[Great World's Fair Searchlight.]
The Great World's Fair Searchlight, which is now so well known from its operation on Echo Mountain, first became famous at the World's Fair, Chicago, where it excited great interest, and surpassed all other exhibits in its line. After the Fair, it was taken to San Francisco and exhibited at the Mid-Winter Fair, where it delighted thousands from the Bonet electric tower, 264 feet high. When the Mid-Winter Fair was over, Professor Lowe purchased it and removed it to Echo Mountain, where it rests at an altitude of 3,500 feet above sea level. Until this great searchlight was established in its present location its powers could not be brought out on account of its location so near the general level of the surrounding country. Here, however, it is so located that its rays can be seen for 150 miles on the ocean, and the most distant mountain peaks can be made visible by its penetrating rays. The beam of light is so powerful that a newspaper can be read for a distance of thirty-five miles, and its full sweep illuminates the peaks of mountains which are hundreds of miles apart.
It is of 3,000,000 candle power, and stands on a wooden base, built in octagon form, which has a diameter of about eight feet. The searchlight itself stands about eleven feet high, and its total weight is 6,000 lbs., yet it is so perfectly mounted and balanced that a child can move it in any direction.
Machinery for Operating the Great Cable Incline, Mount Lowe Railway.
The reflecting lens is three and a quarter inches thick at the edges and only one-sixteenth of an inch at the center, and weighs about 800 lbs. The metal ring in which the lens is mounted weighs 750 lbs., the total weight of lens, ring and cover being about 1,600 lbs. This great mirror is mounted at one end of the big drum, the outer end of which is furnished with a door, consisting of a narrow metal rim, in which are fixed a number of plate glass strips five-sixteenths of an inch thick and six inches wide. The value of this great searchlight in meteorological work has already been demonstrated on a small scale. When there is moisture in the atmosphere, and varying wind-currents, the light turned upwards discovers the directions in which the wind is conveying the clouds, and aids in revealing the conditions that cause these variations.
[Operating Machinery of the Great Cable Incline.]
Like many other things in connection with the Mount Lowe Railway, the machinery is unique and unlike anything ever before constructed.
The power was originally furnished by water. For the first nine months the Great Cable Incline was operated by water power and electric power generated by two monster gas engines. Now the power is supplied from the Pasadena plant of the Pacific Electric Railway. It is transmitted by large copper conductors to the Echo Mountain power house, supplying current to the 100 horsepower electric motor, which makes 800 revolutions per minute. Then by a series of gears the revolutions are reduced from 800 to 17 per minute, which is the speed at which the massive grip-sheave turns. The grip-sheave consists of a tremendously heavy wheel, on which about 70 automatic steel jaws are affixed. As the wheel revolves, these jaws close and grip the endless cable, to which the cars are permanently attached, and thus are they raised or lowered as occasion requires. By this method there is practically no wear whatever to the cable. It is not strained and chafed by the constant operation of gripping as on the street railway cars, where the inertia of trains of cars of many tons weight has to be overcome by the gripping of the ever-moving cable.