Electricity for Irrigation 



LECTRICAL POWER is found to be of advantage in irrigation 

 in California. A singular feature is that often the very water 

 which through its fall furnishes the power is used for irrigation, 

 being diverted from the same stream at a lower level in its 

 course. Irrigation by electrical power is not expensive. For 

 instance, it is said that land at Redding can be irrigated at an 

 expense of $2.54 an acre with water pumped by electrical power from wells 

 or sources 30 feet below the surface. The water distributed over the land 

 will be equivalent to a 24-inch rainfall during 100 days of ten hours each 

 that the pumps are kept running. 



W. W. Wheeler, chief engineer of the Northern California Power Com- 

 pany, which corporation stands ready to supply the power needed as far down 

 as Vina on one side and Orland on the other, a condition which no doubt 

 other power companies of the State will gladly comply with, says: "I will 

 give you an illustration of how irrigation with electrically pumped water 

 has paid one man near Redding. M. T. Kite, owning a dairy ranch on the 

 outskirts of Redding, installed a 10 horse-power pumping plant two years 

 ago. He pumped the water, a 23-foot lift, to irrigate 35 acres of land. The 

 installation of his plant cost $800. He estimates that he raised enough 

 extra alfalfa the first year to pay for the expense of the operation of the 

 plant and four-fifths of the original cost, or $800, of the plant. As to the 

 cost of operations, suppose a man has a 100-acre tract that he wishes to 

 irrigate and that his water supply is 30 feet below the surface. It will cost 

 $15 an acre, or $1500, to install the pumping plant. The power company 

 will furnish the power for $2.54 an acre, which is at the rate of $35 a 

 horse-power for ten hours a day for 100 days. With the plant once estab- 

 lished, the cost of maintenance would be practically nothing, if proper 

 care be taken. The interest at 6 per cent on the cost of the plant would be 

 $90 a year, or 90 cents an acre for the 100 acres. That would make the 

 total cost of irrigating one acre per annum $3.44 per acre. Allow for in- 

 cidentals and the allowance of $3.50 per acre would be liberal." 



California is the first State to realize the possibilities of hydro-electric 

 motive power. Nowhere else has the energy of falling water been used to 

 such an extent to generate electricity for transmission at high tension, except 

 in New York, which leads by a few per cent, with Illinois 40 per cent behind. 

 The first experiments in hydro-electricity were made at Lauffin, in Germany, 

 in 1891. Within a^ear there was a plant at Pomona and three years later 

 a big plant was constructed at Folsom. Since then many other plants 

 have been variously located; among them the de Sabla power house, which 

 holds the record for long-distance transmission at 272 miles. 



A great deal of the history of early improvements in telephone ap- 

 paratus originated in San Francisco between 1877 and 1879. Undoubtedly 

 the first serious installation anywhere of a telephone exchange was that 

 operated from the District Telegraph Office on Sansome street. Here also 

 was developed the first automatic ringer and selective signal. 



Along with the serious use of the telephone in California originated 

 the long-distance telephone in 1878. It ran from French Corral in Yuba 

 County to the summit of the Sierra Nevadas, some sixty miles in all. 



Of all the applications of electricity, one of the handiest has been the 

 principle of the hotel annunciator. The first electric hotel annunciator was 

 installed by W. C. Ralston in the Grand Hotel, San Francisco, in 1868. 

 Just ten years later another important principle of electricity was applied in 

 San Francisco in the construction of the first central station for light and 

 power in the United States. 



