\VATKR-PO\VKK INSTALLATIONS. 115 



across the end of the room. The turbine is capable of giving ;5 h.p. when running at three hundred 

 revolutions per minute, and the dynamo, which is directly coupled to the turbine shaft, gives its current 

 at a piessure of two hundred volts. There is a battery of accumulators on the floor above to piovide 

 a reserve, of electricity should the water supply fail for a short time. To charge this battery a motor- 

 booster consisting of two four-pole dynamos coupled together has been installed. This is seen on the 

 left in the illustration. 



There is also a motor-driven turbine pump ol _ o h.p. that is capable of supplying with water lour 

 lire hydrants, each having a nozzle three-quarters of an inch in diameter. The pressure in the hydrants 

 is sufficient to throw the. water over the root ol the house . At ordinary times water Iroin the dam is allowed 

 to run through the stationary pump, the twenty-two feet of head that it possesses being found sufficient 

 to keep the garden fountain in play and also for watering the garden. 



A switch-board for controlling the various lighting and power circuits is placed just in trout of the 

 right-hand wall of the power-house. It is made up of six panels of white marble. The three uppc r panels 

 contain the measuring instruments and regulating switches for the dynamo, booster and battery, and 

 also a clock, while the three lower panels are fitted with switches and fuses for the distributing circuits. 

 The plant serves three hundred lights in the house and an electric luggage lift. 



The water-power plant at Ardkinglas is an object-lesson to all who desire, to make use ol water- 

 power amid scenes of natural beauty, and a direct disclaimer to all the objections raised by tlio^e ultra- 

 a-sthetes who can never hear of some natural source of water-power being put to use without 

 exclaiming against an age so sordid and Philistine. 



The world is still waiting for the genius who can supply a design at once efficient and artistic for 

 large hydro-electric power-stations. It will be a thousand pities if the site of the Victoria Falls on the 

 Zambesi ever becomes cumbered with a collection ol buildings which for all the eye can tell are Lancashire 

 cotton-mills without chimney-stacks, as has been done on both banks of the St. Laurence at Niagara. The 

 engineering capacities ol mankind are great, and are growing Iroin year to year, but we are still unable to 

 construct a Niagara, though by carelessness and parsimony we may readily destroy the sublimity and 

 grandeur which is Nature s gift to us. Vast quantities of water falling from an immense height are not 

 such common phenomena that we can afford to desecrate the two or three unblemished examples that still 

 remain to us. The Governments of the countries containing these mighty cataracts will be showing 

 little regard for their national treasures it they leave them to the small mercies of unchecked industrial 

 capital. MAI/KICK Iliun. 



143. IN THE DYNAMO ROOM. 



