Every-day Science: Volume 6. The Conquest of Nature

by Henry Smith Williams; Edward Huntington Williams

As you stand there beside this great steel mechanism a sense of wonderment and of utter helplessness takes possession of you. As you glance down the hall at this series of great water conduits, and strain your eyes upward in the endeavor to follow the great funnel to its very end, an oppressive sense of the irresistible weight of the great column of water it supports comes to you, and you can scarcely avoid a feeling of apprehension. Suppose one of the great tubes were to burst?—we should all be drowned like rats in a hole. There is small danger, to be sure, of such a contingency; but it is well worth while to have stood thus away down here at the heart of the great power-house to have gained an awed sense of what man can accomplish toward rivaling the wonders of nature. To have stood an hour ago on the ice bridge at the foot of the most tremendous cataract in the world, where Nature exhausts her powers amidst the mad rush and roar of seething waters; and now to stand beneath this other column of water which effects a no less wonderful transformation of energy, serenely, silently,—is to have run such a gamut of emotions as few other hours in all your life can have in store for you.

A MIRACULOUS TRANSFORMATION OF ENERGY

There are eleven of these great turbine mechanisms, each with a supplying funnel of water and a revolving shaft extending upward to its companion dynamo, in the room in which we stand. Energy representing fifty-five thousand horse-power is incessantly transformed and made available for man's use in the subterranean building in which we stand. And there is not a pound of coal, not a lick of flame, not an atom of steam involved in the transformation. There are no dust-grimed laborers; there is no glare of furnace, no glow of heat, no stifling odor of burning fuel;—there is only the restful hum of the machinery that responds to the ceaseless flow of the silent and invisible waters. Day and night the mighty river here pulls away at its turbine harness; and man, having once adjusted that harness, may take his ease and enjoy the fruits of his ingenuity.

As we return now to the top of the building, we shall view the spinning dynamos with renewed interest, and a few facts regarding their output of energy may well claim our attention. In their principle of action, as we have seen, all dynamos are alike,—depending upon the mutual relations between the wire-wound armature and a magnetic field. In the present case the magnets are made to revolve and the armatures are stationary, but this is a mere detail. There is one feature of these dynamos, however, which is of greater importance,—the fact namely that they operate without commutators, and therefore produce alternating currents. This fact has an important bearing upon the distribution of the current. Each of the dynamos before us generates the equivalent of five thousand horse-power of energy. There are eleven such dynamos here before us; there are ten more in the power-house on the other side of the canal, giving a total of one hundred and five thousand horse-power for this single plant; and there are five such plants now in existence or in course of construction to utilize the waters of Niagara, three being on the Canadian shore. When in full operation the aggregate output of these plants will be six or seven hundred thousand horse-power.

SUBTERRANEAN TAIL-RACES

As we step from the door of the power-house and stand again beside the canal whose waters produce the wonderful effects we have witnessed in imagination, one question remains to be answered: What becomes of the water after it has passed through the turbine wheels down there in the depths? The answer is simple: All the water from the various turbines flows away into a great subterranean canal which passes down beneath the city of Niagara Falls, and discharges finally at the level of the rapids a few hundred yards below the Falls. The construction of this subterranean canal would in itself have been considered a great engineering feat a few decades ago; but of late years mountain tunnels, such subterranean railways as the London "tube system" and tunnels beneath rivers have robbed such structures of their mystery. It may be added that another such subterranean canal, to serve as a tail-race for one of the new Canadian plants, extends beneath the cataract itself, discharging not far from the centre of the Horseshoe Falls. Another of the power companies utilizes the water of the old surface canal which extends to the brink of the gorge some distance below the Falls. Yet another company on the Canadian side conveys water from far above the rapids in a gigantic closed tube to the brink of the gorge just below the Canadian Falls, above the point where their power-house is located.

But the principle involved is everywhere the same. The idea is merely to utilize the weight of falling water. The water of Niagara River is of course no different from any other body of water of equal size. It is merely that its unique position gives the engineer an easy opportunity to utilize the potential energy that resides in any body of water—or, for that matter, in any other physical substance—lying at a high level. In due course, doubtless, other bodies of water, such as mountain lakes and mountain streams will be similarly put into electrical harness. The electrical feature is of course the one that most appeals to the imagination. But it may be well to recall that the ultimate source of all the power in question is gravitation. People fond of philosophical gymnastics may reflect with interest that, according to the newest theory, gravitation itself is, in the last analysis, an electrical phenomenon—a reflection which, it will be noted, leads the mind through a very curious cycle.

THE EFFECT ON THE FALLS

Much solicitude has been expressed as to the possible effect, upon the Falls themselves, of this withdrawal of water. For the present, it is admitted, there is no visible effect; and to the casual observer it may seem that almost any quantity of water the power-houses are likely to need might be withdrawn without seriously marring the wonderful cataract. But the statistics supplied by the power companies, taken in connection with estimates as to the bulk of water that passes over the Falls, do not support this optimistic view. Taking what seems to be a reasonable estimate for a basis of computation it would appear that when the power-houses now rapidly approaching completion are in full operation, the total withdrawal of water from the stream will represent a very appreciable fraction of its entire bulk—one-twenty-fifth at the very least, perhaps as much as one-tenth. Such a diminution as this will by no means ruin the Falls, yet it would seem as if it must sensibly affect them, particularly at some places near Goat Island, where the water flows at present in a very shallow stream. Be that as it may, however, the power-houses are there, and it is probable that their number will be added to as years go on. Whether commercialism or æstheticism will win in the end, it remains for the legislators of the future to decide.