“Do you mean the thing’s working?” demanded Mr. Whiteley.
“She’s a-turnin’ her rotator this very second about twelve thousand times a minute,” says Mr. Tidd, “and she’s a-stirrin’ up close to a hundred horse-power.”
“Impossible!” says Mr. Whiteley.
“Measure it, then,” sings Mr. Tidd. “Measure it.”
The engineer brought Mr. Whiteley a couple of little brass things, and he hitched them onto the turbine. The one that measured the revolutions seemed to go plum crazy for a while, then it settled down to business, and Mr. Whiteley bent over to read what it said. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. “Tidd,” he said, all excited, “Tidd, it can’t be possible! It can’t! But this says you’re making fourteen thousand revolutions to the minute.”
“What’s she doin’ in the way of horse-power?” Mr. Tidd chuckled.
Mr. Whiteley fussed around a while till he found out.
“It says the machine’s turning up one hundred and two horse-power,” he says, kind of hushed like. With that he walked over to Mr. Tidd and put out his hand. “Mr. Tidd,” says he, “you’ve done it. You’ve come close to revolutionizing the business of applying power, and you’re going to be a rich man.”
“Wait,” says Mr. Tidd. “You hain’t seen it all. What’s one of the greatest obstacles now in the turbine?”
“The difficulty of reversing.”