in Fig. 164, prepared by Pro- 
 fessor Mead to illustrate by the vertical height of the 
 irregular line the variation in flow for each month 
 of the year at Kilbourn, Wisconsin. It will be seen 
 that the maximum flow is approximately seven times 
 the minimum. The same thing is shown by the table 
 prepared by J. F. Frizell, showing what per cent of 
 the total yearly stream flow in Massachusetts is avail- 
 able for each month of the year. This is a particularly 
 striking case because this district is not one subject to 
 violent storms or droughts. 
 
 PER CENT OF YEARLY STREAM FLOW AVAILABLE IN EACH MONTH 
 OF THE YEAR IN MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 January 16% 
 
 February 14% 
 
 March 20% 
 
 April 15% 
 
 May 10% 
 
 June . 4% 
 
 July ! . 2% 
 
 August ...... 3% 
 
 September ..... 3% 
 
 October ...... 5% 
 
 November ..... 6 % 
 
 December ..... 8% 
 
 From the table it appears that the minimum flow 
 occurs in July and is only one-tenth of the maximum 
 occurring in March, when the snow and ice are melting. 
 If on a stream of this character power development 
 be based on the minimum flow, only 2 per cent of the 
 annual flow can be used per month, or 24 per cent of the 
 total in the year. All the rest must be wasted. Even 
 to use this 24 per cent of the yearly rainfall, storage 
 reservoirs must be available, because for several days 
 at a time the actual flow may fall below or rise above 
 the mean for the month. 
 
218 POWER 
 
 In general, stream-flow fluctuations are least when 
 the watersheds feeding this stream are greatest in extent, 
 because rain may fall in one section and not in another, 
 the average for all being steadier than for any one. 
 Sometimes these watersheds are very large. To illus- 
 trate this point, the following table is presented by 
 Colonel Samuel Webber, and indicates the number of 
 square miles drained for each of three sections of the 
 Merrimac River, where 10,000 h. p. is available. 
 
 AREAS OF MERRIMAC WATER SHEDS 
 
 Manchester . . 10,000 49 ft. head 2709 sq. mi. watershed 
 Lowell . . . 10,000 33 1 A ft. head 4000 sq. mi. watershed 
 Lawrence . . 10,000 28 ft. head 4600 sq. mi. watershed 
 
 He also estimates the rainfall for the United States 
 as forty-two inches, about half of which gets into the 
 streams, representing about 1,000,000 cubic feet per 
 day per square mile, one-third of which total might be 
 conserved by reservoirs if the cost were not prohibi- 
 tive, rendering available about one cubic foot per sec- 
 ond per square mile on the average for the whole coun- 
 try. Of course, much of this rain falls on low land and 
 is useless. A large quantity either falls on dry sections, 
 or the streams flow through dry sections where the 
 evaporation is very severe. Cases are known where 
 evaporation from a pond or river exceeds the equiva- 
 lent of one inch depth per day. As a consequence only 
 a very small portion of the rainfall is really available 
 for power purposes; but by careful study and stimulated 
 by changes in industrial and economic conditions, more 
 and more can be rendered available and more and more 
 than is now used may be profitably developed. 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 219 
 
 The study of water-power conditions is very old 
 indeed, but it is only for the past fifty years or so that 
 these broad aspects of the question of economic develop- 
 ment, such as have been outlined, have received atten- 
 tion. The recent great progress is due partly to the 
 fact that in the early days there were no wheels ca- 
 pable of using high heads ; partly to the lack of market 
 for power; but very largely because many of the most 
 effective water-power sites were located off in the woods 
 far from the towns, and with no transportation facilities 
 between. With the increasing demands for power, 
 due to the development of manufacturing and largely 
 stimulated by the influence of the steam-engine, atten- 
 tion was directed to other water-powers than those 
 early developed, and a better understanding of the 
 principles of design enabled engineers to build suitable 
 high-head water-wheels, so that a change in the water- 
 power situation was inaugurated. The greatest factor 
 of all, however, in this new and vigorous utilization of 
 water-power came from the progress in electrical 
 engineering, which showed how the power of rotating 
 shafts could be converted into electrical energy, how 
 such electrical energy could be made to flow without 
 prohibitive losses or excessive costs on wires over dis- 
 tances exceeding 100 miles, and how at the end of a 
 transmission line the electrical energy could be con- 
 verted back into the form of rotating shaft power by 
 electric motors, or converted directly into light by 
 electric lamps. The creation of electric systems of 
 power transmission, consisting of generators, line wires, 
 and motors, has widened the limit of water-power 
 application, and to-day water-power does not merely 
 
220 POWER 
 
 exist at the power house, but in fact is available at any 
 point within a circle having a radius of one hundred 
 miles. By this electrical transmission of water-power, 
 progress in water-power generation and use has been 
 stimulated to a degree that otherwise would have been 
 impossible; for it is far cheaper to run wires over the 
 mountains to towns already located, and in commu- 
 nication with the rest of the world by river or railroads, 
 than to run railroads through mountain countries to 
 permit of the establishment of a factory at the water- 
 power site. 
 
 As a result of this latter period of economic develop- 
 ment, the practice has more or less crystallized, and in 
 reviewing the situation as it exists to-day it is con- 
 venient to divide those cases that have proved to be 
 worth while into three typical classes with regard to 
 the head, assuming, of course, that this head is available 
 within not too great a horizontal distance. The first 
 class will include low heads of 20 to 30 feet, in which 
 case there would nearly always be involved a large 
 quantity of water, because it would take a good deal 
 of water with such heads to develop much power. The 
 second class includes medium heads between 100 and 
 200 feet and with perhaps moderate or large flow; 
 and the third class, heads up to or exceeding 1000 feet, 
 in which case there need not be a very great flow to 
 develop considerable power. In no case, as has already 
 been stated, must the horizontal distance to secure this 
 head be too great, and in practice it has been found 
 that the abrupt head, such as occurs at falls of consid- 
 erable height, is almost ideal, while a horizontal dis- 
 tance of two or three miles is not out of the question. 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 221 
 
 FIG. 165 
 
 To illustrate some of these typical cases a few pictures 
 will be helpful. Perhaps the best-known large-flow, 
 abrupt-drop, medium-head site is that of Niagara 
 
 FIG. 166 
 
222 
 
 POWER 
 
 Falls, shown in Fig. 165, taken from a point above the 
 Falls and showing more particularly the great volume 
 of water and the width of the fall. At this point the 
 fall varies in height from 158 to 167 feet, and the width 
 of the crest is about one-half mile, over which the 
 
 volume of the flow is 
 
 not exactly uniform. 
 It is estimated that 
 about 7,000,000 h. p. 
 is available at this 
 point, of which only a 
 small portion is devel- 
 oped or under con- 
 sideration. Another 
 view of the Falls, taken 
 from the gorge below 
 some distance away, 
 and showing some of 
 the industrial plants 
 that have grown up by 
 reason of the power, is 
 shown in Fig. 166. In 
 this view a vertical 
 pipe-line is clearly visi- 
 ble, conducting water from above to a power house below, 
 where the head available is about 220 feet, and by means 
 of which some 1500 h. p. is developed. Part way up 
 the cliff, water can be seen spouting from the discharge of 
 several water-wheels using only part of the head and so 
 wasting some of the power. Another example of a still 
 greater falls of much the same character as Niagara is 
 shown in Fig. 167, representing the great cataract of the 
 
 FIG. 167 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 223 
 
 Zambesi in Africa, still undeveloped because of lack of 
 market or demand for power in that locality, although 
 many projects have been formulated, some of which 
 will ultimately be carried out. The illustration 
 shows clearly the abrupt character of the drop, and 
 the indications of the variable flow which charac- 
 terizes this stream, in ( ^ 
 
 striking contrast to the 
 almost uniform flow of 
 Niagara. Here the 
 height is a little over 
 400 feet, and it is esti- 
 mated that in time of 
 flood over 35,000,000 
 h. p. may be secured; 
 but by reason of the 
 tropical and irregular 
 character of the rain- 
 fall, only a small frac- 
 tion of this can be de- 
 pended upon for steady 
 generation. Another 
 example of the same 
 class of abrupt fall, but 
 much smaller, though FIG. IBS 
 
 still large, is shown in 
 
 Fig. 168, which is a view of the Montmorency Falls, 
 about eight miles from Quebec, where there is now in 
 use some 12,000 h. p. under a head of 275 feet. Part 
 of the head works and gate-houses through which the 
 water-power is diverted are visible at the top of the 
 picture. An example of the somewhat scattered but 
 
224 
 
 POWER 
 
 still fairly high, though not so abrupt, fall is shown 
 in Fig. 169, representing the city of Tivoli, Italy, where 
 there is a head of 360 feet, of which, however, only 
 165 feet is used and some 2000 h. p. developed. The 
 city above the falls is clearly visible at the top of the 
 picture. These few examples will serve to illustrate 
 that type of stream in which the volume of water is 
 
 FIG. 169 
 
 considerable, the fall obtained in a very short hori- 
 zontal distance, and the head of intermediate value, 
 offering almost ideal conditions for power development. 
 Extremely high heads are available only in the moun- 
 tains and obtainable only by more or less considerable 
 horizontal distances. Development in these cases will, 
 therefore, cover some miles of mountainous country, 
 often involving the boring of rock tunnels and the 
 construction of canals carrying water around the sides 
 of hills, so that no single picture can quite show the 
 nature of the problem. There is, however, presented 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 225 
 
 in Fig. 170 a view of a pipe-line coming down the side 
 of a high mountain and forming part of one of these 
 high-head plants. This pipe-line has been installed by 
 
 the San Joaquin Electric Co. of 
 
 Fresno, California, to develop 
 a head of 1400 feet, and 1000 
 h. p. is transmitted electrically 
 35 miles over the mountains. 
 This pipe-line is fed by a canal 
 seven miles long, the pipe itself 
 being 4000 feet in length, in- 
 dicating that a distance of 
 seven miles was necessary to 
 develop this head, a condition 
 which would never have been 
 justified unless so great a head 
 could be available. Such high- 
 head work through mountain- 
 ous country is characteristic of 
 our own Rocky Mountains, 
 parts of Mexico, and the Swiss 
 Alps, and is a direct result of 
 the influence of electrical trans- 
 mission, without which these 
 isolated and inaccessible moun- 
 tain streams would have been 
 quite useless. 
 
 The last of the three classes 
 
 of streams and that first developed is the low-head 
 class, where either at a low natural waterfall, or at 
 the head of a section of the river where there are 
 rapids, a dam is placed, fixing a high level for the 
 
 FIG. 170 
 
226 
 
 POWER 
 
 water, the low point being located at some convenient 
 spot down-stream, perhaps only a few feet or per- 
 haps several miles away. Such a stream is illustrated 
 in Fig. 171, which represents the German Rhine at 
 Neuhausen. Here the river runs through a sloping 
 stretch, making a rapid. Another stream having a 
 similar rapids section is the Susquehanna River, 
 
 FIG. 171 
 
 recently developed at McCall's Ferry, at which point 
 the river is 2700 feet wide, and drains an area in 
 the Alleghanies of 27,400 square miles. The erec- 
 tion of a dam has made available a head of 53 feet, 
 which, of course, varies from time to time. In time of 
 flood the flow of water is 225 times as much as the 
 minimum flow. This requires a large waste weir, or 
 overflow dam, 2500 feet long, over the crest of which 
 the flood waters will rise 17 feet. To indicate the 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 227 
 
 power market that has warranted this development 
 it should be noted that within a radius of seventy miles 
 are located the cities of Philadelphia, Wilmington, 
 Baltimore, Harrisburg, York, and Lancaster, for which 
 there will be available by ten wheels about 140,000 h. p. 
 The Susquehanna development is shown in Fig. 172, 
 which is a map of the section. A photograph illustrat- 
 ing the magnitude of the construction work necessary 
 
 to the dam is shown in Fig. 173, while the flood diffi- 
 culties are shown in Fig. 174, representing a flood through 
 a partly completed section of the dam, submerging 
 much of the construction equipment there located. 
 Still another case of low-head development is that on 
 the Tennessee River below the city of Chattanooga, 
 the location of which, with respect to the dam, is shown 
 on the map (Fig. 175), from which it will appear that 
 the dam is many miles below the city, while the stream 
 runs through sections of low land and through narrow 
 valleys between high banks. The creation of the dam 
 
226 
 
 POWER 
 
 FIG. 173 
 
 causes the water to rise in this stream for some thirty 
 miles above, although the head is available through 
 the abrupt fall created at the dam itself. 
 
 In the early 
 days of Ameri- 
 can develop- 
 ment only low 
 heads were at- 
 tempted, and on 
 the sites chosen 
 cities grew. 
 These low heads 
 were selected 
 because of the 
 prevailing form 
 Fl - 174 of water-wheel, 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 229 
 
 which was the familiar old mill overshot or breast type, 
 completely exposed and of diameter approximating the 
 height of the falls. These wheels were located first at 
 either the side of a natural fall or at one end of a dam built 
 above a fall or rapids. When more power was wanted, 
 another mill with its wheel was located at the other 
 end of either the fall or the dam; and when more than 
 this supply was wanted, there began canal construction. 
 A canal was excavated on the high ground on a level 
 
 FIG. 175 
 
 with the upper waters, and sometimes also another one 
 through the low ground at a level with the lower waters. 
 Between these two canals any number of wheels could 
 be located and any number of mills established. Where 
 the ground was sloping between the high and low-level 
 canals, wooden boxes or flumes were built out and 
 supported on posts to bring the water directly over the 
 wheel, from which it discharged into the tail canal. 
 In those cases where the head was so high as to demand 
 very large wheels, say 30 feet in diameter, another 
 
230 
 
 POWER 
 
 CONNECT/CUT 
 
 intermediate canal was built, and smaller wheels, of 
 half the diameter, located at intermediate points. The 
 water from the high-level canal would run from one 
 wheel into the intermediate canal, and from there to 
 a second wheel into the low level. This sort of develop- 
 ment was carried on for many years and was the first 
 attempt. According to Colonel Samuel Webber, the 
 first water-wheel to be erected in this country was 
 built in 1790 at Pawtucket Falls, for cotton manufac- 
 ture, and was 
 soon followed 
 by others at 
 Paterson, New 
 Jersey, in 1813 
 at Fall River, 
 Massachusetts, 
 and in 1821 on 
 the Merrimac 
 River for oper- 
 ating both a 
 machine shop and a cotton-mill at a point which after- 
 wards became the city of Lowell. At the point on the 
 Merrimac River the two-canal system was used, with 
 two drops of 13 and 17 feet respectively, to accommo- 
 date the small wheels to the. 30-foot head. A similar 
 canal development, but with three levels, took place 
 at a point in the Connecticut River where is now lo- 
 cated the city of Holyoke, Massachusetts. The ar- 
 rangement of these canals is shown on the map, Fig. 176. 
 At this point there is a total head available of 61 feet, 
 developed for a distance of 3250 feet below the dam, 
 where there are now at work some 60 mills, using about 
 
 FIG. 176 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 231 
 
 30,000 h. p. by day, and half as much at night. Per- 
 haps the first tendency toward the changing of con- 
 ditions was the result of steam competition, which 
 appeared in 1830, at which time the first steam-engine 
 mill was erected at Providence, Rhode Island, and it 
 is an open question whether this competition did or 
 did not tend to stimulate the study of water-power; 
 but whether it did or not there was applied fourteen 
 years later, at the Appleton Mills in Lowell, 1844, the 
 first hydraulic turbine. This turbine, typical of all 
 future development, was capable of making more effec- 
 tive use of any head of water than were the old wheels; 
 and it, moreover, could be built for high as well as low 
 heads, and could be supplied with water through pipes 
 over or under ground, making canals unnecessary, except 
 in those cases where they were already installed, or 
 where their construction was cheaper than pipe-lines 
 of the same water capacity. These turbines make 
 use of the spouting capacity of 
 water under pressure as it issues 
 from the pipe or nozzles con- 
 nected with the pipe. The 
 water-jet, as already explained, 
 works in connection with 
 curved vanes, operating them 
 by giving up its velocity, an 
 action which distinguishes FIG 1? 
 
 them from the old and most 
 common overshot wheels, where the water turns the 
 wheel by its weight alone. It is worth while to review 
 the principles of these turbines, which had the effect of 
 changing water-power development methods, and which 
 
232 
 
 POWER 
 
 were not built in this country until 1844. In Fig. 177 
 is shown a crude Indian affair, acting by impulse. 
 Water issuing from the wooden pipe has a certain 
 velocity and direction, and by impulse on the wooden 
 vanes turns the wheel. A more recent form and better 
 design, though still an old one, is shown in Fig. 178, 
 in which gates are provided 
 to control the water. The 
 spout is tapered to get a 
 better form of jet and the 
 vanes are curved to get 
 better effect on the wheels. 
 
 Elevation. 
 
 FIG. 178 
 
 Plan and Partial Section. 
 FIG. 179 
 
 This design is fundamental to the modern impulse 
 wheel. A similar simple wheel of earlier times, con- 
 taining the essentials of the modern reaction wheel, 
 is shown in Fig. 179, in which the water is brought 
 to the hollow interior of the wheel by a pipe leading 
 upward to its center. Water escapes from the hollow 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 233 
 
 interior through nozzles bent so as to make the dis- 
 charge tangential and rotating the wheel by reaction. 
 Modern water-wheels designed with nozzles and curved 
 vanes act on both reaction and impulse, and sometimes 
 by both in the same wheels, and are no more than re- 
 finements of these simple affairs which started a move- 
 ment completely revolutionizing water-power develop- 
 ment some years ago. In order to show clearly how 
 
 FIG. 180 
 
 the turbine installation compares with the overshot 
 water-wheel installation, which it began to replace 
 at that time, there is presented Fig. 180. Here there 
 are two parallel installations for the same head of water, 
 the water being carried from the stream to the wheels 
 through an open wooden box or flume. It will be 
 observed that the overshot wheel spills most of its 
 water part way down, so that the water, which acts 
 only by its weight, is available for only part of the fall, 
 
234 
 
 POWER 
 
 in fact, only a very small portion of it is available for 
 all of the fall. For the turbine a vertical box is at- 
 tached to the flume, and at its bottom all the water 
 escapes through jets in the turbine with a velocity due 
 to the whole head or fall, so that if the vanes are rightly 
 formed and run at the right speed, fully 80 per cent of 
 
 the possible effect 
 can be obtained. 
 Moreover, the 
 water could have 
 been brought to 
 the turbine by a 
 pipe over the whole 
 distance instead of 
 by canals, thus 
 making possible 
 great flexibility of 
 construction, no 
 matter what the 
 head. Modern 
 turbines are care- 
 fully designed and 
 somewhat elabo- 
 rate machines, 
 especially when 
 
 they are built to run electric generators, which require 
 great steadiness of motion accomplished only by 
 very elaborate governing apparatus in addition to 
 fine design. A few examples of these will be shown 
 to indicate general form and appearance, but the 
 principles of detailed design are too technical to be 
 gone into here. In Fig. 181 are shown three small tur- 
 
 FIG. 181 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 235 
 
 bines on vertical shafts as they appeared in the shop, 
 inlet and discharge pipes being clearly shown. The 
 largest turbine ever built, and designed also for a ver- 
 tical shaft operation, is shown in Fig. 182, the size of 
 which may be judged by comparing with the ladder at 
 the left, which is faintly visible. It develops 18,000 
 
 FIG. 182 
 
 h. p. in a single wheel, and is one of four built by I. P. 
 Morris Co. for Great Western Power Co., for 525 feet 
 head and nearly 90 per cent efficiency. This particular 
 picture is interesting by reason of the fact that there 
 is clearly visible at the top of the machine a series of 
 levers operating the gates for closing off the water 
 which enters the pipe shown and so regulating the power. 
 These levers are all attached to a ring having two 
 
236 
 
 POWER 
 
 lugs at opposite points on .tba side, to which are at- 
 taghed the rods of two hydraulic pistons. By supply- 
 ing pressure water to these cylinders, the pistons, rods, 
 and levers may be moved, and this movement is con- 
 trolled by the speed of the machine through a governor. 
 These gates are rather heavy in large machines and 
 offer considerable resistance to opening and closing, 
 
 FIG. 183 
 
 and it is for this reason that hydraulic cylinders like 
 these are provided to utilize the water pressure to 
 accomplish the change of gate position. A smaller 
 machine, designed for a horizontal shaft and also com- 
 pletely cased in, is shown in Fig. 183. Here the hy- 
 draulic cylinders are also present but the gate levers are 
 not visible. Another horizontal shaft machine is shown 
 in Fig. 184, in which the wheel proper is exposed beyond 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 237 
 
 FIG. 184 
 
 the casing. This particular machine is capable of 
 developing some 200 h. p. under a head of 30 feet, and 
 is built for the Hanford Irrigation & Power Co. in the 
 state of Washington, by the Allis-Chalmers Co. The 
 wheel proper, or runner, of one of another type of 
 
 turbine is shown in Fig. 185, 
 
 from which it will be clear 
 that the vanes are sometimes 
 quite complicated and curi- 
 ously curved, and yet these 
 curvatures are very carefully 
 worked out on hydraulic prin- 
 ciples. Two turbines provided 
 with wheel runners of this 
 kind just mentioned, built by 
 the Samson Co., are illustrated 
 in Fig. 186, one of which is 
 provided with a casing com- 
 plete, while the other is only 
 
 partly cased. In the latter 
 
 form the water supply is not FIG. 185 
 
 
238 
 
 POWER 
 
 
 FIG. 186 
 
 piped to the wheel, although the discharge is piped away. 
 A large wheel of this same construction, designed to 
 operate in one of the plants of the Niagara Falls Power 
 Co., is shown in Fig. 187, and develops 1500 h. p. under 
 
 FIG. 187 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 239 
 
 a head of 220 feet. An extremely large wheel, designed 
 for a vertical shaft and developing 13,000 h. p., is shown 
 in Fig. 188 as designed for the Electrical Development 
 
 FIG. 188 
 
 Co. of Ontario. As a matter of fact, this wheel is two 
 wheels within one casing, each receiving water from 
 the same pipe, shown in the background, and both 
 
240 
 
 POWER 
 
 discharging to the center to a common discharge pipe, 
 shown at .the right. This is one of eleven installed at 
 Niagara Falls for a head of 135 feet, each supplied 
 through riveted steel pipes 10 feet 6 inches in diameter. 
 From the constructions shown it will appear that 
 the water may be led to these turbines through pipes, 
 or they may be submerged in the head waters above 
 the dam ; they may be run with vertical or horizontal 
 shafts; all have vanes and nozzles, although the 
 nozzles may themselves look like vanes, as is the case 
 with steam-turbines. The direction of flow may be 
 up or down, in or out, in practically any convenient 
 way, making their application by reason of this flexi- 
 bility a comparatively easy thing. In all cases the water 
 acts over the whole circumference of the wheel, and 
 whether it enters through guide vanes to ultimately 
 discharge through nozzles, as in reaction wheels, or 
 enters nozzles directly to strike vanes later, as in im- 
 , pulse wheels, the 
 
 nozzles themselves 
 form a continuous 
 ring and are made 
 -j f~ by inserting parti- 
 tions of suitable form 
 between plates; the 
 water spaces between 
 the partitions con- 
 stitute the nozzles. 
 To regulate the quantity of water passing through these, 
 nozzles gates are always provided, and a water-wheel 
 that is not provided with gates for regulating it is prac- 
 tically useless for, electrical operations, as control of 
 
 FIG. 189 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 241 
 
 speed is quite essential. These gates are of three 
 classes, known as cylinder gates, register gates, and 
 wicket gates. In Fig. 189 is shown a wheel provided 
 with register gates. These register gates are really a 
 series of specially formed covers that slide over the 
 nozzles of the wheel by a 
 movement about the circum- 
 ference. In the figure the 
 gates are shown in three dif- 
 ferent positions. In the upper 
 right-hand position the nozzles 
 are completely closed. In the 
 upper left-hand position the 
 nozzles are partially open. In 
 the lower left-hand posi- 
 tion they are completely 
 open. To move these 
 gates around so that they 
 cover or uncover the ori- 
 fices, a ring is provided 
 with gear teeth and a 
 small gear attached, as 
 shown in the lower left- 
 hand corner. Instead 
 of sliding something 
 around the circumference to close the opening, as is 
 done with the register gate, a thin cylindrical shell, 
 somewhat like a piece of pipe, may be slipped in 
 between the fixed and moving part of the turbine, as 
 is shown in Fig. 190, which represents a cross-section 
 of one of the 5500 h. p. turbines of the Niagara Falls 
 Power Co. The two heavy black lines at the center 
 
 FIG. 190 
 
242 
 
 POWER 
 
 represent a section of the cylinder gate plate. By 
 lifting this cylindrical shell up and down, the size of 
 the water-passage may be controlled. Instead of 
 lifting a cylinder up or down, as is done with the 
 cylinder gate, or instead of sliding a row of covers 
 over the nozzles, as is done in the register gate, curved 
 partitions may, as in the wicket gate, be pivoted. 
 Such a wicket gate is shown in Fig. 191 attached to a 
 small 100 h. p. turbine of Swiss design. Each partition 
 is formed somewhat like a shoe and has a pivot at its 
 
 center. By ro- 
 tating each about 
 this central pivot 
 the space be- 
 tween may be 
 made narrow or 
 wide, but still 
 will constitute a 
 nozzle directing 
 the water in approximately the same desired direction. 
 The movement of these gates, whether they be cylinder, 
 wicket, or register type, is always under the control of 
 governors, which are themselves quite complicated 
 machines, one of which is shown in Fig. 192, the 
 details of which need not be gone into here; but it 
 must be realized that governing is an important factor 
 in successful water-power work, and that it is a difficult 
 problem. 
 
 When gates are closed to reduce the quantity of 
 water passing through the wheel, the whole quantity 
 of water in the pipe must be reduced in speed. This 
 water is practically incompressible, and the slowing up 
 
 FIG. 191 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 243 
 
 of this long column without danger is just as difficult 
 a proposition as stopping a high-speed train. If gates 
 be suddenly closed at the end of a long pipe-line, the 
 water will tend to continue to move by its own inertia, 
 so that the pressure at the gate will momentarily rise, 
 and may become very high, so high, perhaps, as to burst 
 the pipe or injure the wheel. In the case of the Fresno 
 
 FIG. 192 
 
 Power Plant, already referred to, the weight of the water 
 contained in the 4000 feet of pipe, having diameters 
 at the beginning 24 inches, and 20 inches at the end, 
 is 317 tons. If the gates were suddenly closed on this 
 pipe-line, the 317 tons of water would be suddenly 
 stopped, and something would happen, and that some- 
 thing would mean a wreck, unless the pipe were made 
 unusually thick, or some safety element provided. 
 
244 
 
 POWER 
 
 To avoid this difficulty relief- valves are sometimes 
 used, something like the safety-valves on boilers, but 
 they are not considered as reliable as another device, 
 which, however, cannot be used on very high heads. 
 This other device is a stand-pipe projecting up in the 
 air near the power house. Under ordinary flow con- 
 ditions the water would not run out at the top, but 
 
 , , should the flow of water 
 
 be suddenly arrested, 
 the water would spout 
 out at the top, as shown 
 in Fig. 193, illustrating 
 two stand-pipes, one of 
 which is discharging 
 water, and the other 
 is not. 
 
 The horse-power of 
 a turbine is some frac- 
 tion of the product of 
 the quantity of water 
 flowing and its head or 
 pressure. This frac- 
 tion is the efficiency, 
 or the ratio of the 
 power that the turbine can develop to the energy of 
 the water passing through, and in good wheels this 
 is about 80 to 90 per cent. The area of the passages 
 through which the water flows must be large enough 
 to pass just the right amount of water, so that for low- 
 head work, when much power is to be developed, the 
 orifices must be large, and the water passages in the 
 wheel also. On the contrary, for very high-head work 
 
 FIG. 193 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 245 
 
 the quantity of water needed to develop the same power 
 is very much less, so that the areas of the nozzle passages 
 must be quite small. As a matter of fact, for very 
 high heads, approaching 1000 feet, a wheel of suitable 
 diameter would require a total nozzle area too small 
 to permit of construction and control if the nozzles 
 extended all around the circumference of the wheel, 
 as each nozzle will be a mere slit no wider than the blade 
 of a knife. Therefore, for 
 high-head work all the water, 
 instead of entering the wheel 
 over the whole circumference, 
 is concentrated in one, two, or 
 three nozzles, generally one 
 directed toward the wheel, 
 which is, therefore, always of 
 the impulse type. These high- 
 head wheels, designed for single 
 nozzles, are differently formed 
 from the other turbines noted, 
 and consist of disks carrying 
 on their circumferences a series 
 of buckets, such as shown in 
 Fig. 194, which illustrates a wheel to develop 500 h. p. 
 at a head of 865 feet. A series of impulse- wheels of 
 the same general class, but differing structurally, is 
 shown in Fig. 195, as installed in the San Joaquin 
 plant, the jet striking the buckets of the wheels 
 underneath. To control the speed of these wheels 
 and at the same time to avoid setting up heavy inertia 
 pressures in the pipe-line by varying the quantity of 
 water, it has become customary to deflect the nozzles so 
 
 FIG. 194 
 
246 
 
 POWER 
 
 that the jets strike the 
 buckets more or less. 
 Such an arrangement 
 is shown in Fig. 196, 
 in which the nozzle is 
 carried from a lever 
 controlled by the gov- 
 ernor, so that when the 
 speed gets too high the 
 nozzle is dropped away 
 from the wheel. This 
 allows the regulation of 
 speed desired, without 
 varying the quantity 
 of water, and therefore 
 injuring the pipe. It 
 is interesting to note 
 
 in this connection how concentrated is the jet. Such 
 a jet is shown in Fig. 197. It looks like a bar of 
 polished steel, and if directed against a man would 
 pierce his body, as would a projectile from a gun. 
 
 FIG. 195 
 
 FIG. 196 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 247 
 
 It is, therefore, a thing to be carefully guarded and 
 perfectly controlled. 
 
 Wheels being available for any head, however "gfeat 
 or small, and a locality likewise available for a flow of 
 water with a suitable head that can be developed 
 within a reasonable distance, small if the head is low, 
 large if it is high, the problem becomes how best to 
 adapt the wheel to the locality, or how best to modify 
 the locality to receive the wheel ; the modification in 
 every case involving 
 concentration of the 
 flow of water, or as 
 much of it as is to be 
 used, the providing of 
 storage to take care of 
 fluctuations in the flow, 
 and the providing of 
 safeguard against the 
 destruction of the 
 wheels. Unless there 
 is a direct fall, there 
 
 must be a dam, the object of which is to fix the high 
 level and to store water. In connection with the dam 
 there should be at one side, or at some other point in 
 the stream, a spillway over which waste water coming 
 down in time of excess of supply or of flood may flow 
 without injuring the plant. At Niagara, the falls them- 
 selves constitute a natural spillway, whereas at McCall's 
 Ferry, as has been noted, there was required a half-mile 
 spillway dam. Dams are made in all sorts of ways, from 
 earth and rock reinforced by timber, from masonry, or 
 from concrete running down to bed-rock, and may, there- 
 
 FIG. 197 
 
248 
 
 POWER 
 
 FIG. 198 
 
 fore, be cheap or expensive. They may vary from 
 only a few hundred feet in width to nearly a mile. 
 
 A timber and 
 cribwork dam 
 of the Animas 
 Co,, in southern 
 Colorado, is 
 shown in Fig. 
 198. At this 
 point about 
 4000 h. p. is 
 developed with 
 a head of ap- 
 proximately 
 1000 feet. The 
 water is led 
 from Cascade Creek to this dam through a wooden 
 flume, the reservoir back of the dam covering about 
 
 960 acres, the , , 
 
 dam itself, 550 
 feet long, 75 feet 
 high, extending 
 33 feet down to 
 rock. Another 
 dam, built of 
 concrete with 
 stone spillway, 
 is shown in pro- 
 cess of erection 
 in Fig. 199 on 
 the Chattahoochee near Columbus, Georgia. This 
 dam is 33 J feet above bed-rock, and controls a head 
 
 FIG. 109 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 249 
 
 
 of 40 feet, at which some 25,000 h. p. will be devel- 
 oped from the drainage of 3500 square miles. From 
 above the dam, or natural water basin, if there is 
 one instead of the dam, the water is led to the wheels 
 in a great variety of ways. The wheels may even be 
 within the dam itself, the casing being removed from 
 the supply side and the inlet 
 orifices exposed to the stand- 
 ing water; or the water may 
 be led through wooden flumes, 
 masonry canals, rock tunnels, 
 or vertical shafts bored in the 
 rock, or through iron or wooden 
 pipes. Somewhere in the open 
 conduit there is usually pro- 
 vided a sort of basin called a 
 forebay, to which the head- 
 gates are attached, so that 
 the water may be shut off for 
 repairs ; there will also be 
 placed at this point rubbish 
 or ice racks to intercept float- 
 ing ice or logs. Whenever 
 there is an upper level canal it 
 
 is called a head-race. Below the wheels a canal is 
 needed sometimes to reach the lower level waters, and 
 in such cases it is called a tail-race. Before looking at 
 some of the standard constructions for these various ele- 
 ments it will be interesting to examine some diagrams 
 and possible general arrangements. In Fig. 200 are 
 shown five diagrams of stream development, prepared 
 by Professor Mead, lettered A to E. In the first one, 
 
 " 
 
 FIG. 200 
 
250 
 
 POWER 
 
 A, there is practically no head-race, gates and wheels 
 being located on the high ground above the dam, and 
 as the surface slopes away rapidly in all directions a 
 tail-race is excavated. In position B, the land is all 
 high, so that instead of excavating to the depth re- 
 quired for a tail-race there is instead a head-race ex- 
 cavated, and the wheels are 
 located on the steep bank, 
 discharging directly into the 
 stream. The land sloping 
 rather abruptly from the bank 
 necessitates a construction as 
 shown at (7, where the wheels 
 are located in a down-stream 
 extension of the dam itself, or 
 that shown at D, which is 
 practically the same thing. 
 In diagram E the land is so 
 located as to permit of the 
 easy construction of a long 
 head-race parallel to the 
 down-stream part of the river, 
 and between this head-race 
 and the lower banks of the 
 river many wheels are located. This is really a diagram 
 of the old-fashioned canal development arrangement. 
 Bends in streams are often favorable points to develop, 
 especially when the bend is sharp. Three such 
 possible arrangements are shown in Fig. 201, differing 
 only in the contour of the location of the land. In 
 the upper diagram the land is high but comparatively 
 level for about half way. It then rises high so that 
 
 FIG. 201 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 251 
 
 a head-race is economical for half the distance, after 
 which a tunnel and shaft are constructed to reach 
 the tail-race. In the second diagram the land is high 
 for nearly the whole distance, and then slopes down 
 to the water, so that a head-race would be con- 
 structed the whole way and the wheels be located 
 on the down-stream 
 bank. In the third 
 diagram the land is 
 high for only a short 
 distance. It then slopes 
 down rapidly and is low 
 for all the rest of the 
 distance. In this case 
 the wheels are located 
 next the dam and dis- 
 charge into a tail-race, 
 excavated across the 
 rest of the point. 
 
 Wheels may also be 
 located in a variety of 
 ways with respect to 
 the dam itself, or to 
 the low, pipe-line, pen- 
 stock, and tail-water, as 
 shown in Figs. 202 and 203, also prepared by Professor 
 Mead. The first of these arrangements, that shown at 
 A, is that of a vertical shaft turbine, the inlet orifices of 
 which are incased and submerged in the shallow high- 
 level water, the discharge water passing through a casing 
 submerged in the tail-water. This is a typical arrange- 
 ment for a very low head, to utilize every inch of height 
 
 FIG. 202 
 
252 
 
 POWER 
 
 of the downward projecting tube, and is called a draft 
 tube, as it acts much the same as a suction. At posi- 
 tion B is shown the same arrangement except for high 
 heads, in which case the water is brought to the wheel by 
 a pipe and the upper part is surrounded by a casing. 
 
 Three wheels on one 
 shaft of the open inlet 
 submerged character are 
 shown at C, with two 
 discharging draft tubes. 
 Two wheels on one shaft 
 with single discharge 
 draft tube are shown at 
 D. In both cases the 
 shafts are vertical. Two 
 cases of horizontal tur- 
 bine shafts with exposed 
 inlet submerged are 
 shown at E and F. 
 In the former case the 
 whole wheel is under 
 the water and in the 
 
 FIG. 203 
 
 latter 
 inlet, 
 tubes. 
 
 case only the 
 Both have draft 
 
 Referring to Fig. 203, there are shown six arrange- 
 ments of horizontal shaft turbines, in the first of which 
 the whole machine is submerged and the draft tubes 
 are constructed of concrete. In B the wheel is inclosed 
 and rests on the power plant floor, and is supplied 
 with high-pressure water through a pipe, but discharges 
 through a masonry draft tube as in the former case. 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 253 
 
 In the next two cases, C and D, horizontal turbines 
 completely incased receive water under pressure 
 through pipe-lines, and discharge through draft tubes 
 in the tail-water. In the former case, the draft tube 
 is of metal, and in the latter built in the masonry. The 
 same construction as that shown in D is used at E, 
 
 FIG. 204 
 
 except that the two turbines are supplied from a single 
 pipe-line in opposite directions, discharging through 
 two draft tubes ; while at F the construction is espec- 
 ially adapted to low-head working ; the two turbines 
 are without any casing for their inlets and are, therefore, 
 submerged, while a common discharge leads to a draft 
 tube on the lower level. 
 
254 
 
 POWER 
 
 FIG. 205 
 
 Returning now to some of the typical constructions 
 
 of the water conduit systems, there are shown in Fig. 
 
 204 a small fore- 
 bay, waste dam, 
 and canal inlet 
 gate. Near the 
 intake of the 
 forebay there 
 will be located 
 some sort of 
 screen to keep 
 out logs and 
 floating ice. 
 This illustrates 
 the intake of 
 
 the Puget Sound Power Co. on the Puyallup River. 
 
 The waste dam is 200 feet long, and the intake 62 feet 
 
 wide in the river bank. Water entering this forebay 
 
 and canal is con- 
 ducted about 
 
 10 miles, finally 
 
 drops 872 feet, 
 
 and develops 
 
 10,000h.p. The 
 
 canal is only 
 
 8 feet wide and 
 
 5 feet deep. 
 
 An example of 
 
 head-gate ar- FIG 206 
 
 rangement for 
 
 a comparatively small-sized plant is shown in Fig. 205, 
 
 and represents the outlet at the Great Jezero Lake 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 255 
 
 in Europe. The water flowing through these gates 
 ultimately develops 9000 h. p. A still larger gate is 
 shown in Fig. 
 206, through 
 which are led 
 the waters of 
 Lake Superior, 
 which has an 
 area of 30,000 
 square miles, 
 escaping natur- 
 ally through the 
 Sault Rapids, 
 some of which, 
 however, has 
 been diverted 
 
 through this canal for the generation of about 60,000 
 h. p. under a head of about 16 feet by submerged wheels 
 which are shown in Fig. 207. Just before reaching the 
 
 FlG 2 or 
 
 FIG. 208 
 
 wheels, the canal expands into a forebay 1400 feet 
 wide, at the end of which is located on one side the power 
 
256 
 
 POWER 
 
 house, and on the other the spillway. The complete 
 power house is shown in Fig, 208, and the ice-racks 
 
 FIG. 209 
 
 in Fig. 209. A somewhat more elaborate arrangement 
 for controlling the water is that used by the Ontario 
 Power Co. at Niagara Falls, shown in Fig. 210. This 
 
 FIG. 210 
 
 is a beautifully executed hanging wall of masonry 
 under which the water must flow. 
 
WATER-POWER" SYSTEMS 
 
 257 
 
 These few illustrations will serve to show the variation 
 in structure of head works, including forebays, gates, 
 
 etc.; but before , 
 
 the water, the 
 diversion of 
 which is started 
 at the head 
 works, can be- 
 come available 
 it must be con- 
 ducted some 
 distance. This 
 requirement is 
 most commonly 
 
 . J FIG. 211 
 
 carried out first 
 
 by canals and later by pipes. A common earth canal 
 
 is shown in Fig. 211. A crude sort of conduit or flume 
 
 FIG. 212 
 
258 
 
 POWER 
 
 made of wooden boards 
 is often used, and by 
 it water may be car- 
 ried across depressed 
 points on bridges, such 
 as shown in Fig. 212, 
 a section of the wooden 
 flume of the San Joa- 
 quin Co., already re- 
 ferred to. A more 
 elaborate and expen- 
 sive construction is 
 illustrated in Fig. 213, 
 which shows a concrete 
 canal issuing from a 
 rock tunnel, bored 
 through the mountain, 
 and forming part of 
 the Bosnia develop- 
 ment. 
 
 An elaborate masonry viaduct is illustrated in Fig. 
 214, forming part of the Tivoli development, previously 
 illustrated by a 
 general view. 
 This latter case 
 is a good ex- 
 ample of the 
 most expensive 
 type of struc- 
 ture, in striking 
 contrast to the 
 tail-race of the FIG. 214 
 
 FIG. 213 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 259 
 
 FIG. 215 
 
 Susquehanna River development at McCall's Ferry, 
 shown in Fig. 215, which is roughly blasted and 
 left unfinished. 
 From the 
 forebay or 
 head-race pipe- 
 lines are run to 
 the lower level, 
 and in Fig. 216 
 are shown three 
 pipe-lines under 
 construction, 
 connecting with 
 the end of a 
 canal coming 
 out of the 
 
 woods. Through these pipes will flow water to develop 
 some 5000 h. p., involving part of the development of 
 
 Lakes Joux and 
 Brenets in 
 Switzerland. 
 
 Where there 
 is a dam on a 
 stream, as has 
 already been 
 noted, it is pos- 
 sible to sub- 
 merge wheels in 
 the dam, and to 
 illustrate this 
 point there are presented two pictures of the develop- 
 ment at Lowell, Kansas, on the Spring River. In 
 
 FIG. 216 
 
260 
 
 POWER 
 
 the first, Fig. 217, are shown some cross-sections 
 of the dam at various points and in different direc- 
 tions. Section marked AB shows controlling gate, 
 
 FIG. 217 
 
 which is of radial form. CD shows power house 
 built inside the dam;; section EF shows a turbine lo- 
 cated in the head-water with its draft tube extending 
 into the tail-water. The long picture at the bottom 
 is a longitudinal section of the dam, showing the loca- 
 tion of eight wheels, the power house, and the controlling 
 
 FIG. 218 
 
 gates for regulating the head. A photograph of the 
 dam in cross-section is shown in Fig. 218 from the down- 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 261 
 
 stream side ; the arches just appearing out of the 
 water are the discharges from the turbines located 
 within the masonry structure. At this point the dam 
 is 1250 feet long, and there is a spillway half a mile up- 
 stream. The dam is 30 feet high, and with a head of 
 34 feet 2400 h. p. is developed. In some localities 
 where the head is not very great, especially in the 
 beginning of a long pipe-line, the pipe, instead of being 
 of riveted steel, is made of wooden staves. Such a 
 construction is 
 illustrated in 
 Fig. 219 and is 
 used by the 
 Pioneer Elec- 
 trical Power 
 Co. of Utah, 
 which trans- 
 mits electrically 
 to Ogden and 
 Salt Lake City 
 some 10,000 
 h. p. developed 
 under a head of 
 
 450 feet. This water pipe-line is 5 miles long and made 
 of 2-inch Oregon pine held together by f-inch steel bands, 
 of which 87,000 were used. When the drop in level be- 
 comes excessive, the water pipe is replaced by steel pipe 
 running to the lower level. At the end of such a pipe- 
 line is located a power house, just above the tail-waters. 
 The discharge water from the wheels may enter draft- 
 tubes submerged in the tail-water, which case requires 
 the reaction type of wheel, or it may drop off the cir- 
 
 FIG. 219 
 
262 
 
 POWER 
 
 cumference of open impulse or bucket-wheels such 
 as are used for high heads. The power house of such 
 a high-head development, located just above the tail- 
 
 Tv 
 
 FIG. 220 
 
 water, showing the discharge of such bucket-wheels, 
 is shown in Fig. 220. The other construction just 
 mentioned is used in the Canadian-Niagara Power 
 House, at Niagara Falls. The water from the fore- 
 bay is led verti- 
 cally downward 
 through pipes 
 set in excavated 
 shafts cut in the 
 rock. Draft 
 tubes from the 
 turbines extend 
 downward into 
 a rock excava- 
 tion, finally 
 leading to the 
 tail-water. The 
 
 FIG. 221 
 
 electrical ma- 
 chinery is carried on the upper-level end of long shafts. 
 In this power house the units are each 12,000 h. p. 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 
 
 263 
 
 maximum. Five are installed, and there will be ulti- 
 mately six more, which will make the capacity some- 
 thing over 100,000 h. p. for the station under a head of 
 135 feet. 
 
 Another arrangement somewhat similar in character 
 and also in use at Niagara is shown in Fig. 22 1 . Here the 
 
 pipe drops from the forebay vertically for a distance 
 and then inclines, entering the power house. The 
 construction of the power house at McCall's Ferry is 
 shown in Fig. 222 in cross-section, indicating that no 
 pipe-lines at all are used, but that the water from above 
 the dam enters through head-gates and passes through 
 a concrete water conduit, reaching double wheels and 
 discharging through two draft tubes to the tail-water. 
 The method of construction of these concrete draft 
 
264 
 
 POWER 
 
 tubes is shown in Fig. 223 with part of the dam visible 
 in the distance. 
 
 From what has been said it can readily be under- 
 stood why the cost of water-power is so variable a 
 quantity, dependent as it is on the cost of development, 
 which is seldom twice the same. Water-power may 
 
 be the cheapest or the most expensive. When water- 
 power cost per horse-power hour exceeds that of fuel- 
 burning systems, steam, gas, or oil, the development 
 is not warranted, so that a knowledge of the cost of 
 power by these fuel-burning systems for the particular 
 locality in question must be known with reasonable 
 certainty before undertaking any water-power develop- 
 
WATER-POWER SYSTEMS 265 
 
 ment. Here again is an illustration of the controlling 
 influence of true economy on the engineering methods 
 to be employed in obtaining power, for no matter how 
 clever and ingenious a new scheme, it is warranted 
 only when the cost of the service to be rendered is 
 reduced thereby. 
 
VIII 
 
 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE 
 SUBSTITUTION OF POWER FOR HAND LABOR 
 
 POWER is seldom useful at the point where it is gen- 
 erated, because it is never generated for its own sake, 
 but as a means of driving machines to make or do 
 something. These machines must necessarily be scat- 
 tered more or less, distributed throughout the different 
 floors of one building, or located in each of a number 
 of buildings forming part of the same establishment. 
 In fact, one power-generating system may supply 
 motive power to the machines of shops, factories, or 
 railways extending over hundreds of miles of country. 
 The object is to drive these machines and drive them 
 as economically as possible, and as there is no other 
 reason for utilizing nature's energy, without machines 
 to drive or work to be done there would be no power 
 systems. From the commercial or industrial stand- 
 point the power-generating equipment cannot be con- 
 sidered by itself, but only in association with some 
 means of transmitting the power from that place where 
 it is most convenient to generate it to that place where 
 it is most convenient to use it. These power trans- 
 mission systems take a great variety of form, but may 
 be grouped into three classes for the purpose of review. 
 The first will include direct push or pull by mechanical 
 elements ; the second push by fluids under pressure 
 
 266 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 267 
 
 with or without expansion; and the third all systems 
 not dependent on push or pull, but involving a trans- 
 formation of energy from a form not easily transmitted 
 to another that is. When the distance is short, the direct 
 push of the teeth of wheels or gearing may be used. 
 At a little greater distance between driving and driven 
 points chains running on toothed wheels, or belts of 
 leather, canvas, or steel, running on smooth wheels 
 or pulleys, will transmit a force by a direct pull from 
 the circumference of the driving to that of the driven 
 wheel. In these cases, however, the two shafts must 
 be at not too great distances. Still greater distance 
 between driven and driving shafts, more especially 
 when they are not in line, or where the transmission 
 must take place around corners of buildings, has led 
 to the substitution of ropes running in grooved wheels, 
 constituting the rope drive, and available for distances 
 approximating a thousand feet. Gears, chains, belts, 
 and ropes are all means of transmitting power from 
 one rotating shaft to another through short distances 
 by the actual transmission of a force by push or pull 
 at some properly designed part. When the distances 
 become greater than it is safe to run ropes, then the 
 second system becomes available by substituting the 
 pressure push of fluids in pipes. When the fluid is 
 non-compressible, such as water, there is no further 
 action than by the push, but the use of air permits of 
 additional work by expansion. If an engine be ar- 
 ranged to drive a pump, all its energy may be consumed 
 in pushing water against a certain pressure and at a 
 certain rate through pipes that may be of any size or 
 shape or length; and allowing for a loss in pressure by 
 
268 POWER 
 
 friction through these pipes, the water may exert a 
 corresponding push on any point of the hydraulic main 
 and be there used to operate the pistons of hydraulic 
 engines. Thus, by the addition to the engine of a 
 pump, an hydraulic motor, and a water-pipe connecting 
 them, the engine power may be transmitted almost 
 any distance and in any direction. Such an hydraulic 
 system of transmission is in use in the city of London, 
 where there are high-pressure water-pipes running 
 through the streets, supplied from a central station, 
 and delivering water to hydraulic elevators and motors. 
 Of course, the farther the water is transmitted the 
 greater will be the cost of pipe and the greater will be 
 the loss in energy by friction and leakage; so that at 
 some distance the cost of power, which is continually 
 increasing each foot from the engine, will become 
 greater than the cost to generate directly by a com- 
 peting system, and there the value of the transmission 
 system ceases. If, instead of the pump, an air com- 
 pressor be driven by the main engine, the compressed 
 air delivered to pipes may be made to flow through 
 the piping system to any distance desired, and from 
 any point it may enter a compressed air-engine, similar 
 in all respects to a steam-engine, and there do work 
 by direct push and by its expansion in addition. As 
 already explained, the steam-engine does work most 
 economically when a little bit of high-pressure fluid is 
 admitted to a cylinder, cut off, and the isolated charge 
 expanded to the terminal pressure. Substituting air 
 for steam, the action would be the same. As a conse- 
 quence, each cubic foot of high-pressure air can do ever 
 so much more work than a cubic foot of water at the 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 269 
 
 same pressure, and as a consequence, a pipe of a given 
 size can transmit more power in the form of compressed 
 air than in the form of water. Compressed air trans- 
 mission systems are very much more common because 
 they may be made more economical than hydraulic 
 systems so far as the pipe-line is concerned. They 
 are used extensively about shops and mines, the air 
 being pumped into the mine to operate drills, hoists, 
 and sometimes pumps as well, the exhaust from the 
 machine also helping to keep the air pure for breathing 
 and assisting the ventilation. In the streets of Paris 
 there are laid compressed air mains for transmitting 
 power in this form from a central station to users 
 scattered throughout the town. Even the compressed 
 air system, which is better adapted to long distances 
 than the others examined, is limited to a few miles so 
 far as economical transmission of power is concerned. 
 When really long distances are to be covered, then the 
 third method noted, that of change of energy form, is 
 still available. In fact, some of the systems of this 
 class are found to be even better for the short distances 
 than those systems that are limited to the short distance. 
 There are two systems in this class: one transforms 
 shaft power into electric energy which flows over wires, 
 and the other transforms the fuel into the gaseous form 
 and transmits it through pipes ; this latter is as yet not 
 much used. 
 
 The most commonly used power transmission system 
 to-day is the electric, and this is employed for all dis- 
 tances up to and even exceeding one hundred miles. In 
 many cases it is found economical even within the limits 
 of a single factory building to transform the shaft power 
 
270 POWER 
 
 directly into electric energy, transmitting this over 
 wires to electric motors located directly on each machine 
 requiring power. Of course, each transformation and 
 each foot of transmission involves a loss of energy, and 
 the studying out of the conditions fixing the economical 
 limit of distance for any system is one of the nice and 
 difficult engineering problems of the day. 
 
 The fundamental ideas underlying the electric trans- 
 mission of power are very simple, but the details of 
 most economic execution are extremely complicated. 
 Nearly every one knows what a magnet is, and some- 
 thing of the flow of electric current over wires to ring 
 bells and operate telegraph, telephone, and electric lights; 
 but not so many know of the relation between a magnet 
 and an electric current flowing on wires. The dis- 
 covery of this relation was one of the greatest in point 
 of scientific and commercial value that the world has 
 ever seen. Faraday found, about the year 1832, that 
 when a wire is moved in the neighborhood of a magnet 
 an electric current will flow through the wire and it will 
 take some pushing to accomplish the movement. Now 
 dynamos or electric generators are nothing more than 
 well-designed magnets, past which many wires can 
 be pushed mechanically and in an orderly manner. 
 Each individual wire as it passes the magnet has a 
 current of electricity set up in it, starting from zero 
 as it approaches, later rising to a maximum, and finally 
 falling to zero again as it leaves the magnet. Many 
 wires passing rapidly in succession may be made, by 
 suitable mechanism, to contribute each its share of 
 electric current and all these small currents added 
 up, or accumulated in one, constitute the output 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 271 
 
 of the generator. The way in which the adding up 
 is done differs in different types of generators and con- 
 stitutes the difference between them. Now, this same 
 current which was generated by driving wires across 
 the faces of magnets will, if led to one or more wires 
 near the face of other magnets, result in the reverse 
 operation. As soon as the current flows through one 
 wire the wire will push itself with respect to the magnet, 
 and many wires fastened on a drum will cause that 
 drum to rotate. This is the basal principle of the 
 electric motor, which like the dynamo consists of bundles 
 of wires carried on drums, disks, or wheels of suitable 
 sort, and a system of magnets. In the case of the 
 generator the wires are pushed past the magnet by the 
 engine power and a current generated. In the case 
 of the motor the current is led through the wires and 
 a push results, which may be made continuous rotary 
 motion. It is somewhat curious that this double or 
 reciprocal action between the wires and the magnets 
 was not recognized at the same time. While the prin- 
 ciple of current generation was discovered in 1832, it 
 was not until 1873, or forty-one years later, that the 
 reciprocal action was found, making it possible to oper- 
 ate a motor from a generator any distance away, and 
 through the double transformation of energy transmit 
 the power of the prime mover or engine proper. Long 
 distance transmission was accompanied by great losses 
 with the sort of electric current first generated, and it 
 was not until the discovery that a current of very high 
 voltage or pressure could be transmitted with much 
 less loss, that economical long distance transmission 
 became possible. The economic and safe application 
 
272 POWER 
 
 of this idea involved the design of additional apparatus, 
 called transformers, for changing the pressure of a cur- 
 rent, or even one kind of current into another, so that a 
 generator might be built to make any kind of current 
 at any convenient pressure which could be transformed 
 to high pressure for transmission, and near the motor 
 be again changed to a pressure or kind adapted to the 
 most convenient or suitable kind of electric motor. 
 The first practical high tension long distance trans- 
 mission system of this kind was not installed until 1893, 
 only seventeen years ago, at Great Barrington, Massa- 
 chusetts, whereas to-day it would be practically im- 
 possible to make a list of the electric transmission 
 installations, so numerous have they become. 
 
 When gas is generated in gas producers, as explained, 
 it is possible to conduct that gas through pipes to en- 
 gines located at a distance, so that the transmission of 
 gas in pipes to gas-engines really constitutes a power- 
 transmission system, the most recent of the methods 
 now under consideration. It is so far but little used in 
 this country, although it has been applied to factories 
 in Germany, where a gas producer located at a most 
 convenient point for the receipt of coal makes gas for 
 transmission to ten or a dozen factory buildings scat- 
 tered over many acres, each with its own gas-engine ; 
 the same gas is also available for the operation of in- 
 dustrial gas furnaces and with suitable mantles the 
 generation of factory light. 
 
 We have seen that there are three systems of power 
 generation, the steam, gas, and water systems, and a 
 great variety of means of transmission; so that the 
 decision as to which form of natural energy to use, 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 273 
 
 whether fuel or water, and by which system to trans- 
 form it into work and to transmit the energy developed 
 to the machines requiring it, is a problem of great com- 
 plexity having two distinct phases, one strictly sci- 
 entific and the other commercial, the two together 
 constituting one branch of engineering practice, and con- 
 stituting one of the first and most fundamental steps 
 in the carrying out of any industrial problem of manu- 
 facture or transportation. That system of generation, 
 transmission, and application of power to any machine 
 requiring power that is best for the particular case is 
 the one that will perform the required duty for the 
 lowest cost; and in the determination of the best, general 
 rules are of comparatively little use. Each case must 
 be studied by suitably qualified experts, and all the 
 data collected on the different possible and satisfactory 
 ways, with the cost of each, must be compared, before 
 a judgment can be reached; and it seldom happens that 
 all the systems or methods are equally suitable or that 
 the most suitable is cheapest. The judgment must, 
 therefore, involve a weighing of cost against relative 
 suitability. For example, cars and trains may be moved 
 by steam locomotives or by electric motors supplied 
 from a central station. It has been found that in the 
 streets of cities the steam system cannot compete either 
 in cost or suitability of service with the electric, while 
 on transcontinental or trunk lines the steam is so far 
 superior in point of cost, though the electric would be 
 equally suitable. Cases intermediate between the 
 congested and dense city traffic and the long haul with 
 light traffic present a most difficult problem of the 
 weighing of suitability and cost, and one that is to-day 
 
274 POWER 
 
 agitating practically every railroad the world over, 
 but without as yet any generally accepted solution. 
 Similarly, the driving of machines in a factory offers 
 a parallel controversial case, for they may be driven 
 by belts from a central plant or by electric motors 
 supplied by engine-driven electric generators. In 
 some cases the electric system has proved its unques- 
 tioned superiority, in others the belts are better; but 
 in the great majority of cases there is a lack of concerted 
 opinion, even though relative costs and suitability 
 have been much studied and the data tabulated and 
 published. 
 
 With regard to generation itself the situation is 
 equally complex ; in most cases there may be just 
 controversy and difference of opinion, while in others 
 the proper course to pursue is clear. For example, 
 when the work to be done is continuous and the average 
 load near the maximum power capacity of the plant, 
 the fuel and labor costs are high in proportion to in- 
 vestment charges, and very expensive machinery is 
 warranted if it can save ever so little in the fuel charges. 
 This is the case with most municipal water-supply 
 pumping stations. On the contrary, if the average 
 power demand is very small in proportion to the maxi- 
 mum, then for a large part of the time the machinery 
 is idle, and the investment charge per unit of power 
 generated becomes high in proportion to the fuel, and 
 only cheap machinery is warranted even if the fuel 
 cost is high. Such is the case with farm engines which 
 may work at full load only a month or two in the year. 
 Again, if fuel is very cheap, as at the mines, where it 
 seldom exceeds eighty cents per ton, it would not be 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 275 
 
 good practice to use expensive equipment to save fuel; 
 while in countries like Mexico and South America, 
 where coal often reaches $12 per ton, almost any 
 expense in machinery would be warranted to make the 
 coal go as far as possible. 
 
 It can be said that there is only one best way for 
 each case, but an almost infinite variety of cases, and 
 the amount of time and study to be expended in finding 
 the best that may be justly warranted must be based 
 on the saving that might be effected by selecting the 
 best over the worst; for if a preliminary examination 
 showed four different systems to be equally suitable 
 and nearly equal in cost, it would not pay to bother 
 much with working out the exact details of each, when 
 any one would do. The most elaborate study is war- 
 ranted only when the possible ranges of cost are great, 
 or, and most often, when the cheapest is not as equally 
 suitable as the most costly. 
 
 After all, we are all not so much concerned with the 
 ways in which power may be generated for its own sake, 
 or even the relative value of the ways it may be trans- 
 mitted and applied to the machinery of manufacture 
 and transportation, as we are with the bigger industrial 
 problem of daily supply of the world with the means 
 for comfortable living. From what has been said con- 
 cerning the complexity of the power problem, it may 
 be easily inferred that this larger question, by reason 
 of the greater number of things that enter into it, is 
 ever so much more complex and must be approached 
 with great caution if one would avoid drawing unwar- 
 ranted conclusions. However complex or big a ques- 
 tion ma}^ seem, it can by patient study and analysis 
 
276 POWER 
 
 be resolved into simple terms, and guiding principles 
 be evolved that are useful. While, to be sure, there 
 will always be certain questions left ever unsolved, 
 and hence of controversial nature, yet the fact that 
 out of the chaos some order has been evolved proves 
 the effort is worth while and leads to a belief that con- 
 tinued study along sound scientific and logical lines will 
 finally resolve the rest. 
 
 It has been said that by the introduction of power- 
 driven machinery the modes of life, habits, comforts, 
 and pleasures of the great mass of the people were greatly 
 changed; so much so as to lead historians to charac- 
 terize the movement as the industrial revolution, 
 meaning thereby not only that industrial methods 
 were revolutionized, but the whole world, by means 
 of and as a result of these industrial changes, all of 
 which started with the use of power-driven machinery 
 when James Watt applied his steam-engine to the 
 driving of- textile mills in England one hundred and 
 sixty years ago. 
 
 This industrial change was briefly reviewed in the 
 first lecture of this series; the magnitude of the modern 
 industries which did not exist before the time noted 
 was pointed out, as well as the ever increasing propor- 
 tion of the population directly dependent on them 
 for wages and salaries; the equally large number of 
 traders or merchants supplying raw material and 
 distributing manufactured products of ever changing 
 form from the same natural substances that have always 
 existed since the world began; the absolute dependence 
 of all of us on the manufactures and the transportation 
 systems for all that we need and much that we do, 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 277 
 
 and the importance to all of at least trying to under- 
 stand how it all has happened. With such world 
 questions before us, why, then, has so much time been 
 spent in discussing the construction of steam-boilers, 
 gas producers, vaporizers, engines, turbines, nozzles, 
 and valves, and in studying the principles of gasifica- 
 tion and combustion of fuel, generation and expansion 
 of steam, or the flow of water, when instead attention 
 might have been directed to the more popular questions 
 of industrial growth itself, its effects on the organiza- 
 tion of society, the creation and distribution of wealth, 
 or the government of the people ? Because these ques- 
 tions, of infinite complexity compared to the economic 
 generation and application of power to machines, have 
 been much discussed by economists, sociologists, his- 
 torians, and statesmen, while the power question, 
 which is so large a factor and so strong a formative 
 force, has never been presented to a popular audience ; 
 and finally, but by no means least, because it is the 
 finest possible example of the value of patient, logical, 
 scientific study, in resolving complexity into com- 
 parative simplicity, yielding to exposition, and serving 
 as a model of the method to be applied to the apparently 
 more complex and larger questions. Place before the 
 average man a collection of all the standard power- 
 generating machinery, and it would not be too much 
 to say that he would at once admit its explanation and 
 creation to be far more difficult for him to discuss than 
 a question of politics, government, or economics, on 
 all of which he has some well-defined opinions, and 
 yet all of these are far more difficult to solve than any 
 machinery problem ; how much more cautious, then, 
 
278 POWER 
 
 should we be in reaching conclusions, and how much 
 more needed is a method of procedure that is safe and 
 sane. Who could have foreseen the tremendous effects 
 of studying wheels, cylinders, rods, and chambers, and 
 the designing of these to carry out the physical processes 
 of rendering available for man's use nature's energy 
 to change into useful and more serviceable forms the 
 substances of sea, farm, forest, and mine ? Probably 
 no one. It is not surprising, then, that the average 
 man has a feeling that there is no connection between 
 his needs and pleasures, his commercial or social stand- 
 ing, his opinion or mode of thinking, and the dirty 
 shop, the hot and mysterious engine room, the laws of 
 thermodynamics and hydraulics, and their application 
 to machine structures, or any other part of the problem 
 of power generation and its application to manufac- 
 ture and transportation. Yet there is a twofold con- 
 nection, for without these things the world would not 
 be what it is to-day, and the methods and principles 
 involved in the creation of the machinery have re- 
 vealed Nature herself, and are equally applicable 
 to the other problems that seem of more intimate im- 
 portance. No man can afford to fail to inquire into 
 all that concerns his welfare, more especially those 
 things that may serve to guide his thinking, which con- 
 trols action; yet it is all too true that not only has the 
 study of industrial development and its effects been 
 neglected by the public in general, but the work and 
 methods of the scientific mechanical engineer, who is 
 responsible for it, are practically unknown. 
 
 So far attention has been directed mainly to the 
 work of the engineer in developing the machinery of 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 279 
 
 power; but the machinery to be driven is of equal, 
 if not greater, importance, and while time will not 
 permit us here to examine the principles and appa- 
 ratus of the manufacture of all the articles of com- 
 mon use, it would be decidedly worth while to do so. 
 Precisely the same methods are, however, applied 
 as have been reviewed in the discussion of the 
 power machinery, and it is hoped that what has 
 been said will serve to arouse interest enough to 
 induce a few to take up some reading on this phase 
 of the subject. 
 
 All the time that the engineer of the industries has 
 been creating or applying machinery for the most 
 economic use of nature's energy and of the common 
 substances used in manufacture, he has had to meet 
 constantly the parallel problem of making the best use 
 of the effort of man himself in the production of results, 
 for results are obtained, not by power alone, by machin- 
 ery alone, by men alone, but by all working together. 
 It is, therefore, just as much the duty of the engineer, 
 who began by studying nature's substances and forces, 
 to study also the forces controlling men, so that each 
 individual may contribute the best that is in him, just 
 as in the case of an engine itself. This parallel study 
 of the most economic use of man's own efforts has been 
 placed on a scientific basis only in recent years, and 
 from present indications is destined to receive as much 
 painstaking analysis in the future as it has lacked in 
 the past, which lack was the cause of much disorder, 
 misery, abuse, and social unrest in the early days of 
 industrial expansion. With a brief, but necessarily 
 hopelessly inadequate, review of some of these social 
 
280 POWER 
 
 and economic changes, to round out the subject, we 
 shall close this series. 
 
 In the old days, and by the old days we shall under- 
 stand the days before the steam-engine and the machine 
 method of manufacturing which it made possible, the 
 people could be divided into classes somewhat as fol- 
 lows. The first class would include all those who 
 produced everything they needed, and this would be 
 the largest class of all, constituting the bulk of the popu- 
 lation, the farmer or domestic manufacturing group. 
 The materials for food, clothing, housing, heating, 
 and lighting were all produced on the spot by the man 
 and his family, with perhaps a few helpers. It was 
 unnecessary to buy anything except the luxuries, and 
 few of these were indulged in by this class. Being 
 independent of their neighbors, there was no particular 
 necessity for travel, so that there were few towns, and 
 these were small. Occasional gatherings at fairs were 
 held largely for pleasure, but partly for trade, which 
 consisted mostly in exchange of horses, cows, or wool, 
 or whatever one man had in excess for that of which he 
 was a little short. In the second class there would be 
 grouped those people who produced nothing at all, - 
 the soldier, policeman, preacher, and government officer. 
 These bought everything they needed, to supply which 
 a little transportation was maintained, carried on by 
 wagons, sailing vessels, or canal-boats. This class 
 constituted the principal town population, together 
 with those few traders who served as middlemen be- 
 tween the producer and the non-producing consumer. 
 The third class would include those people who pro- 
 duced some of the things they needed and bought 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 281 
 
 the rest, such as he who set up a few hand-looms in 
 a village and bought wool, making cloth for himself 
 and selling it to others. In some cases the farmer 
 would also be included in this class, when, for example, 
 he bought a wagon or cloth. The fourth class would 
 include those who produced all the time for others, 
 but made practically nothing that they needed them- 
 selves, devoting their time to the creation of things for 
 others, which they sold and from the returns of which 
 they bought what they needed. This would include 
 the ship-builders, who never sailed a ship that they 
 built, the tailor, who spent all his time in making 
 clothes for other people, the iron maker, carpenter, 
 mason, shoemaker, jeweler, and the armorer. The 
 size of this class, which consisted partly of wage-earners 
 and partly of master workmen, who were also traders, 
 was comparatively small, being limited by the size of 
 the class that could afford to buy their services. The 
 really large class was the farmer or agricultural group. 
 
 When the power-loom and spinning-machines were 
 produced and the steam-engine put to work to drive 
 them, the whole condition of affairs changed; and 
 following the same analysis there was an enormous 
 increase in the wage-earning group, the last-mentioned 
 producing class, with a corresponding decrease in the 
 farmer or domestic manufacture class. More and 
 more people came to work in the factory, because it 
 could produce cloth far cheaper than it could be made 
 by hand spinning and hand-looms in isolated homes 
 in the country. Every such factory worker became 
 a producer of goods that he did not use himself except 
 in a very small degree; and as factories increased in 
 
282 POWER 
 
 numbers the factory system displaced the domestic 
 system of production not only in cloth, but in all things. 
 This continuously producing class of factory workers, 
 drawing on the independent farmer class, decreased 
 the number of self-contained individual families, and 
 thus was set up what amounts to practically a new 
 organization of society, as a result of what has come 
 to be known as the factory system. The concentration 
 of workers around a factory created a town or enlarged 
 an existing town. The presence of many workers 
 stimulated the location of another factory there. Thus 
 factory followed factory, town population continuously 
 increased, and the farm population decreased. In this 
 way is the growth of the city traced to the factory and 
 back to the steam-engine or power plant as the prune 
 factor in its creation. This same concentration of 
 population in cities producing practically anything 
 that was needed stimulated a corresponding increase 
 in the trading class. The factory worker did not pro- 
 duce his food any more, but had to buy it. So the 
 grocery store and butcher shop increased in numbers 
 enormously, and being located in the cities to supply 
 city workers, their owners and clerks in turn increased 
 the population of the city and drew still more from the 
 farms. 
 
 All farm productions as well as those of the mine and 
 the sea had now to be transported to these cities to 
 feed the factory workers and the tradesmen and to 
 keep them supplied. Thus was transportation stimu- 
 lated, stimulated to a degree that ultimately demanded 
 the creation of the locomotive and steamboat. Trans- 
 portation was also stimulated in another direction, 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 283 
 
 for not only were the food and other necessities for the 
 city population to be brought from a distance, but 
 likewise the raw materials for the factory, which had 
 a capacity in a short time far exceeding that of the sur- 
 rounding country to supply. Ships and railroads were 
 put to work to bring these raw materials from all over 
 the earth, to keep the factory supplied, and it was 
 cheaper to do this than to continue the domestic manu- 
 facture near the place where the raw material was pro- 
 duced. It must have been cheaper or it never would 
 have been done. Having drawn the raw material 
 from all over the earth to the factories for manufacture, 
 there was necessary a reciprocal transfer or transporta- 
 tion system, because the manufactured article was 
 produced in quantities exceeding the capacity of the 
 immediately surrounding country and town to use. 
 England produced cloth for the whole world, as well as 
 many other things, for it was in England that these 
 changes took place originally and developed most 
 rapidly. It is easy to see by such analysis as this 
 how the simple act of driving machines by engines for 
 the doing of work formerly done by hand created the 
 city, increased the trading class, stimulated transporta- 
 tion to a degree only satisfied by the application of the 
 same steam-engine that created the factory, and the 
 transportation demand to the movement of the car 
 or boat. 
 
 There were other effects, however, as important and 
 far-reaching as these, and necessary accompaniments 
 or consequences. This transportation to and from 
 factories and all parts of the earth was the beginning 
 of the modern world commerce, the enormous increase 
 
284 POWER 
 
 in the class of wholesale dealer of manufactured com- 
 modities and raw materials, as well as in the class of 
 retail storekeeper in every town of the land, to supply 
 that which the factory made so much better and cheaper 
 than it could have been produced before, or that which 
 the factory made which had never been heard of before. 
 To buy a ship-load of raw material, transport it across 
 the ocean in ships that might take months in trans- 
 porting, required the tying up of large sums of money, 
 and this could be done only by him who had the money. 
 Similarly, the buying of a ship-load of manufactured 
 goods to be sent from England to China likewise re- 
 quired capital, for during all the period between pur- 
 chase and sale a large sum of money or its equivalent 
 in value is idle, and the act can be accomplished only 
 by the possession of capital. The manufacturer, 
 between the time of purchase of raw material and the 
 time of sale of manufactured product, has given out 
 money for which there is no return. Not only has he 
 paid out money, which might be thus tied up for months 
 or even years in the material itself, but he must con- 
 tinually pay workmen through this whole period of 
 time, they demanding their pay every day or every 
 week regularly. There is likewise required capital 
 sufficient to maintain operation between the period of 
 wholesale purchase of manufactured goods and their 
 retail sale. Even before the factory can be started, great 
 buildings must be erected and enormous sums of money 
 sunk in the filling of them with machinery. This 
 likewise required capital. No one could manufacture 
 and no one could carry on the world's commerce who 
 had not capital. Now, in the days when these move- 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 285 
 
 ments started, there was practically no use for capital, 
 that is to say, comparatively. The only rich people 
 were the landowners or those who had been landowners, 
 or descended from them, and whose accumulation of 
 wealth had been derived largely from farm rentals. The 
 manufacturing era offered to those who had capital 
 an outlet, and no one could engage in the business who 
 did not have the capital, and he who had the capital 
 and used it in this way could expect returns for his 
 money and make a profit and thus accumulate more. 
 So there was a tendency established, continuing to our 
 present day, toward the concentration of wealth, 
 sometimes described as the "rise of capitalism," trace- 
 able directly to the use of power-driven machinery 
 more than any other single thing. It frequently hap- 
 pened that periods of hard times appeared. The farms 
 did not yield their crops, and the purchase of every- 
 thing decreased. The new manufacturer produced 
 standard goods far in advance of real demand or without 
 regard to any known demand, contrary to the old 
 domestic worker who made a shoe only when somebody 
 asked for it, and then made it to fit a particular foot. 
 These periods of business depression, now so called, 
 found the manufacturer with large sums of money 
 tied up in unsold goods, which had been made up only 
 on a hope that they could be sold, but which he was 
 sure he could sell perhaps the next year. He, therefore, 
 did not want to stop his factory, but manufactured 
 for stock, to be able to supply the retarded demand 
 when it came and to keep his skilled workmen busy. 
 He might decrease the output, but it must be kept 
 going. He must pay wages all this time to his work- 
 
286 POWER 
 
 men, so he had to borrow money on the goods he pos- 
 sessed, as security. Thus was established the modern 
 system of industrial banking, the borrowing and loaning 
 of money in vast sums to keep industrial enterprises 
 going between periods of purchase of stock and sale 
 of product. 
 
 The factory owner, besides being a buyer of raw 
 materials and seller of manufactured product and 
 owner of factory with its machinery, was an employer 
 of labor, labor of all sorts from the most unskilled and 
 ignorant to the most skilled physically, or the most 
 highly developed mentally, of course, in different pro- 
 portions for the different classes. These factory workers 
 constituted a large class of the community and were 
 themselves divided into classes. There was a man 
 skilled in firing boilers, a man skilled in taking care of 
 the engines, other men skilled in maintaining the ma- 
 chines and repairing them, others skilled in operating 
 any one machine, still others engaged in buying for 
 the factory, more in selling, and still others in conduct- 
 ing correspondence and keeping records of costs, in 
 paying wages, in negotiating with banks for funds, 
 others in inventing new improvements. This assign- 
 ment of special duties to each individual is known as 
 the division of labor, and while the system created 
 opportunities for advancement to higher grades re- 
 quiring more skill, better mental equipment, or con- 
 centration of effort n those fitted by nature or educa- 
 tion to advance, it had also the effect of clearly marking 
 off the unfit, and in some cases tended to keep them 
 unfit. For when a man has learned to do only one 
 thing, and is worked too hard at it, he is too tired to 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 287 
 
 learn to do something more difficult and stays in his 
 class. It appears from the old books on the subject 
 that this latter condition was most common, and that 
 the unskilled were much abused, and had a very hard 
 time. The workers, having learned to do one thing 
 for wages, were dependent for their living on the wages 
 they could earn, for from these wages everything they 
 needed had to be bought, and they could not advance 
 unless they learned to do something more difficult, but 
 with ever increasing competition among themselves, 
 because there was less and less of the skilled work to 
 be done. The factory owner, to get as much product 
 from his machinery per day as possible, increased the 
 working day, and cases are on record noting a working 
 day of sixteen hours, which was so exhausting as to kill 
 ambition and study. The factory owners also estab- 
 lished kitchens to feed their own people, and in some 
 cases they erected cottages to keep them near by, thus 
 putting them more and more in the power of the fac- 
 tory owner, who, when unscrupulous, could feed them 
 badly, clothe them badly, make them work in poorly 
 lighted rooms without sanitary conditions, seriously 
 injuring their health and taking from them all the 
 pleasures of life and prospects for betterment. The 
 performing of the manufacturing operations by machines 
 divided the total number of operations into a large 
 number of steps, some of them machine steps and some 
 of them hand steps. Some of these things that had to 
 be done were very simple, so simple that a child could 
 do them; and the desire of the factory owner to get 
 each operation done as cheaply as possible led him to 
 employ children to do those things that they could do, 
 
288 POWER 
 
 and women to do other things. These women and 
 children had no more pleasures, no shorter hours, no 
 more sanitary surroundings than the men. For a 
 time the conditions of these factory workers seem to 
 have been most miserable; then began a reaction, the 
 reaction for adjustment of conditions extending in one 
 form or another to our present time, which adjustment 
 took place partly by force and partly by intelligent 
 cooperation. 
 
 For a long time nothing but force was used, and 
 probably it was the best way; it began with philan- 
 thropic agitation and labor unions directed toward 
 reform through legislation, and the statute books of 
 practically all industrial nations contain acts controlling 
 the hours of labor, restricting the employment of women 
 and children, requiring the maintenance of sanitary, 
 healthful surroundings in the workrooms, and in some 
 places providing for accident compensation or em- 
 ployees' pensions. At the present time a new attitude 
 toward these questions is beginning to take root, in- 
 volving a reduction of appeal to force and the substitu- 
 tion of cooperation; but from the time that the evil 
 conditions began to be noticed almost up to the present 
 we find a condition of industrial warfare, workman 
 against employer, labor against capital. For a long 
 time this condition was believed to be absolutely neces- 
 sary because it seemed clear that the two interests were 
 opposed, and on this ground all sorts of movements 
 were organized, practically all involving the assertion 
 of right based on might, that is, up to recent times. 
 It must be understood that these conflicts were not 
 confined to the manufacturing industries, even though 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 289 
 
 these were responsible to so large a degree for the sharp 
 drawing of the lines of division between the two classes. 
 As a matter of fact, much of the most bitter of this sort 
 of war was fought outside of the ranks of what might 
 be called the machine industries, and it is a most sig- 
 nificant fact that these particular industries are to-day 
 pointing the way toward a betterment of conditions 
 that shall be permanent, and that shall involve right 
 and not might. In these machine industries, where the 
 study of nature's processes, forces, energy, and sub- 
 stances has resulted in so much undoubted good for 
 all, similar study of man-controlling forces is meeting 
 with equal success. It is sometimes stated that the 
 evil conditions that came with the creation of the fac- 
 tory system, in times when society was not organized 
 to apply a remedy and avoid abuses of the new found 
 forces, are responsible for the creation of the trade- 
 unions, but this is not the case any more than the 
 assumption that labor abuses did not exist before the 
 factory system. The trade-union, as a matter of fact, 
 while it played an important part in the change of these 
 conditions, was not a creation or product of the factory 
 system, as the following quotation from the " History 
 of Trade Unionism," by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 
 will show: "It is often assumed that the divorce of 
 the manual worker from the ownership of the means of 
 production resulted from the introduction of machinery, 
 and the factory system was responsible for the trade- 
 unions. Had this been the case we should not, upon 
 our hypothesis, have expected to find trade-unions at 
 an earlier date than factories, or in industries un- 
 transformed by machinery. The fact that the earliest 
 
290 POWER 
 
 combinations of wage-earners in England precede the 
 factory system by half a century and occur in trades 
 carried on exclusively by hand labor, reminds us that 
 the creation of a class of lifelong wage-earners came 
 about in more than one way." For example, the 
 master tailors. " The master tailors in 1720 complained 
 to Parliament that the journeyman tailors about the 
 cities of London and Westminster, to the number of 
 7000 and upward, have lately entered into a combina- 
 tion to raise their wages and leave off working an hour 
 sooner than they used to do." "It is easy to under- 
 stand how the massing together in factories of regi- 
 ments of men all engaged in the same trade, facilitated 
 and promoted the formation of journeymen's trade 
 societies, but with the cotton spinners, as with the 
 tailors, the rise of permanent trade combination is to 
 be ascribed in a final analysis to the definite separation 
 between the functions of the capitalist and the manual 
 worker, that is to say, the direction of industrial opera- 
 tions and their execution. Only in those industries 
 in which the worker has ceased to be concerned in the 
 profit of buying and selling can effective and stable 
 trade organizations be established." "It appears to 
 us from these facts that trade-unionism would have 
 been a feature of English industry even without the 
 factory system." 
 
 Just what part trade-unionism played in the attack 
 on these factory abuses is not quite clear, but that there 
 were vigorous attacks and that there were real abuses, 
 there can be no doubt. As an illustration concerning 
 the older feelings on this subject, note the following 
 quotation from a little book, written in 1836 by P. 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 291 
 
 Gaskell, entitled " Artisan and Machinery " : "It would 
 have been well if steam and mechanism, in breaking 
 up a healthy, contented and moral body of laborers, 
 had provided another body, possessing the same ex- 
 cellent qualities as men and citizens, but it has not been 
 so." This is offered, not as representing anything that 
 is now true, but as an indication of the feeling at the 
 time of writing, 1836, concerning these abuses. Even 
 John Ruskin, whose literary productions have met 
 with admiration among those capable of judging, 
 blamed the mechanical inventions and industrial 
 progress for about everything that he noticed wrong 
 in the organization of society. 
 
 Abuses of the laboring classes as well as the divorce 
 of the functions of capitalist and manual worker existed 
 in other industries before the factory era, and it is well 
 known that even at the time when this began coal was 
 being carried from English mines on the backs of women. 
 As a matter of fact, it is in the factory management 
 of labor and machinery to-day that this most perplex- 
 ing source of social unrest is being gradually solved; 
 and the solution will be based on the general acceptance 
 of that most fundamental proposition, that the interests 
 of worker and capitalist employer are not only not 
 diametrically opposed, but absolutely identical, all of 
 which appears more clearly when it is realized that the 
 wealth of the world is not a fixed quantity, and that 
 he who gains does not necessarily take from another 
 who loses. We may assume that wealth is anything 
 that somebody wants, or its equivalent in the means to 
 secure it. Now the very act of manufacturing makes 
 something new out of something old, makes something 
 
292 POWER 
 
 useful out of a useless thing, or makes from something 
 that nobody wants something that somebody does 
 want, or from something of value something of greater 
 value in point of desire to possess it. Often the new 
 article is something never heard of before, but which 
 is wanted as soon as seen, witness the automobile, 
 the electric light, the gas cook-stove, or the rubber 
 boot. From this point of view, not only is the product 
 of the farm, sea, forest, or mine wealth, but the opera- 
 tion of every manufacturing machine in the land 
 is most positively a wealth-producing process. The 
 last census report showed an increase in money value 
 of nearly 80 per cent by the manufacturing operations 
 on the raw material. So also is transportation. The 
 rubber that grows on the banks of the Amazon is just 
 about useless to the natives. It is, however, a very 
 much-desired and high-priced article here. Traveling 
 through the country will show every fall thousands 
 of barrels of apples lying on the ground rotting, while 
 apples in town bring a good price, which indicates how 
 much they are wanted. That which is wanted in one 
 place may perhaps be quite useless in another. The 
 application of machinery to transportation and manu- 
 facture has, then, been a great wealth producer, and 
 trade and commerce may likewise be so regarded from 
 this point of view. However, the more primary, the 
 more direct of the two, as wealth producers, are the 
 manufacturing processes rather than transportation 
 or commerce. Having produced something useful, or 
 in more desirable form, from something less desirable, 
 the manufacturer finds it possible to secure a profit 
 for his skill, skill in carrying out the operations re- 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 293 
 
 quired for the transformation of substances, skill in 
 gathering money necessary to carry on the work, skill 
 in managing men, in buying and selling. On the other 
 hand, the worker has only his time and special skill of 
 hand or brain to offer for service with the capital and 
 other sort of skill of the employer ; together they pro- 
 duce wealth which may be shared to the profit of both, 
 in proportion to the contribution of each, without taking 
 anything from anybody else. Of course, if either 
 party tries to take the whole gain, the other may not 
 be criticized for fighting for his share, no matter which 
 one it is. Now, the share of the worker is represented 
 by his wages, and the share of the employer by his 
 profits ; if either takes more than he should, the public 
 that buys the product pays the bill. It is to the inter- 
 est of the public as a whole, therefore, to know some- 
 thing of this sharing problem, one phase of which is 
 the effort of the worker to secure more and more 
 wages regardless of work done, and the other that of 
 the manufacturer to get as much for his product as 
 he can after paying the wage demand and for material 
 and the capital and skill used in management. Com- 
 petition is often considered a sufficient force to regulate 
 the prices of manufactured goods, while the fixing of 
 wages and salaries, being subject to no such automatic 
 principle, has been, and is yet, a bone of contention. 
 Intelligent study of this problem by engineers of great 
 breadth is, however, producing effects, and it is inter- 
 esting to note that greater progress is being made in 
 the industries in which machinery plays an important 
 part, and in this country more than in any other. 
 In the industrial history yet to be written, engineers 
 
294 POWER 
 
 like Taylor, Gannt, and Emerson, whose philosophic 
 studies of the problem are producing practical results 
 that are now recognized, will rank with Watt and 
 Arkwright as benefactors, pioneers in the movement 
 to minimize waste of labor by proper systems of com- 
 pensation and management, as has already been done 
 by the substitution of machine-work for so much of 
 hand labor. Nothing but good can result from the 
 most efficient use of nature's materials, nature's energy, 
 and the power derived from it, and last, but not least, 
 the most efficient use of man's own effort and ability. 
 More can be done and is now being done for the general 
 good in the minimizing of labor waste by trained engi- 
 neers to-day, with a corresponding increase of indus- 
 trial peace and social welfare, than has been done in 
 almost a century of legislation, or by the teachings of 
 economists and sociologists of the old school. 
 
 Few beside those who have studied the question have 
 any idea of the enormity of labor waste to-day, and, 
 therefore, of how much less things might cost than they 
 do, and of how much higher wages might be paid with- 
 out reducing profits, and in spite of reduction of prices. 
 All modern scientific profit-sharing and fair wage- 
 systems are, however, based on the study of these things. 
 Mr. Harrington Emerson tells of a shop in Cincinnati 
 where a certain part of a machine had been made regu- 
 larly by good men in thirty-four hours, and it was 
 claimed by the workmen that this was a fair and proper 
 time. By offering inducements that time was changed, 
 and the same work is now done regularly in ten hours. 
 A similar case was reported by Mr. Fred W. Taylor, 
 at the Bethlehem Steel Co., some years ago, where 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 295 
 
 laborers loading pig-iron on cars averaged about 12 
 tons per day, but after inducements were offered this 
 was increased to 45 tons per day. Another case, re- 
 ported by him at the Mid vale Steel Co., showed that 
 the turning or finishing of certain large forgings was 
 done at the rate of four or five pieces per day, which 
 was increased to ten pieces per day without serious 
 tax after the men were induced to try. One of the 
 most earnest and practical engineers studying this 
 problem and applying remedies is Mr. H. L. Gannt, 
 and we cannot do better than quote his summary of 
 the situation from some lectures delivered on the sub- 
 ject before the students of Mechanical Engineering 
 at Columbia University. 
 
 " In any discussion on the relations between employer 
 and employed we must recognize the fact that in the 
 majority of cases men still act on the principle that 
 1 they should take who have the power, and they should 
 keep who can.' As long as the interests of the em- 
 ployer and employed seem antagonistic, there will be 
 conflict, and in any discussion of the subject we must 
 recognize that antagonism means conflict. Until we 
 can find some means of doing away with the antagonism, 
 the conflict will continue. 
 
 " If the amount of wealth in the world were fixed, the 
 struggle for the possession of that wealth would neces- 
 sarily cause antagonism; but, inasmuch as the amount 
 of wealth is riot fixed, but constantly increasing, the 
 fact that one man has become wealthy does not neces- 
 sarily mean that some one else has become poorer, but 
 may mean quite the reverse, especially if the first is a 
 producer of wealth. The production of wealth can be 
 
296 POWER 
 
 so greatly facilitated by the cooperation of employer 
 and employed that it would seem that if the new wealth 
 were distributed in a manner that had in it even the 
 elements of equity, neither party could afford to have 
 the working arrangement disturbed. 
 
 "As long, however, as one party, no matter which, 
 tries to get all it can of the new wealth, regardless of 
 the rights of the other, conflicts will continue. 
 
 " It is undeniable that unions have advanced the cause 
 of workmen in general, and we must not blame them 
 for using force to accomplish their ends. It was the 
 only means they had. If we wish them to use any other 
 means, we must provide them with a means that they 
 will consider more desirable, and that will give better 
 results, for in this country so long as a man conforms 
 to the laws of the state, he has a right to govern his 
 actions in such a manner as his interests seem to dic- 
 tate. Men join the union because they think they 
 will be better off in the long run for being in the union. 
 The idea of the union is to get a higher rate of wages 
 for the whole class, because in general nobody in that 
 class can get a substantially higher rate unless the 
 whole class gets a higher rate. 
 
 " The employer generally pays but one rate of wages 
 to one class of workmen, because, as a rule, he has no 
 means of gauging the amount of work each man does. 
 
 " Under ordinary conditions, where there is no union, 
 the class wage is practically gauged by the wages the 
 poor workman will accept, and the good workman soon 
 becomes discouraged and sets his pace by that of his 
 less efficient neighbor. 
 
 " Increase of efficiency is essentially a problem of the 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 297 
 
 manager, and the amount to which efficiency can be 
 increased by proper management is so great in most 
 cases as to be almost incredible. 
 
 " There are only two methods of paying for work. 
 One is for the time the man spends on the work, and the 
 other is for the amount of work he does. The first is 
 day-work. The second is piece-work. All other sys- 
 tems, whatever may be their names, are combinations 
 of these two elementary methods in different propor- 
 tions. It is natural that the employer should wish 
 to get all the work he can for the money he spends. 
 It is also natural that the workman should wish to get 
 all the money he can for the time he spends. Any 
 other condition would be wrong, would be almost 
 suicidal. These two conditions seem to be so antag- 
 onistic that most people give up any attempt to har- 
 monize them and adopt a scheme of bargaining. Under 
 such a system the most aggressive group or the one that 
 has the most favorable conditions wins in the long 
 run. 
 
 " Day-work is of two classes: first, ordinary day-work, 
 in which there is no attempt to get individual records 
 and every man of a class receives the same wages, re- 
 gardless of the amount of work he does ; the second, 
 that in which the work is carefully planned beforehand 
 so each man can have continuous work, and so that 
 an exact record can be kept of what he does and his 
 rate of pay adjusted accordingly. 
 
 " The first method leads the good men to organize a 
 union. In the second class of day-work some intelli- 
 gent man studies the work to be done, lays it out care- 
 fully, provides the proper appliances, divides it up in 
 
298 POWER 
 
 such a manner that it can be done by individuals or 
 by small gangs, so that an exact record can be kept of 
 what each individual or gang does and compensation 
 paid accordingly. Such a method of handling work- 
 men has exactly the reverse effect, and their efficiency 
 begins to increase at once. When we increase one 
 man's wages because his record shows he deserves it, 
 it not only does not cause trouble with the other work- 
 men, but it acts as a stimulus to them. To carry out 
 this plan there must, however, be created a system of 
 training men and teaching them the most efficient way 
 to get the work done. 
 
 " If, then, you train a man to be efficient and adopt a 
 system of management which enables him to utilize 
 all of his energies in productive work, you can afford 
 to pay him far higher wages than he can get where the 
 workmen are not trained, and where the system of 
 management is not such as will enable him to work 
 continuously and efficiently. 
 
 " If you keep an exact record of what each worker 
 does, surround the men with conditions under which 
 they can work, and compensate the efficient one liberally, 
 no man will spend his spare time trying to find out how 
 to raise the wages of the other fellow. Workmen, as a 
 rule, will do more work if their earnings are increased 
 by so doing, and you will find great difficulty in getting 
 the efficient ones into labor unions if they are not 
 benefited by joining them. 
 
 " The second system of paying wages is called piece- 
 work. In the term 'piece- work' we include all the 
 schemes for compensating men for what they do in- 
 stead of for the amount of time they work. It may be 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 299 
 
 divided into two classes, the first in which the price 
 of a job is set from previous records or from the estimate 
 of a foreman, who generally considers his work done 
 when he has set the price. The second system of piece- 
 work, when properly operated, provides a complete 
 system of instruction for the workman, equitable 
 compensation for his efforts, and opportunity for 
 advancement on his own merits and not through pull 
 or friendship. The essentials of this system, which 
 have never failed to create a system of harmony and 
 cooperation, are : - 
 
 " a. To have the very best expert available investi- 
 gate in detail every piece of work, and find out the best 
 method and the shortest time for doing it with the 
 appliances to be had. 
 
 " b. To develop a standard method for doing the work 
 and to set the maximum time which a good workman 
 should need to accomplish it. 
 
 " c. To find capable workmen to do the work in the 
 time and manner set, or to teach an ordinary workman 
 to do it. 
 
 " d. When high efficiency has been attained, to com- 
 pensate, not only the workman actually doing the work, 
 but also those who supply him with materials and appli- 
 ances to enable him to maintain the efficiency specified. 
 
 " e. To find among the workmen who have learned 
 the best ways of doing the work some that can investi- 
 gate and teach, and thus gradually get recruits for the 
 corps of experts so that the system may be self-per- 
 petuating. 
 
 "/. The ordinary foreman of the shop must not be 
 called upon to do the work of the expert. 
 
300 POWER 
 
 u It is a well-recognized fact that the efficient man 
 at high wages is much more profitable to his employer 
 than the inefficient man at lower wages. 
 
 " Inasmuch as the efficient workman often does two or 
 three times as much as the poor workman, and does it 
 better, and inasmuch as the workman who does twice as 
 much work cuts the general expense per unit of output 
 in half, there would seem to be no question that such 
 a system of training would pay handsomely." 
 
 All this is sound practical philosophy, and its ex- 
 tensive application will do a great deal toward not 
 only the reduction of capital and labor conflicts, and 
 the limination of erroneous and unsound ideas as to 
 necessary opposition of interests, but it will do far 
 more it will have a world-wide effect, for increase 
 of efficiency of labor must necessarily have the same 
 result as the use of labor-saving machinery has had, 
 since it enables one man to do the work of two, three, 
 or four. It is sometimes assumed that this sort of 
 thing will mean the throwing out of employment of 
 those no longer necessary, and it would if it all happened 
 in a minute, but it will not if it happens in the naturally 
 slow way. Early spinning and weaving machinery 
 was smashed by the hand workmen, who thought there 
 would be no more demand for them; yet the use of it 
 so decreased the cost of cloth that the sales increased 
 doubly fast, in a short time more weavers and spinners 
 were at work than ever before, and, moreover, their 
 labor was by no means so fatiguing or wearing as ma- 
 chine attendants as it was as hand workers. Precisely 
 the same thing has happened in all lines ; increased 
 efficiency of workers, either by working faster or by 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 301 
 
 machine assistance, however much it might seem to 
 harm the class at first, has always benefited the class 
 itself and the whole community by decreased prices, 
 increased consumption, and all-round better living. 
 
 There is absolutely no doubt that the use of machin- 
 ery and power is on the increase, that every old machine 
 is constantly being studied to devise ways of improving 
 it, and that equally deep study of the efficiency of labor, 
 its proper compensation and welfare, will receive 
 ever-increasing attention of the analytical sort, and 
 that all the effects of this will be in the main beneficial 
 and elevating to that nation that makes the greatest 
 progress. What effect, then, will such an increase have 
 on the conditions of living of the future ? Will the 
 flow to the cities continue, will more manufacturing 
 cause more cities, and if so, how is this tremendous 
 congestion of population to be housed and fed ? While 
 it is true that in the early days the factory created the 
 city, to-day it is not ; it is breaking up the city, and the 
 reason is sound. Highest efficiency of processes and 
 lowest cost of product demand saving in every way 
 possible, so that the factory that can do its work in 
 the country or small town simply cannot afford to stay 
 in the city. It does not take a highly refined study to 
 show how absurd it would be to build steel works at 
 Broadway and Wall Street, when there are thousands 
 of square miles of cheap land within reach of railroads. 
 This fact alone will be sufficient to explain the ten- 
 dency, now so common and ever on the increase, of 
 relocating factories in small towns, or creating new 
 towns in the open country as is being done at Gary, 
 Indiana, by the United States Steel Co., and indicates 
 
302 POWER 
 
 that the city, if it is to increase at all, must find that 
 increase based on other causes. Statistics show that 
 while there is still a flow toward cities it has changed 
 in character. Weber, in his " Growth of Cities/' says: 
 "The most rapid rate of increase of population is found 
 in villages and small towns (2500 to 800) which are 
 chiefly dependent for their prosperity upon manufac- 
 turing industries. The great cities, centers of trade 
 and commerce, nearly rival the villages in rate of 
 growth." Here, then, is the key, the large cities 
 are becoming, not the centers of manufacturing, but 
 centers of trade and commerce, and their location and 
 growth are now traceable to two causes, commercial 
 and social. They will locate wherever there is a break 
 in the transportation; railroad terminals, shipping 
 ports, or points of transfer are to be city sites as they 
 always have been. Their growth seems to be dependent 
 just as strongly, however, on social conditions, described 
 by Mr. E. S. Smith as follows : - 
 
 "Man naturally loves company and good fellowship. 
 This seems to be the real basis of the drift from farms 
 to the cities. All the attractions of city life are spread 
 in the literature of the day. Men come to know more 
 about the life outside of their own little horizon, and 
 become restless to share other and more attractive 
 callings. In the country it is quiet, with few pleasures, 
 but in the city there is the hurry and excitement, stir 
 and push of business, amusements of every sort, re- 
 sorts of every grade where men may congregate and 
 pass the time in congenial companionship. In the 
 city also are the great educational institutions, museums, 
 art collections, each making its appeal to the different 
 
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 303 
 
 types of man. There is a higher standard of living. 
 Every man enjoys the comforts and luxuries of life." 
 While, therefore, as a result of good transportation 
 and cheaper land in the small towns the manufactures 
 will no longer be causal influences in city growth directly, 
 they do, nevertheless, draw more and more on the farm 
 or food-producing element of the population, which 
 must be recruited, when the danger point is reached, 
 not from the manufacturing and transportation work- 
 ing classes, but from the small trader class, with which 
 the large cities swarm, and who seem to prefer an 
 approach to starvation in the excitement of the city 
 with but light labor to good, honest, hard work on farm 
 or in factory. This danger point will not be reached, 
 however, for some time to come, for although the farm 
 population has been ever on the decrease in proportion 
 to the city dweller, the output of the farm has been 
 keeping pace fairly well by the application of the same 
 principles of efficiency so highly developed in manu- 
 facture. In the United States, Weber says that the 
 farm population was about 97 per cent of the whole, 
 which had decreased in 1890 to about 70 per cent, and 
 is probably less to-day. Yet increase of farming effi- 
 ciency seemed to more than keep pace ; for example, 
 Powell shows that from 1896 to 1908 the whole popu- 
 lation increased 24 per cent, whereas the agricultural 
 exports increased in the same time 53 per cent, or more 
 than twice as much. With regard to this same ques- 
 tion of efficient farming, Davidson and Chase, in their 
 book on "Farm Machinery," make the interesting 
 comment that there were never over 400,000 Indians 
 in North America, yet they were often in want of food. 
 
304 POWER 
 
 Up to the year 1850 the old-fashioned hand methods 
 of farming sufficed to maintain the balance fairly 
 well, but at that time the steam-engine began to appear 
 and stimulated the use of farming machinery. To-day 
 practically everything can be done by machine when 
 the farm is large enough to warrant its purchase. Plow- 
 ing may be done by traction engines run by gasolene 
 or kerosene ; the seed planted by horse-drawn machines; 
 grain cut and threshed, or corn picked and shelled ready 
 for market ; cream separated from milk, churned, and 
 butter made ; water pumped for stock and irrigation 
 by power-driven machines ; all of which remove the 
 drudgery, and, taken together with the rotation of 
 crops, cultivation, and the use of proper fertilizers and 
 insect-destroying methods, enormously increase the 
 productiveness of both the acre of ground and the man 
 who tends it. In America, we have never had an 
 abundance of farm labor, but the American inventor 
 has surpassed the world in his ability to devise machines 
 and methods, without which this country could never 
 have been supplied with food; and this same ability, 
 that has rendered efficient the manufacturing system, 
 may be relied upon to continue to build up both, with 
 continued and permanent prosperity for the nation 
 that teaches its sons how to patiently study the little 
 things which control the large ones, however remote 
 the connection may seem to him who has not studied 
 both profoundly and widely. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Accessories of the boiler plant, 67, 85 
 Aeroplane, Gasolene engine funda- 
 mental to the, 204 
 Air and water in motion, 7, 16, 29 
 Air, needed in combustion, 67, 69, 
 84-85 ; proper control of, supplied 
 to furnaces, 105 ; in explosive mix- 
 tures, 163 ; in gas-producer, 185- 
 87 ; in carbureter, 202, 203 
 Air, Compressed, transmission sys- 
 tems, 268-69 
 
 Air-cooled type of motor, 154-55 
 Air-pump or vacuum-pump, 126 
 Air-valve for carbureter, 202 
 Alcohol, Materials for conversion into, 
 
 26; denatured, 201, 205 
 Allis-Chalmers Co., Milwaukee, Ma- 
 chine shop of the, 21 ; pumping- 
 engine, 53 ; turbine built by the, 
 236-37 
 American inventor, Ability of the, 
 
 304 
 
 Angle-compound engine, 114, 116 
 Animas Co., Cascade Creek, Col., 
 
 Dam of the, 248 
 
 Anthracite coal, Exhaustion of known 
 supply of, 24 ; gasifying of, 183-86 ; 
 the process, 184-85 
 Arkwright, Improvement in spinning 
 
 by, 61 
 
 Asphalt from natural oil, 200 
 Atmospheric gas-engine, 55 
 Atmospheric pressure, Use of, 45-47, 
 55 ; pounds of, 46 ; height water 
 is raised by, 46 ; in gas-engine of 
 Huygens, 55 
 
 Atmospheric steam-engine, 4547, 54 
 Automobile, Gasolene engine funda- 
 mental to the, 204 
 Automobiles, Number of, built an- 
 nually, 204 
 
 Baffles for hot gases, 76-77, 78, 79 
 Baker, Walter, Co., Vertical engine 
 
 in factory of, 50, 51 
 Banking, Industrial, 285-86 
 Barometer, Action of the ordinary, 46 
 Barometric type of condenser, 132-35 
 Beehive oven for making coke, gas 
 
 wasted, 180-82 
 
 Belts, Transmission of power by, 267 
 Bituminous coal, Duration of supply 
 of, 25 ; melting and caking of, in 
 roasting, 181 ; caused by the tar 
 in the coal, 183 ; gasifying of, 192- 
 98 ; real difficulties with, 199 
 Blast-furnace gas utilized in gas- 
 engines, 179-80 
 Blow-guns, 43 
 
 Blowing-engine, The, 47 ; of the Re- 
 public Iron and Steel Co., 53, 54 
 Boilers, Steam, 52, 67-85 ; variety of, 
 67, 68; general relations of, 69; 
 shapes of, 70-72 ; flues in, 71-73 ; 
 Scotch and fire-tube, 73-75 ; loco- 
 motive, 74 ; water-tube, 75-80 ; 
 concentrated form of, 82-83 ; cost 
 and efficiency in, 83 ; use of high- 
 pressure, 95 
 
 Bosnia, Concrete canal at, 258 
 Branca, Impulse steam-turbine of. 
 
 41-42 
 
 Breast wheels in early low-head de- 
 velopment, 229 
 
 Cam to operate valves, 154, 171 
 Canadian-Niagara Power House, 262- 
 
 63 
 
 Canals, High- and low-level, for low- 
 head development, 229-30; on 
 the Merrimac and Connecticut 
 rivers, 230 ; arrangement of, at 
 Holyoke, 230; 257-58 
 
 305 
 
306 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Capital and business, 285-86 ; and 
 labor, 286-89, 294-301 
 
 Captains of industry, 4 
 
 Carbon dioxide gas, Process of con- 
 verting, into carbon monoxide, 
 184-86 
 
 Carbureter, The, for volatile fuels, 
 201-05 ; varieties of, 203, 206 ; for 
 gasolene, 201-3 ; 210 
 
 Carnegie Steel Co., Pittsburg, Home- 
 stead Works of the, 21 
 
 Cartridge method of vaporizing 
 heavy oils, 209 
 
 Cartwright, Dr., The power loom of, 
 61 
 
 Census reports, Statistics from, 9-11 
 
 Central power-stations, Average out- 
 put of, 139-41 
 
 Centrifugal pump, 127, 130, 134 
 
 Chains on toothed wheels, Trans- 
 mission of power by, 267 
 
 Chambers, see High-pressure cham- 
 bers. 
 
 Chattahoochee, Dam and spillway 
 on the, near Columbus, Ga., 248- 
 49 
 
 Chattanooga, Low-head develop- 
 ment below, 227-29 
 
 Chicago, Speed of a journey to, 18-19 
 
 Circulation in boilers, 71, 75-76, 79, 
 81-83 
 
 Cities becoming centers of trade and 
 commerce, 302 
 
 Clark, F. G., on power cost distribu- 
 tion and station output, 140-41 
 
 Clearance volume, 110 
 
 Clermont, The, of Robert Fulton, 63, 
 64 
 
 Clinkering, Prevention of, by steam 
 jets, 186-87, 190 
 
 Coal, the main fuel dependence, 24 ; 
 consumption of, 24 ; duration of 
 supply of, 24-25 ; economy of, 68 ; 
 combustion of, 84-85 ; efficiency 
 consumption of, per hour per h. p., 
 102 ; losses in converting one pound 
 of, into electricity, 137-39 ; adap- 
 tation of, for gas-engines, 180 ; 
 roasting processes, 180-83 ; bee- 
 hive oven for coke, gas wasted, 
 180-82 ; gas from bituminous, 
 coke the waste, 182-83 
 
 Coal-gas, Components of, 183 
 
 Coal storage bins under roof, 52 
 
 Coal tar, Products from, 14 ; 183 
 
 Coke, Beehive oven for making, 180- 
 82 ; waste product in making coal- 
 gas, 182-83; gasifying, 183-86; 
 the process, 184-86 
 
 Combustion chamber, Heavy oils 
 injected into hot, 206-8 
 
 Combustion of coal, Conditions of, 
 84-85 
 
 Combustion supplies rapid heating 
 in gas-system, 144 ; explosive, 
 144-46 ; spherical, 145-46 ; waves 
 in, 161-62 
 
 Commonwealth Electric Co., Power- 
 house of, 121-22 
 
 Commerce, Evolution of, 283-85 
 
 Compound engines, 111 15 ; turbines 
 as auxiliaries to, 124 
 
 Compression of explosives in cylinder, 
 151 
 
 Condensers, 52, 95, 96 ; forms of, 
 125-34 ; economize use of steam, 
 125; surface, 128-30; cooling 
 towers, 131-32; spray-nozzle sys- 
 tem, 13233 ; barometric type of, 
 132-35 
 
 Condensing water, Loss of heat to, 
 137, 138 
 
 Conditions, Controlling, must be 
 studied, 69 
 
 Cooling towers, 131-32 
 
 Corliss compound engines, 114-16 
 
 Corliss valve, The, 91-93 ; gives full 
 control, 98 
 
 Cost and relative suitability, 273-75 
 
 Cost of power, 139-41 
 
 Cotton mill, Largest, in the world, 22 
 
 Cotton seed, Value of, 14 
 
 Cranks to give rotary motion, 47 
 
 Crompton, Improvement in spinning 
 by, 61 
 
 Cross-compound engine, 112-14 
 
 Curved-tube boilers, 79-80; for 
 torpedo boats, 81 ; most concen- 
 trated form of, 82-83 
 
 Cylinder and piston, Single- and 
 double-acting, 43-45 ; spaces at 
 end of, 110; use of two or more, 
 111-15; low-pressure and high- 
 pressure, 111 
 
INDEX 
 
 307 
 
 Cylinder, Explosion within the, 55 
 
 56, 151-53 
 
 Cylinder gates for turbines, 241 
 Cylindrical sleeve valve, 172 
 
 Dams for low-head development, 
 225-30; construction of, 247-48; 
 wheels may be within, 249 ; loca- 
 tion of wheels with respect to, 251- 
 52 ; power-house inside, 260 
 Davidson and Chase on "Farm Ma- 
 chinery," 303-4 
 
 Day-work and piece-work, 297-300 
 Design, True, 59 
 Double-acting cylinder, 4344 
 Double-acting gas-engine, 15558 
 Double-acting tandem twin engines, 
 
 156-58 
 Draft, Furnace, 67, 85 ; heat loss in 
 
 maintaining, 138-39 
 Draft tubes, 252-53, 262 ; concrete, 
 
 263-64 
 
 Drums in curved-tube boilers, 79-80 
 Dry vacuum-pump, 129, 130 
 Dynamos or electric generators, 270- 
 71 
 
 Economizer, The, 103-5 
 
 Economy, a controlling idea, 68-69 ; 
 how measured, 137 
 
 Efficiency, in boilers, 83 ; principles 
 of, in steam-power systems, 101- 
 41 ; in use of heat from coal, 102 ; 
 of jet energy of steam, 117; low 
 limit of, in steam power, 142 ; 
 higher limit of, in gas system, 142 
 43, 174-75 ; of a turbine, 244 
 
 Electric igniters, 172-73 
 
 Electric light, Power-generated, 5 
 
 Electric motor, Basal principle of the, 
 271 
 
 Electric plant, Relation of engines 
 and boilers in a large, 51, 52 
 
 Electrical Development Co. of On- 
 tario, Large vertical two-wheel 
 turbine for the, 239-40 
 
 Electrical transmission of power, 219- 
 20, 269-72 
 
 Electricity, a manifestation of energy, 
 7, 65 
 
 Emerson, Harrington, or reduction of 
 labor waste, 294 
 
 Employer and employed, 286-89 ; 
 H. L. Gannt on, 294-301 
 
 Employment, Creation of, 26 
 
 Energy, Man's control of the sources 
 of, 4-5 ; natural, not dreamed of, 
 7 ; interchangeable manifestations 
 of, 7, 65 ; discovery of availability 
 of, in nature, 7 ; power generation 
 from, 8, 54-55 ; nature's stores of, 
 26 ; work from each unit of, 32 ; 
 of motion can be communicated, 
 34-35 ; three old principles of 
 conversion of, 34-42, 54 
 
 Energy form, Change of, for trans- 
 mission of power, 269 
 
 Engine or machine, Essentials of a 
 good, 31-32 
 
 Engineering, The profession of, 59 
 
 Engineering design, The basis of, 59 
 
 Engineers of more importance than 
 generals, 4 ; how developed, 59 ; 
 trained, 141 
 
 Engines, Standard horizontal and 
 vertical, 47; piston, 86-98. See 
 also Gas-engine, Steam-engine 
 
 Ericsson, John, Hot-air engine of, 143 
 
 Erie R. R. locomotive, 18, 20 
 
 Exhaust, Reduction of pressure in 
 the, increases efficiency, 125 
 
 Expansion of steam, 108-11 ; multi- 
 ple, 111-15 
 
 Expansion stroke in gas-engine, 151 
 53 
 
 Explosion of gas within the cylinder, 
 5556 ; means of rapid heating in 
 gas system, 144-46 
 
 Explosive mixtures, 145-49 ; mix- 
 tures of air and fuel compressed 
 in cylinders before ignition, 146-47 ; 
 puffed into cylinder during portion 
 of stroke, 15960 ; means for mak- 
 ing the, 16169; chemical constitu- 
 ents, 161 ; combustion spherical, 
 161-62; of weak, hastened by 
 compression, 163 ; time of ignition, 
 164 ; limits of compression, 165- 
 66 ; physical properties of, valu- 
 able, 166 ; mechanism for propor- 
 tioning mixtures as drawn in, 166 
 69 ; primary principle of propor- 
 tioning, 167 ; inlet and sliding 
 valves for, 167-69 
 
308 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Explosive or detonating wave, The, 
 162 
 
 Factories, Evolution of, 2, 281-82; 
 removing from cities to small 
 towns, 301-2 
 
 Factory, Definition of a, 11 ; devel- 
 opment of the, 281-82 
 
 Factory system displaced the domes- 
 tic, 282 
 
 Factory workers, Classes of, 286-89 
 
 Fairs or markets for exchange, 60, 
 280 
 
 Fall River, Water-wheel for cotton 
 manufacture at, 230 
 
 Farm products, Value of, 10, 13 
 
 Farm workers, the largest class, 281 ; 
 drawn to factories and towns, 281- 
 82 ; decrease in number of, 303 
 
 Farmers resorting to mechanical 
 power, 9 
 
 Farming efficiency, Increase in, 
 303-4 
 
 Feed-water heaters, 104-5 
 
 Fire, Capacity of, 6, 7 
 
 Fire-box, The locomotive, 74 
 
 Fire-tube boilers, 18, 73-75, 81 
 
 Fisheries, Use of power boats in, 8 
 
 Float-valve chamber in gas-producer, 
 191 ; in carbureter, 201-3 
 
 Flues, Boiler, 71-75 
 
 Fluids, how put in motion, 2930 ; 
 high pressure chambers for, 30 ', 
 moving, have energy by reason of 
 their motion, 35 ; getting, under 
 pressure, 37, 54 ; generation of 
 power by moving, 41-42 ; push of, 
 on pistons in cylinders, 43 ; push 
 of, under pressure, 266-69 
 
 Flume of the San Joaquin Co., 257-58 
 
 Fly-shuttle invented by Kay, 61 
 
 Fore River Ship Building Co., 51 ; 
 steam turbine for the North Dakota 
 from the, 122-24 
 
 Forebay, The, 249, 262, 263 
 
 Forest products, 10, 13 
 
 Form changing, Simple processes of, 
 6, 7 
 
 Four-cycle engine, 151-52 
 
 Freight haulage in 1900, 20 
 
 Frizell, J. F., Table of stream flow in 
 Massachusetts, 217 
 
 Fuel, principal source of natural 
 energy, 23-24 ; the sun the source 
 of the energy in, 24 ; sources of 
 supply of, 26 ; to get motion from, 
 31 ; steam from combustion of, 48 ; 
 combustion of, 84-85 ; consists of 
 combustible substances, 145 ; con- 
 servation of, 175 ; gasifying every 
 grade of, possible, 199 
 
 Fuel-burning power system, The 
 most economical, 56 
 
 Fuels, Liquid, mixed for use by ex- 
 ternal apparatus, 201 ; the carbu- 
 reter, 201-5 
 
 Fuels, solid and liquid, Adaptation of, 
 for the use of internal combustion 
 engines, 177-210 
 
 Fulton, Robert, bought engine for 
 the Clermont from Watt, 63 
 
 Furnaces, Loss of heat in, 8485 
 
 Gannt, H. L., on employer and em- 
 ployed, 295-300 
 
 Gary Steel Plant, Double-acting 
 tandem twin engines at, 157-58 
 
 Gas, Per cent of power generated by, 
 as a fuel, 23 ; pressure of, increased 
 by heating when confined in a 
 chamber, 143, 148 ; from gas-pro- 
 ducers, 18485 ; passes through 
 vaporizer, 188-89 ; through spray- 
 tower and cleanser, 190 ; tar in, 
 192 ; static cleaners for, 193 ; 
 filter cleaners, 193-94 ; mechanical 
 cleaners, 194 ; fluctuations in 
 quality of, 195 ; from roasting 
 bituminous coal, 183, 192-95; 
 making a constant weak, 19899 
 
 Gas-engine, of Lenoir, 56, 57 ; prime 
 element of the fuel-burning power- 
 system, 56 ; involves apparatus to 
 create explosive mixture, 146-47 ; 
 elements of the, 149-50 ; processes 
 in, 150-60 ; cylinder, piston and 
 valves, in four-cycle single-acting 
 engines, 150-55 ; will run best 
 when mixture is constant, 166 ; 
 mixtures proportioned as drawn 
 into, 166 ; inlet and sliding valves 
 for, 16769 ; mixture supply con- 
 trol appliances for, 17072 ; effi- 
 ciency of, 174-75 ; first operated 
 
INDEX 
 
 309 
 
 with illuminating gas, 177-78; 
 with natural and blast-furnace 
 gas, 17883 ; with gas-producer 
 gas, 18499 ; gas from oils vapor- 
 ized, 201-9; great efficiency of , 210 
 
 Gas-engines of the Lacka wanna Steel 
 Co., 56, 58 
 
 Gas-power system, 30 ; how pressure 
 is produced in the, 54-56, 143 ; 
 processes and mechanism of the, 
 14276 ; two basal principles, 144 ; 
 efficiency per unit of heat, 144 ; 
 explosive mixtures, 145-47 ; 161- 
 69; gas-engines, 149-60, 167-72; 
 efficiency of, 174-76; two sources 
 of gas for, 178-79 ; efficiency of 
 producers and engines, 199, 210 
 
 Gas power- transmission system, 272 
 
 Gas-producer, Description of, 184 
 86 ; clinker prevention, 186 ; steam- 
 jet blower, 187 ; without grates, 
 187-88 ; suction, 188 ; vaporizer, 
 188-90, 191, 192; cooling and 
 cleansing tower chamber, 190, 193 ; 
 varieties of, 192; value of, 200; 
 209 
 
 Gas-tar, 183 
 
 Gases in vacuum chamber, 129 
 
 Gaskell, P., on "Artisan and Ma- 
 chinery," 291 
 
 Gasolene distilled from oil, 200 
 
 Gasolene engines for farm use, 9, 204 ; 
 carbureters for, 201-4 ; industrial 
 effects produced by, 204-5 
 
 Gearing for transmission of power, 
 267 
 
 Generation, see Power-generating 
 machinery 
 
 Generators, Electric, or dynamos, 
 270-71 
 
 Germany, Use of blast-furnace gas 
 in, 17980; suction gas-producers 
 in, 188 ; gas power-transmission 
 in, 272 
 
 Governors and valves, 47, 170, 171, 
 172 ; for regulating flow of water, 
 242, 246 
 
 Great Barrington, Mass., First high 
 tension long-distance transmission 
 at, 272 
 
 Great Jezero Lake, Head-gate ar- 
 rangement at the, 254-55 
 
 Great Western Power Co., Turbine 
 
 for, the largest ever built, 235 
 Gunpowder, 147-48 
 Gunpowder engine of Huygens, 55 
 
 Hackensack Water Co., Pumping- 
 engine of the, 53 
 
 Hand and finger movements repro- 
 duced mechanically, 7-8 
 
 Hand labor, 60 
 
 Hand loom and spinning-wheel, 60 
 
 Hanford Irrigation & Power Co., 
 Turbine built for the, 236-37 
 
 Hargreaves invented spinning ma- 
 chine, 61 
 
 Head, see Hydraulic head 
 
 Head-gate arrangement at the Great 
 Jezero Lake, 254-55 ; at Saulte 
 Rapids, 255-56 
 
 Head-gates, 249 
 
 Head-race, The, 249-51 
 
 Head-works, Variation in structure 
 of, 257 
 
 Heat, a manifestation of energy, 7, 
 8 ; nature of, and relation to work 
 discovered, 65, 142 ; percentage 
 of, liberated by combustion of 
 coal, in steam, 83 ; loss of, in fur- 
 naces, 84-85 ; per cent of, from 
 coal, utilized, in steam engines, 
 102 ; reduction of loss of, and use 
 of waste, 103-8 ; saving flue-gas, 
 by heating boiler water, 1034; 
 per cent of, from coal, lost, 13738 ; 
 high limit on waste of, in steam 
 power, 142 ; necessary to vapori- 
 zation of the heavy oils, 205-6; 
 methods of applying, 206-8 
 
 Heat energy, Unconscious use of, 6-7 
 
 Hero, Steam reaction turbine of, 41, 56 
 
 High-pressure boilers, Use of, 95 
 
 High-pressure chambers for fluids, 30; 
 velocity of jet from, determined by 
 the pressure, 36-37 
 
 High-pressure fluid, Idea of securing 
 motion from, 30 
 
 High-pressure steam, Expansion of, 
 95-97 
 
 History, The Topics of, 1-2 
 
 Holyoke, Mass., Canals at three 
 levels at, 230-31 ; h. p. developed 
 at, 231 
 
310 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Horizontal engines, 50, 52 
 
 Horse-power, Statistics of, 10-11 ; 
 of a turbine, 244 
 
 Hot-air engine, Ericsson's, 143 
 
 Hot-well pump, 126 
 
 Huygens, Gas-engine of, 55 
 
 Hydraulic head defined, 212 ; classes 
 of, 220 ; medium, at Niagara Falls, 
 221-22 ; extremely high available 
 only in mountains, 224-25 ; low- 
 head, 225-30 
 
 Hydraulic pistons for moving gates 
 of largest turbine, 235-36 
 
 Hydraulic processes, Basal, 211- 
 265 
 
 Hydraulic system of transmission, 
 267-68 
 
 Hydrocarbons, by-products in mak- 
 ing coal-gas, 183 
 
 Igniter, The, in gas-engine, 153, 160 ; 
 varieties of, 172-73 
 
 Ignition, Proper time for, 164 ; nat- 
 ural temperature of mixture for 
 self, 165 ; sets a limit to compres- 
 sion, 166; systems of, 172 
 
 Illuminating gas used as a fuel, 177- 
 78; could not compete with coal, 
 178 
 
 Impulse principle, 34, 38-42 ; suc- 
 cessive, 120 
 
 Impulse steam-turbine of Branca, 41- 
 42 
 
 Impulse wheels, 38, 39, 120 ; a crude 
 Indian, 23132 ; more recent forms, 
 232 ; series of, for the San Joaquin 
 plant, 245-46 
 
 Industrial age, Our times the, 4 
 
 Industrial conditions, Importance of, 
 in shaping affairs, 2 ; value of 
 understanding present, 3 ; changes 
 in, 276; often discussed, 277 
 
 Industrial revolution, 276-78 
 
 Industrial undertakings dependent 
 on men of every degree of ability, 
 26-28 
 
 Industries, The manufacturing and 
 transportation, world-shaping 
 
 forces, 4 ; dependent on power, 9 ; 
 capital valuation of, 9 ; wage- 
 earners and value of products of, 
 11-12 
 
 Industries, Mechanical power im- 
 portant to all, 8, 9 
 
 Interborough R. R., Distribution of 
 energy from a pound of coal at 
 central power-station of, 13738 
 
 Invention, pure, Little progress 
 without, 59 
 
 Iron goods, Early manufacture of, 61 
 
 Iron industry, Power machinery in, 
 62 
 
 Jet, Water, like a bar of steel, 246-47 
 Jets, Velocity of, determined by the 
 pressure, 36 ; energy of, 37 ; re- 
 lation of, to that of vanes, 39, 99 ; 
 turn wheels by reaction, 42, 54; 
 equals that of rifle bullet, 99-100 ; 
 at atmosphere and vacuum, 117 
 Jump spark, The, 173 
 
 Kaiser Wilhelm, The, 17-18; fire- 
 tube boilers of, 18, 81 
 Kay invented the fly-shuttle, 61 
 Kerosene distilled from oil, 200, 205 
 Kilbourn, Wis., Variation of stream 
 
 flow at, 216-17 
 
 Knowledge more important than 
 mechanical ability, 29 
 
 Labor unions, 296-98 
 
 Labor waste, Reduction of, 28 ; enor- 
 mity of, 294; remedies for, 295- 
 300 
 
 Laborers, Classes of, 280 ; abuses of, 
 before the factory era, 291 
 
 Lackawanna Steel Co., Gas-engines 
 of the, 56, 58 
 
 Lakes Joux and Brenets, Switzer- 
 land, Pipe-lines at, 259 
 
 Lenoir, Operative gas-engine of, 56, 
 57 
 
 Leopold, Steam-pumping engine of, 
 44 ; worked by steam pressure, 47 
 
 Life the best example of change of 
 substance through natural energy, 
 7 
 
 Light, a manifestation of energy, 7, 
 65 
 
 Light-weight self-contained engine 
 made possible, 204 
 
 Living, What comfortable, involves, 
 6 ; conditions of, before time of 
 
INDEX 
 
 311 
 
 Watt, 60-61, 280-83 ; daily supply 
 
 of, for the world, 275-76 
 Locomotive, The modern, 18-20, 47 ; 
 
 construction of, 48 ; the first, 63 
 Locomotive boilers, 74 
 London, Hydraulic system in, 268 
 Losses in converting one pound of 
 
 coal into electricity, 137-39 
 Low-head water-power, 225-30 ; 
 
 water-passages for, large, 244 
 Lowell, Kansas, Development at, 
 
 259-61 
 Lowell, Mass., First water-wheel at 
 
 site of, 230 
 Lowell and Suburban Traction Co., 
 
 Boilers for power-house of, 79 
 
 McCall's Ferry, Low-head develop- 
 ment at, 226-28 ; cities supplied 
 with power from, 227 ; spillway at, 
 227, 247 ; tail-race at, 259 ; power- 
 house at, 263 
 
 Machine or engine, Essentials of a 
 good, 31-32 
 
 Machinery, Relation of, to social 
 conditions, 1-28 ; power-generat- 
 ing, 4 ; driven, 5 ; problem of 
 power, 3132 ; wide interest in, 62 
 
 Magnet, Relation of, to electric cur- 
 rents, 270-72 
 
 Magnetism, a manifestation of energy, 
 7, 65 
 
 Make-and-break spark, 172-73 
 
 Manhattan Elevated R. R. plant, 
 51, 52 
 
 Manufactures, Infinite variety of, 5-6 
 
 Manufacturing, Definition of, 8 ; 
 owes existence to power, 9 ; early, 
 by hand labor, 60-61 
 
 Manufacturing establishments, Num- 
 ber of, employees, pay-rolls, 9 ; 
 some characteristic, 2022 
 
 Marine boilers, 7374 ; grates under 
 entire, 81 ; circulation in, 81-83 
 
 Marine engine, Requisites for the, 
 48 
 
 Markets or fairs for exchange of 
 products, 60 
 
 Massachusetts, Monthly stream flow 
 in, 217 
 
 Materials, Changing useless, into use- 
 ful, 8 
 
 Mead, Prof. Elwood, on variation of 
 stream flow at Kil bourn, Wis., 
 216-17; diagrams of stream de- 
 velopment, 249 
 
 Mechanical elements must have sim- 
 plicity, 30-31 
 
 Mechanical engineers, Development 
 of, 33-34 
 
 Mechanical invention, The story of, 
 3-4 
 
 Mechanical power, Relation of, to 
 social conditions, 128 ; substitu- 
 tion of, for hand labor, 3 ; impor- 
 tant in all industries, 8-9 ; 62 
 
 Mechanism subordinate to ideas, 29, 
 30 
 
 Men of different qualifications neces- 
 sary to organization, 27-28 ; prob- 
 lem of best use of, 279 ; classes of 
 laborers, 280-81 ; effects of intro- 
 duction of machinery, 281-82 ; 
 transportation, 282-83 ; commerce, 
 283-85 ; capital and labor, 286-89 ; 
 trade-unionism, 289-94 ; employer 
 and employed, 294-301 
 
 Merrimac River, Areas of watersheds 
 drained by the, 218 ; water-power 
 on the, at Lowell, 230 
 
 Midvale Steel Co., Reduction of labor 
 waste by the, 295 
 
 Milwaukee Railway, Double-acting 
 tandem twin engine in power plant 
 of, 157 
 
 Mine products, Cost of, 10, 13 
 
 Mines, Use of power in, 8 
 
 Montmorency Falls, Water-power at, 
 223 
 
 Morris, I. P., Co., builders of largest 
 water turbine, 235 
 
 Motion, The energy of, commun- 
 icable, 34-35 ; processes to produce, 
 against resistance, 31, 54-55; by 
 atmospheric pressure, 45-46 ; re- 
 ciprocating, changed to rotary, 
 47 
 
 Motive power in U. S., Diagram of 
 total prime, 25 
 
 Motor boat, Gasolene engine funda- 
 mental to the, 204 
 
 Moving fluids have energy by reason 
 of their motion, 35 
 
 Multiple expansion, 111-15, 136 
 
312 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Natural gas, Localities of, 178 ; cost 
 of, 178 
 
 Natural sciences, Development and 
 study of the, 33-34, 64-65 
 
 Nature, Man's control over forces of, 
 4-5 
 
 Nature's stores, Man's use of, 6 ; of 
 substances and energy, 26 
 
 Needle-valve for carbureter, 202, 203 
 
 Neuhausen on the Rhine, Low-head 
 development at, 226 
 
 New York Central locomotive, A, 
 18-20 
 
 New York Edison Power Station, 
 Mechanical stoker for, 105-6 
 
 New York Subway power-house, 16, 
 17 ; turbine auxiliary to compound 
 engine in, 124-25 
 
 Newcomen's single-acting cylinder 
 engine, 44-45 ; worked by atmos- 
 pheric pressure, 46-47, 55 
 
 Niagara Falls, a larga-flow, abrupt- 
 drop, medium-head water-site, 221 
 22; two-wheeled turbine at, 239- 
 40 ; a natural spillway, 247 
 
 Niagara Falls Power Co., Large tur- 
 bine for, 238 ; cross-section of, 241- 
 42 
 
 Non-producing consumers, 280 
 
 North Dakota, The, and steam-turbine 
 for, 122-24 
 
 Nozzle with needle-valve in carbu- 
 reter, 202 
 
 Nozzles, Outlets for jets of fluids, 36, 
 38; action of jets on, 39-42, 54; 
 complete expansion of steam in, 
 99; forms of, for steam, 118-21; 
 small areas of, for very high-head 
 water work, 245 ; single, for high- 
 head wheels, 245-46 ; deflection 
 of, 245-46 
 
 Oil, Natural, as fuel, 200; sub- 
 stances distilled from, 200 ; vapor- 
 izing heavy, 205-6 ; very heavy, 
 injected into heated combustion 
 chamber, 206-8 ; cartridge 
 
 method, 209 
 
 Oil-engine using compressed hot air, 
 207 
 
 Ontario Power Co., Water-power of 
 the, 256 
 
 Organization to reduce waste of 
 
 human effort, 28 
 Overshot wheels in early low-head 
 
 development, 229 ; compared with 
 
 turbine, 233-34 
 
 Pacolet Mills, Horizontal water-tube 
 boilers for the, 77, 78 
 
 Paddle wheels, Motion given to, by 
 moving water, 34 
 
 Paraffine obtained from natural oil, 
 200 
 
 Paris, Compressed air system in, 
 269 
 
 Parker, E. W., Estimate by, of dura- 
 tion of coal supply, 25 
 
 Paterson, Water-wheel for cotton 
 manufacture at, 230 
 
 Pawtucket Falls, First water-whsel 
 for cotton manufacture erected at, 
 230 
 
 Physical processes discovered, 29-30 
 
 Piece-work and day-work, 297300 
 
 Pioneer Electrical Power Co. of Utah, 
 Pipe-line of the, of staves, 261 
 
 Pipe-line of San Joaquin Electric Co., 
 225 ; weight of water in, 243 
 
 Pipe-lines, Regulating flow of water 
 in, 243 ; at Lakes Joux and Brenets, 
 259 ; of staves, 261 
 
 Piping systems, 67, 85 
 
 Piston, The reciprocating, 47 ; and 
 two valves, in four-cycle single- 
 acting gas-engines, 150-55 ; in 
 double-acting, 155-56 
 
 Piston engines, 86-98 
 
 Piston engines, Combined vertical 
 and horizontal, 51, 52 
 
 Piston speed of an engine, Variations 
 in, 164 
 
 Piston-valve, The, 86 
 
 Pistons in cylinders, 43-46, 47, 54 
 
 Port Morris power station of N. Y. 
 Central R. R., 130-31 
 
 Potomac Electric Co., Steam turbine 
 of the, 36-37 
 
 Powder-guns, 43 
 
 Power-driven machinery, Products 
 of, 5-6, 26; invention of, 61 ; suc- 
 cess of, 62 ; in iron industry, 62 ; 
 changes effected by, 276-82 
 
 Power employed, Statistics of, 10-11 ; 
 
INDEX 
 
 313 
 
 per cent of, derived from combus- 
 tion of fuel, 22-23 ; increase in, 
 24-25 
 
 Power-generating machinery gives 
 control over forces of nature, 4-5 ; 
 variety of results from, 5-6 ; from 
 source of energy with least net 
 waste, 26 ; substitution of, for 
 labor of men, 2965 ; mechanism 
 subordinate to idea of physical 
 process, 29 ; elements in problem 
 of development of, 31-32 ; develop- 
 ment of mechanical engineers, 33- 
 34 ; the earliest, result of pure in- 
 vention, 57-59 ; Watt engines in 
 textile factories, 61 ; success of, 
 62 ; old and new, 64 ; steam-power 
 machinery, 65-100 ; social and 
 economic consequences of substi- 
 tution of, for hand labor, 266-304 ; 
 object of, 266 ; complexity of the 
 situation in, 274 ; one best way for 
 each case, 275 ; little popular 
 knowledge of, 277-78 
 
 Power generation, denned, 8 ; one 
 of earliest ideas applied to, 34 ; 
 simplest, oldest, and most modern 
 ideas of, 41-42 
 
 Power loom perfected by Cartwright, 
 61 
 
 Power-machinery, see Power-generat- 
 ing machinery 
 
 Power plant, the vital organ of a 
 complex organism, 14 
 
 Power transmission systems, 266-69 ; 
 variety of, 272 
 
 Preignition, 165 
 
 Pressure, exerted by water or other 
 fluid, 36 ; velocity determined by, 
 36 ; how secured in the several 
 systems, 54-55 ; from exploding 
 confined gases, 148 
 
 Principles discovered and classified, 
 64-65 ; thermodynamics, 65 
 
 Processes fundamental, mechanisms 
 incidental, 30 
 
 Producers and non-producers, 280 
 
 Products of manufacturing industries, 
 Value of, 11, 12 
 
 Products of power-driven machinery, 
 5-6 
 
 Progress, True, when possible, 59 
 
 Prosperity, National, a prerequisite 
 
 to civilization, 8 
 Providence, First steam-engine mill 
 
 erected at, 231 
 Public Service Corporation, Newark, 
 
 N. J., Economizers for the, 103-4 
 Puget Sound Power Co., Intake of 
 
 the, 253-54 
 Pumping-engines, 47 ; of Allis-Chal- 
 
 mers Co., 53 
 Pumps auxiliary to condensers, 126- 
 
 30 
 Putnam, H. St. Clare, Table of power 
 
 in use, 11 
 Pyro, denatured alcohol, 201 
 
 Questions of vital importance, 12 
 
 Racks or screens for intercepting ice 
 
 and rubbish, 249, 254, 256 
 Railroads, Mileage, employees and 
 
 wages, 9 ; passenger mileage in 
 
 1900, 20 
 Rainfall, Concentration of, 211-12; 
 
 irregular, 214-15; of U. S., 218 
 Raw materials, Cost of, for 1905, 10 ; 
 
 source of, 13 ; increased in value 
 
 by manufacture, 13-14 
 Reaction, principle of, Use of, 39-41, 
 
 54 
 
 Reaction steam-turbine of Hero, 41 
 Reaction wheels, 39-42, 232, 261; 
 
 modern combined impulse and, 233 
 Register gates for turbines, 241 
 Relief-valves for flow of water, 244 
 Republic Iron and Steel Co., Blowing- 
 engine of the, 53, 54 
 Reservoirs, Storage, 214, 216, 217, 247 
 River steam-boat, The modern, 63, 64 
 "Rocket, The," first locomotive, by 
 
 Stephenson, 63 
 Rocky Mountains, High head-work 
 
 in the, 225 
 
 Ropes, Transmission of power by, 267 
 Rotating shafts, Early uses of, 60 
 Ruskin, John, blamed industrial 
 
 progress, 291 
 
 St. Clair Steel Co., Curved-tube 
 boilers for the, 80 
 
 Samson Co., Wheel runners of tur- 
 bines built by, 237-38 
 
314 
 
 INDEX 
 
 San Joaquin Electric Co., Pipe-line 
 of, 225 ; impulse wheels for, 245 
 46; flume for the, 258 
 
 Saulte Rapids, Water-gate and power- 
 house at, 25456 
 
 Scale in boilers, 77 
 
 Science based on related facts and 
 general principles, 59 
 
 Scotch marine boiler, 73-74, 75 
 
 Screen or rack for logs and ice, 249, 
 254, 256 
 
 Sea products, 10, 13 
 
 Seeds, Growth of, through heat energy, 
 6-7 
 
 Self-ignition, 165 
 
 Shawinegan Falls, Canada, Large 
 water-wheel at, 35-36 
 
 Single-acting cylinder, 43, 45 
 
 Slide-valve, The, 86-91 ; variation of 
 form of, 89-90 ; use of two, 97-98 
 
 Smeaton's cylinder blower, 62 
 
 Smith, E. S., on growth of cities, 
 302-3 
 
 Social conditions, Growth of cities de- 
 pendent on, 302-3 
 
 Soot formed in gas-producer with 
 down draft, 197 
 
 Sound a manifestation of energy, 7 
 
 Spillway for waste water, 226, 247, 
 248 
 
 Spinning machines invented, 61 
 
 Spinning room at New Bedford, 22, 
 23 
 
 Spray-nozzle system of condensing, 
 132-33 
 
 Spray tower chamber in gas-pro- 
 ducer, 190, 193 
 
 Sprayed air -mixtures, Methods of 
 heating, 205-6 
 
 Stack, Loss of heat to the, 137, 138-39 
 
 Stand-pipes, 244 
 
 Stationary engines, Steadiness and 
 durability in, 51 
 
 Statistics, Manufacturing, 9-11 
 
 Statistics, Railroad, 9-11 
 
 Steam, a fluid that behaves much 
 like water, 34 ; how set in motion, 
 36 ; use of, at pressure greater 
 than the atmosphere, 44 ; at at- 
 mospheric pressure, 45 ; vacuum 
 from condensing, 45-46; percent- 
 age of heat liberated by combus- 
 
 tion of coal in, 83, 102; efficient 
 use of pressure of, 94-96 ; expan- 
 sion of, 96 ; range of volume of, 
 95-96 ; expansion of, to atmos- 
 phere, 108; to vacuum, 109, 110- 
 11 ; per cent of work done by, 109- 
 10 ; expansion of, in two or more 
 cylinders, 111-15; complete ex- 
 pansion of, in nozzles, 116; veloc- 
 ity of expanding, 117 ; loss of, 134- 
 36; superheated, 136 
 
 Steam-engine mill, The first, erected 
 at Providence, 231 
 
 Steam-engines, Variety of, 47 ; 67, 
 98 ; the larger, consume less steam 
 per h. p., 68 ; questions of economy 
 and efficiency of, 85-86 ; use of 
 steam per hour per h. p., by simple 
 type, 102 ; advances in, 108 ; mul- 
 tiple expansion, 111-15 
 
 Steam-jet for gas-producer, 185-87 
 
 Steam-power system, 30 ; how pres- 
 sure is produced in the, 54 ; essen- 
 tial elements of, 66-100 ; steam- 
 generating plant, 66-85 ; prin- 
 ciples of efficiency in, 101-41 ; use 
 of, less than of water-power, 101 ; 
 sources of advances in, 101-2 ; 
 improvements in, of two classes, 
 102-3 ; study for net economy in, 
 141 
 
 Steam-pumping-engine, 44 
 
 Steam turbine, 34, 36; of Hero, 41, 
 56, 98 ; relations of wheel and 
 vanes to steam jet, 99-100 ; forms 
 of, 115-25; for the North Dakota, 
 122-24 ; condensing equipment for 
 exhaust of, 128-29 
 
 Steamship, A modern, 17-18 
 
 Stephenson, George, built first loco- 
 motive, "The Rocket," 63 
 
 Stokers, Mechanical, 105-7; for 
 N. Y. Edison Power Station, 105-6 
 
 Stott, H. G., Table of heat losses from 
 one pound of coal, 137-38 
 
 Stream development, 249-51 ; loca- 
 tion of wheels with respect to the 
 dam, 251-52 
 
 Stream flow, Minimum, only avail- 
 able, 215-16 ; per cent of yearly, 
 in each month, in Massachusetts, 
 217 ; fluctuations of, 216-18 
 
INDEX 
 
 315 
 
 Streams, Percentage of power from, 
 decreasing, 23 ; estimated water- 
 power capacity of our, 25-26 
 
 Substance form, Change of, through 
 natural energy, 6-7 
 
 Substances, Nature's, Knowledge and 
 use of, 26 
 
 Suction, denned, 45-46 
 
 Suction gas-producer, 188 
 
 Suction stroke in gas-engine, 154 
 
 Sun, The, source of all energy, 24 
 
 Sunshine, Energy of the, 6-7 
 
 Superheated steam, 136 
 
 Swift & Co., Chicago, Meat-product 
 plant of, 21 
 
 Systems, Choice of, 273-74 
 
 Tail pipe to condensers, 132-35 
 
 Tail-race, The, 249, 250, 251 
 
 Tandem compound engine, 112 
 
 Tar, 183 ; in bituminous coal-gas, 
 192 ; static and filter cleaners, 193- 
 94; mechanical cleaners, 194-95; 
 consumption of, by downward 
 draft, 195-96 ; by combination of 
 up-and-down draft, 197 ; by com- 
 bination of beehive oven and blast 
 furnace, 198-99 
 
 Taylor, Fred W., on reducing labor 
 waste, 294-95 
 
 Thermodynamics, Development of, 
 65, 95 ; application of laws of, 98, 
 141 : one of greatest contributions 
 of, 143 
 
 Throttle valve, 170 
 
 Tivoli, Italy, Falls at, 224 ; masonry 
 viaduct at, 258 
 
 Towns, Evolution of, 281-82 
 
 Trade-unionism, 289-94 
 
 Transformers of electric currents, 
 271-72 
 
 Transmission, see Power transmis- 
 sion 
 
 Transportation, Result of developed 
 systems of, 2, 5-6, 282-84 ; power 
 the prime element in, 9 
 
 Turbine, First hydraulic, at Apple- 
 ton Mills, Lowell, 231 ; principles 
 of the, 231-34; impulse and re- 
 action, 232-33 ; examples of, 234- 
 40 ; flexibility of construction of, 
 234, 240 ; largest ever built, 235 ; 
 
 gates for, 240-44 ; h. p. of a, 244 ; 
 efficiency, 244 
 
 Turbine wheel, An Indian impulse, 
 231-32; and overshot compared, 
 233-34 ; submerged, 251-53 ; hori- 
 zontal shaft, 252-53 
 
 Turbines, 36 ; efficiency of, calcu- 
 lable, 39, 42; steam, 99-100, 115- 
 25 ; as auxiliaries to compound- 
 engines, 124 
 
 Two-cycle engine, 158-60 
 
 Up-draft pressure producers, 184-88 
 Upper-level canal or head-race, 249 
 
 Vacuum chamber, 126 
 
 Vacuum from condensed steam, 45- 
 46 
 
 Vacuum-pump, 126 
 
 Valves, see Corliss valve, Piston- 
 valve, Slide-valve 
 
 Valves in gas-engines, 150-57 
 
 Vanes on wheels, 38, 115-23; rela- 
 tion of speed of, to that of jet, 39, 
 54, 99, 117-18; forms of, 117-19, 
 121 ; curvatures of, on wheel 
 runners, 237 
 
 Vaporizer, A separate, 206 
 
 Vaporizer, Hot bulb, 207-8 
 
 Vaporizer, or carbureting vaporizer, 
 206 
 
 Vaporizers, Heavy oil, 205-8; 210 
 
 Vaporizers in gas-producers, 189-90, 
 191, 192 
 
 Vaporizing automatic in carbureter, 
 203 ; of heavy oils or fuels, 205-9 
 
 Variable lift inlet valve, 171 
 
 Vaseline made from natural oil, 200 
 
 Velocity of jet determined by the 
 pressure, 36; 99-100, 117 
 
 Vermont, U. S. battleship, 49 ; en- 
 gines of the, 48-50 
 
 Vertical engine of the Walter Baker 
 Co., 50, 51 
 
 Vertical water-tube boilers, 78-79 
 
 Wage earners in manufacturing in- 
 dustries, 11-12; increase of, 281- 
 82; capital and, 286-89; trade- 
 unionism, 289-94 ; and employers, 
 294-301 
 
316 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Wars the only extraordinary happen- 
 ings of early times, 2 
 
 Waste, Location and reduction of, 
 a philosophic law, 5 ; utilization 
 of, 14 ; study of reduction of, and 
 our industrial future, 26, 28; va- 
 rious distribution of, 13738 ; the 
 problem of minimum, 139 
 
 Water energy, First application of, 
 7, 16, 29 ; per cent of power gen- 
 erated from, 23 ; motion from, 31- 
 42 ; basal idea of water- and steam- 
 turbines, 34 
 
 Water headers, 76, 81-82 
 
 Water-jacket around cylinder, 151, 
 153 
 
 Water-jet like a bar of steel, 246-47 
 
 Water-mill, The, 15, 16 
 
 Water-power capacity of our streams, 
 25-26 
 
 Water-power system, 30, 54 
 
 Water-power systems and basal hy- 
 draulic processes, 211-65; meas- 
 ure of stream power, 212; cost of 
 concentration on wheel, 213-14 ; 
 storage reservoirs, 214, 216, 217; 
 only minimum stream flow avail- 
 able, 215-16; monthly stream 
 flow in Massachusetts, 217 ; sites 
 for, far from towns, 219 ; relation 
 of electric power transmission to, 
 -219-20 ; variable cost of, 264-65 
 
 Water, Pressure exerted by, 36; 
 height raised to by atmospheric 
 pressure, 46 ; conducted from a 
 high to a lower level, 54 ; in pipes, 
 212 
 
 Watersheds, 211 - 
 
 Water-tube boilers, 76-80 
 
 Water-wheel, The first, in this coun- 
 try, erected at Pawtucket Falls, 230 
 
 Water-wheels, 34-36; one of the 
 largest, at Shawinegan Falls, 
 Canada, 35-36 
 
 Watt, James, The steam-engine of, 
 47 ; first rotative steam-engine of, 
 57 ; use of engines of, 61 ; sold 
 engine to Fulton, 63 ; demand for 
 engines of, 98 
 
 Weak explosive mixtures, 165 
 
 Wealth, Sources of, 8 ; definition of, 
 291 ; production of, 292-93 ; share 
 of manufacturer and worker in, 
 292-93, 295-300 
 
 Wealth of country, how increased, 
 26 
 
 Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, on Trade- 
 unionism, 289-90 
 
 Webber, Samuel, Areas of Merrimac 
 River watersheds, 218 
 
 Wheel, Adaptation of, to the locality, 
 247 ; may be within the dam, 249 ; 
 supply of water to, 249-51 ; loca- 
 tion of, with respect to dam, 251-52 
 
 Wheel runners of turbines, Peculiar, 
 237-38 
 
 Wheels and vanes in turbines, 115-23 ; 
 velocity of, 117-18 
 
 Wheels, High-head, for single noz- 
 zles, 245-46 
 
 Wheels, Impulse, 38, 39, 245-46 
 
 Wheels, see also Water-wheels 
 
 Wicket gates for turbines, 241, 242 
 
 Wind energy, First application of, 7 ; 
 to get motion from, 31 
 
 Windmill, The, 15, 16 
 
 Woolens, Early manufacture of, in 
 England, 61 
 
 Work, a manifestation of energy, 7, 
 65 
 
 Zambesi Falls in Africa, 222-23 
 
 C. A. N. 
 
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 WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
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 OVERDUE. 
 
 NOV 
 
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 D*C 10 1933 
 
 32 
 
 
 LD 21-100m-7,'33