The tide or current wheel, (Fig. 115) erected in the vicinity of the north end of London Bridge, and subsequently under its northern arch, was erected by Peter Morice, a Dutchman, in 1582, and operated force-pumps which supplied a part of London with water. The stand-pipe from the pump was 120 feet high, and conducted the water to a cistern at that height. The amount raised was about 216 gallons per minute. The wheel worked sixteen pumps, each 7 inches in diameter, and having a uniform stroke of 30 inches.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the works were extended from time to time, and occupied one after another of the arches. In the first arch of the bridge was one wheel working sixteen force-pumps. In the third arch were three wheels, working fifty-two pumps. The united effect was 2,052 gallons per minute, raised 120 feet high.
In 1767 Smeaton added wheels in the fifth arch. Steam-engines were added about this time to assist at low water and at neap-tides. Thus the matter remained till 1821. Stow, the antiquarian and historian, describes the works in 1600; and Beighton in 1731 gives an account of them at that date.
The water-wheels at that time were placed under several of the arches. The axis of these wheels was 19 feet long 3 feet diameter. The radial arms supported the rings and twenty-six floats, 14 feet long by 18 inches wide. The axis turned on brass gudgeons supported by counterpoised levers, which permitted the vertical adjustment of the wheel as the tide rose and fell. On the axis of the wheel was a cog-wheel 8 feet in diameter and having forty-four cogs; meshing into a trundle-wheel 41⁄2 feet in diameter and having 20 rounds, or pins and whose iron axle revolved in brasses.
The axis of the trundle was prolonged at each end, and had quadruple cranks which connected by rods to the ends of four walking beams 24 feet long, whose other ends worked the piston-rods of the pumps. The axis of oscillation of the lever supporting the wheel, and by which it was adjusted to the height of the tide, was coincident with the axis of the trundle, so that the latter engaged the 8-feet cog-wheel in all conditions of vertical adjustment. Cranks operated one end of the beams while pumps were attached to the other end.
Fig. 116.
Fig. 116 exhibits an overshot water wheel employed at Laxey, Isle of Man, for driving the pumps which drain the mines at that village; these have an extreme depth of 1,380 feet. The wheel is 72 feet 6 inches in diameter, 6 feet in breadth, exerts a force of about 200 horse-power and is capable of pumping 250 gallons per min. from a depth of 1,200 feet. Its crank-stroke is 10 feet. The water for driving it is conducted by pipes from a reservoir on a neighboring hill, and ascends in the column of masonry shown to the left of the wheel. (Knight Vol. III.) An extra crank appears to be shown in the foreground of this reproduction of an old drawing.