62 SELLERS — TRANSMISSION OF ENERGY BY ELECTRICITY. [Feb. 3, 



adopted by electric lighting companies, as thereby the local trans- 

 formers that are used to reduce, from street conductors under a 

 pressure of 2000 volts to 100 volts in houses, are small and inex- 

 pensive ; much more so than if similar machines were wound for as 

 low a periodicity as forty-two per second. This question of period 

 or rate of alternation per second has since come to be recognized 

 as an important consideration in the transmission of electric energy 

 for power purposes, and bears directly on the question of efficiency^ 

 convenience and economy in the conduct of the power-house 

 equipment at Niagara Falls. There is so much of interest that may 

 be said on this subject that I am loath to leave it to speak of what 

 resulted from the study of the problems between 1890 and 1893, 

 when in 1893 ^^^ installation of hydraulic machinery was to be 

 begun, and an electric system adopted and put in practice ready 

 for operation. In 1895 t)ut one single tenant, the Niagara Falls 

 Paper Company, now using over 7200 horse power from the surface 

 canal of the company, was and still is the only example we have 

 of a factory controlling its own water power directly connected to 

 its machinery, as at Lowell and elsewhere. 



During the year 1893 ^^^ ^^^^ of extending the tunnel beyond a 

 proposed power house, and all extension of surface canal with 

 branches to supply local factories, was given up in favor of electri- 

 cal generation and transmission thereof to the users in such form as 

 to be acceptable to the industries established on the land of the com- 

 pany. In the year 1893, while the greatest pressure was being exerted 

 to induce the Cataract Construction Company to adopt the direct- 

 current system, Mr. Edward D. Adams and the other officers of 

 the company had before them a diagrammatic plan showing a cen- 

 tral station for the generation of alternate-current electricity, from 

 which conductors were figured as leading to electric furnaces, to 

 apparatus that was capable of converting the alternate current into 

 direct current, either by synchronous motors driving direct-current 

 dynamos or by step-down or step-up transformers and rotary trans- 

 formers that accomplished the same end. Lighting by arc and 

 incandescent lamps was provided for, and trolley lines were desig- 

 nated as in operation, while an overhead pole line was figured as 

 transmitting the energy to Buffalo or elsewhere, at any required 

 pressure. Nothing could be more convincing than this diagram to 

 show the elasticity of the alternate current, which was confirmed 

 by a practical exhibition offered at Pittsburg by the Westinghouse 



