THE IRRIGATION AGE 



VOL. XX 



CHICAGO, DECEMBER, 1904. 



No. 2 



THE IRRIGATION AGE 



With which is Merged 



MODERN IRRIGATION 

 THE IRRIGATION ERA 

 ARID AMERICA 



THE DRAINAGE JOURNAL 

 MID- WEST 



THE FARM HERALD 



THE D. H. ANDERSON PUBLISHING CO., 

 PUBLISHERS, 



112 Dearborn Street, CHICAGO 



Entered at the Postoffice at Chicago, 111., as Second-Class Matter. 



D. H. ANDERSON / - di 

 W. J. ANDERSON \ Edltors 



Western Office: Chamber of Commerce Building, Denver, Colo. 

 GEO. W. WAGNER, Mgr. M. C. JACKSON, Editor, Western Dept. 



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A monthly illustrated magazine recognized throughout the world as 

 the exponent of Irrigation and its kindred industries. It is the pioneer 

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Interesting to Advertisers. 



It may interest advertisers to know that The Irrigation Age is the 

 only publication in the world having an actual paid in advance 

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 rations. It is read regularly by all interested in this subject and has 

 readers in all parts of the world. The Irrigation Age is 20 years 

 old and is the pioneer publication of its class in the world. 



EDITORIAL 



-,, , In 1876 John Ericsson, the great m- 



The olar 



. ventor and, engineer, made the follow- 



Motor for 



j , . ing impressive statement: Upon one 



square mile, using only one-half of the 

 surface and devoting the rest to buildings, roads, etc., 

 we can drive 64,800 steam engines, each of 100-horse- 

 power, simply by the heat radiating from the sun. 

 Archimedes, having completed his calculation of the 

 force of a lever, said that he could move the earth. I 

 affirm that the concentration of the heat radiated from 

 the- sun would produce a force capable of stopping the 

 earth in its course." 



Ericsson may be said to be the first of the world's 

 great mechanics to demonstrate the vast energy stored 

 in the sun's rays, and during the last years of his life 

 spent at least $100,000 in his experiments with solar 

 motors. He made them work, although ho never 

 brought them to such perfection as has been reached 

 within the past decade, and he never forced old Father 

 Sun to make partial amends for his sorry work in the 

 arid regions of the earth. 



It seems like helping along the law of compensa- 

 tion for man to harness the sun to a mechanism which 

 shall freshen the desert places and make the green 

 leaf take .the place of the parched. This is what is 

 being done in California and the Southwest. Satis- 



factory experiments have also been conducted at Den- 

 ver. At the latter point the most successful ones were 

 in winter, the water to be turned into steam being 

 drawn from an ice-covered pond. 



The makeup of the modern machine is essentially 

 the same in all the different patents. A great steel 

 frame is covered with a series of small mirrors, ar- 

 ranged in a concave form so as to focus the sun's rays 

 upon a cylinder which is placed in the center and 

 covered with some heat absorbent. An indicator tells 

 when the focus is exact that is, when the reflector is 

 turned directly toward the sun. An automatic clock 

 keeps the huge reflector true to its wiQfk, and, every- 

 thing about the machine, even to the oiler and safety- 

 valve, is self-acting. 



A boy operates the entire machine, which will be 

 in working order in about an hour from the time the 

 sun begins to get up steam, and will continue to pump 

 water from an hour after sunrise to half an hour be- 

 fore sunset. The cost of the apparatus will not exceed 

 $200 per horsepower. 



We look for the time when such, solar motors may 

 be seen by the thousands in all spots of the earth which 

 need irrigation in the United S'tates, in Mexico and 

 even in the tillable tracts of the great Sahara. The 

 sun will also be utilized in many other practical ways. 

 It will yet operate machinery of tremendous power; 

 it will not be used to stop the earth in its course, but, 

 like the irrigating motors, to promote the welfare of 

 that world which is, after all, a most favored child of 

 the sun. 



