730 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



those who are parties to these controversies. It is impossible to 

 doubt that the wide diffusion of education is always helping to clarify 

 the situation. It has done much already to relieve the industrial 

 strike of its uglier features. Riot and bloodshed now rarely mark it 

 where the parties to a contest are men of average intelligence and 

 education, like the English engineers. So the evolution will ad- 

 vance, step by step, and point by point, until the time shall come 

 when exact justice to all concerned, in harmonious accord with the 

 economic laws of modern business, shall have worked itself out. 



-♦♦♦- 



THE ELECTRIC TRANSMISSION OF WATER POWER.* 



By WILLIAM BAXTEE, Jk. 



EVER since the electric light and power industry began to be 

 a factor in the economic affairs of the industrial world, its 

 adaptation to the work of transmitting the power of waterfalls to 

 more or less distant points has been the dream of those who realize 

 its vast possibilities, and who believe that the ingenuity of man is 

 equal to the task of overcoming any difficulties that may be en- 

 countered in attempts to find a successful solution of the problem. 

 For more than twenty years those who may be called electrical en- 

 thusiasts have prophesied that the day would come when the power 

 of Niagara would be delivered at the door of the consumer in the 

 city of New York, and capitalists have not been lacking who would 

 have provided the means for carrying out an undertaking of this 

 kind if they had been given the proper assurance by electrical en- 

 gineers of prominence that the results sought for could be attained. 

 Such assurance, however, could not be given; for, although it is 

 known that there is no difficulty in the way of accomplishing such 

 a result theoretically, the practical development of the art has not 

 reached a stage that would render the realization of such an under- 

 taking possible. 



To transmit power by means of electric currents over long dis- 

 tances, without suffering too great a loss in overcoming the resistance 

 of the conducting wires, it is necessary to make use of a high 

 electrical pressure, the effect of which is to render very difficult the 

 perfect insulation of the line, so as to prevent the escape of the cur- 

 rent. The greater the distance to which the current is transmitted, 

 the greater must the pressure be to keep the loss of energy and the 

 cost of wire within permissible limits; hence, when the pressure 



* For the illustrations in this article we are indebted to the kindness of the General 

 Electric Company. 



