The buildings are all in a cluster and a branch from the transmission line runs into each one where the current is used. All the wires which are inside of any of the buildings, or are close to the woodwork, are covered with insulation, and, where concealed, are further protected by being placed in twisted metal tubes.
The first actual use of this hydro-electric power was for lighting. The house was illuminated with electric lights, as were also the barn and other buildings, there being ultimately about seventy 16-candle-power lamps in use. Even the pig sty has its electric light, and there is no more groping in the dark anywhere about the Miner farm buildings.
Lathe in E. B. Miner’s Machine Shop
But there was more power in the creek than was necessary to run the electric lights. A circular saw was brought into use, belted to a motor, and the supply of firewood was cut in a fraction of the time previously required. The same motor is used to drive a [lathe] and a [drill] in a machine shop which the Miner boys built and equipped. This motor is belted to a countershaft from which additional machine tools can be driven. One of the Miner boys has developed this machine shop as a combined means of pleasure and profit. In addition to a considerable amount of experimental machine work, he does all the farm repairs and a considerable amount of machine work for neighboring knitting mills, as well as general and automobile repair work, all of which has been made possible by the harnessing of the creek.
Another motor, two-horsepower, driven by the electric current, is belted to a [vacuum pump], which is connected with a one-inch pipe running to the house and the barn. In the house there are two taps, one on each floor, to which the hose of a vacuum cleaner may be attached, and Oriskany creek does the rest; the floors are cleaned in the most modern, sanitary and thorough manner. In the barn the pipe from the vacuum pump runs above the cow stanchions with a tap at alternate stanchions. The tubes of the milking machines are attached and the creek milks twenty or twenty-five cows twice each day.
Drill in E. B. Miner’s Machine Shop
Note the electric motor in background belted
to countershaft near the ceiling
In the dairy room is a one-half-horsepower motor, which may be belted to the cream separator or churn, and on the hot summer days it is frequently belted to the ice cream freezer. An ingenious float device in the separator turns off the power when the cream is all separated from the milk and trips a can of clear water into the heavy, revolving bowl of the separator, which still retains enough momentum to rinse itself thoroughly before coming to rest.