366 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1959 
duce 800 million kw.-hr. per annum has been started in France in the 
Rance estuary. This project is due to be completed in 1960 and, if 
successful, may lead to a much larger scheme embracing the Mont- 
Saint-Michel Bay and producing the equivalent of about half the 
electricity now consumed in France. Plans are also being discussed 
for another attempt in the Bay of Fundy. Such projects demand 
not only specialist knowledge of the tides and currents, but also a 
careful assessment of their effects on navigation, fisheries, and the 
configuration of coasts and beaches in the neighborhood. 
The power of waves is obvious to anyone who has seen the damage 
they can inflict; many a storm hits the coast with a force of a million 
horsepower per mile of coastline. But it would require an enormous 
engine to tap this force, and the operation would be more difficult 
than using the energy of tides. Small installations have been tried; 
a wave pump with an output of about one-half horsepower under 
favorable conditions worked for 10 years at Monaco; an installation 
in Newfoundland produced enough electricity to light a small house. 
These and similar schemes, combined with the use of new techniques 
and materials, seem reasonable enough to warrant a more thorough 
study of wave conditions. 
Utilization of the relatively large and steady differences of tem- 
perature between surface and deep water in the tropical seas has 
engaged the attention of French engineers for many years, and an 
experimental plant at Abidjan, on the Ivory Coast, will soon be com- 
pleted. This plant will produce large quantities of salt and fresh 
water as well as electricity. 
NAVIGATION 
Our greatest use of the sea is as a cheap highway for commerce; and 
although the ships of today are well able to face winds, waves, and 
currents, there is little doubt that time could be saved, and loss and 
damage avoided, if wave conditions and day-to-day changes in cur- 
rents could be predicted reliably from weather charts and forecasts. 
The rewards will not be as spectacular as they were a hundred years 
ago when, by paying due attention to the new charts of prevailing 
winds and currents, a passage might be shortened by several weeks; 
but they will still be substantial. Ships’ captains may not take kindly 
to following changing sailing directions from the shore; but the prac- 
tice has been tried in a small way and has shown that ships can avoid 
storms and save time with less risk of damage. 
The study of ship movements in relation to waves has recently 
progressed to the stage where direct use can be made of reliable wave 
predictions. Much useful work has been done in this direction, and 
a number of authors have independently proposed formulae by which 
