THE CONQUEST OF NATURE 



word. And it must be understood that the turbine 

 water-wheel utilizes the greatest proportion of the power 

 of falling water of any contrivance as yet known to 

 mechanics. It was possible, then, to utilize the water 

 of Niagara with full effectiveness fifty years ago, so far 

 as the direct action of the water-wheel upon machinery 

 near at hand was concerned. The sole difficulty lay 

 in the fact that only a small amount of machinery can be 

 placed in any one location. The real problem was not 

 how to produce the power, but how to transmit it to a 

 distance. 



THE TRANSMISSION OF POWER 



For fifty years mechanical engineers have looked 

 enviously upon unshackled Niagara, and have striven 

 to solve the problem of transmitting its power. It were 

 easy enough to harness the great Fall, but futile to do 

 so, so long as the power generated must be used in the 

 immediate vicinity. So, many schemes for transmitting 

 power were tried one after another, and as often 

 laid aside. There was one objection to even the best of 

 them the cost. At one time it was thought that com- 

 pressed air might solve the problem. But repeated ex- 

 periments did not justify the hope. Then it was be- 

 lieved that the storage battery might be made available. 

 The storage battery, it might be explained, does not 

 really store electricity in the sense in which the Leyden 

 jar, for example, stores it. Rather is it to be likened to 

 an ordinary voltaic cell, the chemical ingredients of 

 which have been rendered active by the passage of the 



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