ELECTRIC POWER DISTRIBUTION 353 



incidental village or two on the way. Each added com- 

 munity adds a few shops, and before long it is time for a little 

 electric road connecting all with the railway. A little tele- 

 phone exchange starts up and gets connected with the long 

 distance lines, and within a few years the whole region, cov- 

 ered by the electric network, takes on an air of new pros- 

 perity; population increases, the farmers find a home mar- 

 ket, and instead of a decaying backwoods community with 

 one lonely general store, a tumble down church, and a cider 

 mill, we have a lively little group of towns, each hustling to 

 get ahead of the others, in close touch with the nearer cities, 

 and a part of the industrial world. There are to-day little 

 manufacturing specialties that are known everywhere, and 

 with decent utilization of natural resources to give cheap 

 power, their number might be increased tenfold. And the 

 modest prosperity thus acquired is stable to a far greater 

 degree than that which depends upon huge urban aggregations 

 of manufacture. A little factory does not shut down because 

 a prominent broker has been speculating too freely, or be- 

 cause a foreman has employed a nonunion scrub woman. 



Technically, the task of organizing a power network for 

 such uses is very straightforward indeed. It simply means 

 following out intelligently principles already familiar. The 

 transmission and distribution of the power is done generally 

 by ordinary polyphase methods, which may perhaps be sup- 

 plemented more or less by single phase circuits for small 

 powers. Abroad, some few plants have tried continuous 

 current distribution with series motors, but the high motor 

 voltages are objectionable on the score of safety. The most 

 interesting feature of engineering small plants lies in the 

 tactful use of water storage. For example, take a power giving 

 300 horsepower off the shaft of the wheel. The normal generator 

 in such a case would be of about 200 kilowatts capacity. 

 This could easily be used up in power and could be put to 

 use in lighting only after the period when lap load occurs. 

 But flash boards and two or three acres of storage at a working 

 head of, say, twenty five feet, would put another hundred 

 kilowatts into service for the couple of hours necessary to 

 carry the load over the peak, so that the plant could earn 



Vol 3-23. 



