1896.] Mr. Thomas Martin on the Utilisation of Niagara. 269 



EXTRA EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, June 19, 1896. 



The Rt. Hon. Lord Kelvin, D.C.L. LL.D. F.R.S. Vice-President, 



in the Chair. 



Thomas Commerford Martin, Esq. (of New York), American 

 Delegate to the Kelvin Celebration. 



TJie Utilisation of Niagara. 



The broad idea of the utilisation of Niagara is by no means new, for 

 even as early as 1725, while the thick woods of pine and oak were 

 still haunted by the stealthy redskin, a miniature saw-mill was set 

 up amid the roaring waters. The first systematic effort to harness 

 Niagara was not made until nearly 150 years later, when the present 

 hydraulic canal was dug and the mills were set up which disfigure 

 the banks just below the stately Falls. It was long obvious that even 

 an enormous extension of this surface canal system would not answer 

 for the proper utilisation of the illimitable energy contained in a vast 

 stream of such lofty fall as that of Niagara. 



Niagara is the point at which are discharged, through two 

 narrowing precipitous channels only 8800 feet wide and 160 feet 

 high, the contents of 6000 cubic miles of water, with a reservoir area 

 of 90,000 square miles, draining 300,000 square miles of territory. 

 The ordinary overspill of this Atlantic set on edge has been deter- 

 mined to be equal to about 275,000 cubic feet per second, and the 

 quantity passing is estimated as high as 100,000,000 tons of water 

 per hour. 



The drifting of a ship over the Horse Shoe Fall has proved it to 

 have a thickness at the centre of the crescent of over 16 feet. Between 

 Lake Erie and Lake Ontario there is a total difference of level of 

 800 feet (Fig. 1), and the amount of power represented by the water at 

 the Falls has been estimated on different bases from 6,750,000 horse- 

 power up to not less than 16,800,000 horse-power, the latter being a 

 rough calculation of Sir William Siemens, who, in 1877, was the first 

 to suggest the use of electricity as the modern and feasible agent of 

 converting into useful power some of this majestic but squandered 

 energy. 



It may be noted that the water passing out at Niagara is wonder- 

 fully pure and " soft," contrasting strongly, therefore, with the other 

 body of water, turbid and gritty, that flows from the north out through 

 the banks of the Mississippi. The annual recession of the American 



