March 22, 1894] 



NATURE 



48; 



side, and extends in a north-easterly direction for 1500 

 feet, with a width of 350 feet, and a depth of 12 feet. At 

 the end of this canal, on the north-west side, are sluice- 

 gates controlling the flow of the water into side passages 

 or head-races, B, which conduct the water to the pen- 

 stocks, c, which guide it from the top of the wheel-pit to 

 the turbines at the bottom. Fig. 2 shows the main canal 

 in course of construction. In the background is seen 

 the Upper Niagara River, flowing from left to right ; 

 and in the foreground appear two entrances to 

 one of the head-races. The wheel-pit is nearly 200 

 feet deep, stone walled, and of sufficient length at 

 present to accommodate three turbines, each of 5000 

 horse-power, and their penstocks. This will be extended 

 as the demand for power increases. The turbines, which 

 have been made by the I. P. Morris Company, of Phila- 

 delphia, from designs by Messrs. Faesch and Piccard, 

 Geneva, Switzerland, are double and of the outward flow 



shortly to be available, in the continuity of the supply. 

 It is approximately 19 feet v.ide, and 21 feet high. It is 

 in section in the form of a horse-shoe, and has a mean 

 grade of about 7 per 1000, and is perfectly straight in a 

 vertical plane. Its length is 7000 feet, or over \\ miles. 

 Four courses of hard brick set in cement line the tunnel 

 throughout, the invert being paved with that of the 

 hardest nature— vitrified brick— to resist the wearing 

 action of the stream with its sand and other materials 

 borne along by it. At the mouth of the tunnel the invert 

 and sides are lined with steel plates forming a wave 

 curve, the last few hundred feet sloping more than else- 

 where, bringing the lower part of the mouth a few feet 

 under the mean water-level. In this way the water of the 

 river forms a cushion against which the discharge fi om 

 the tunnel impinges. In Fig. 3 is seen, under the left- 

 hand end of the suspension bridge, the incomplete 

 mouth of the tunnel. In the distance are the American 



Fig. 2. 



type, being placed horizontally, and driving the dynamos 

 for distributing the power, also placed horizontally, in the 

 power-house over the wheel-pit, by means of a long 

 vertical steel shaft, hollow at all parts for the sake of light- 

 ness except at the beatings. The turbines anddynamoswill 

 revolve at 250 revs, per minute. From the bottom of 

 the wheel-pit a channel leads into the great tunnel, or 

 tail-race, through which the water is discharged into the 

 lower river, a short distance below the upper suspension 

 bridge, after it has passed through the turbines. This 

 tunnel, now completed, is a great work, but only com- 

 mensurate with the scale on which the whole scheme has 

 been undertaken. It has a capacity sufficient for discharg- 

 ing the water from turbines aggregating about 100,000 h. p., 

 whichis the figure towards which the Cataract Construction 

 Company is working at present, and has been constructed 

 with a consideration for durability such as will arrest the 

 confidence of those intending to make use of the power, 



NO. 1273, VOL. 49] 



Falls, the Horse-shoe Falls being hidden from view 

 The small fraction of the Falls to be diverted for the 

 100,000 horse-power, represented by the inaxi7Hum 

 discharge from the tunnel, is forcibly shown by 

 the picture. The regulation of the speed of the 

 turbines will be effected by controlling the flow of water 

 leaving them, by closing the exits from them more or less 

 by means of balanced gates, controlled by governors on 

 the floor of the power-house above. 



Passing now from the hydraulic part of the works to 

 the electrical or distributing part, we are presented with 

 one of the most interesting and important developments 

 in electrical engineering practice of the present day. 



In the year 1S90 the Cataract Construction Company 

 invited selected engineers and engineering firms to con- 

 sider the problem of distributing the power, and appointed 

 a commission, called the International Niagara Commis- 

 sion, to examine and consider all the projects sent in. It 



