1899.] SELLERS — TRANSMISSION OF ENERGY BY ELECTRICITY. 69 



mission of energy by electricity : beyond the possession of useful 

 knowledge, actual practice and the attempt to accomplish results 

 will yet need many venturesome efforts. 



In utilizing the power of Niagara Falls large units of power 

 have been shown to be economical. A single dynamo built to 

 yield 5000 electrical horse power has yielded 5600 electrical horse 

 power without sign of overload. The wonderful efficiency of these 

 machines, which have a loss of less than two and one-half per cent., 

 has established the superiority of electrical transmission of power, 

 and proved it to be more economical than any of the usual methods 

 of transmission by material in motion ; that is to say, by shafting, 

 belting or compressed air, etc. All such methods involve great 

 frictional loss. When a steam engine is attached directly to a 

 dynamo, the electrical output of the dynamo, measured by modern 

 instruments of precision, is known to be more reliable as an indi- 

 cation of the power produced by the combustion of a given amount 

 of coal than any ordinary method of indicating the power of a 

 steam engine to determine the horse power per pound of coal 

 burned. Large factories, such as the Baldwin Locomotive Works, 

 have recognized the economy of generating electricity by steam 

 and transmitting it to the various machines or groups of machines 

 in use, to which electric motors are applied, thus dispensing with 

 long lines of shafting. How far electricity can be transmitted 

 from the turbines at Niagara Falls with profit remains yet to be 

 determined. The actual economy obtained by transmission to 

 Buffalo, say a distance of twenty-two miles, is so much beyond 

 what was predicated as possible in 1890, or even 1893, that no one 

 can venture to say what will be forthcoming in the near future. 

 With electricity it is very much as it was with railroads ; fifteen 

 miles per hour was thought to be a dangerous speed when locomo- 

 tives began to supersede the stage coach. Those who travel now 

 hope for an improvement that will lead to a higher rate of speed 

 than we are now accustomed to. So it is with electricity by over- 

 head lines of transmission. One thousand volts is no less dangerous 

 than 11,000 volts on the Buffalo line, or 20,000 or 30,000 on some 

 of the air lines in this country. 



The question of underground transmission calls for a high 

 quality of insulating material or method of preventing leakage, 

 and of providing means of dissipating the heat that must result 

 from any loss due to resistance in the conducting material used. 



