720 



Popular Science Monthly 



Making Money Out of Waste Land 

 With a Stream of Water 

 AS Henry Ford was laughed at when 

 Jr\. he claimed he would make a success- 

 ful automobile, so Harlan K. Whitney, a 

 civil engineer, caused much merriment 



The new residence addition of Battle Creek, Mich., which was formerly 

 a waste of marshes and ugly hills 



principles to waste real estate is bound to 

 change Mr. Whitney from an engineer of 

 moderate means to a land owner of 

 wealth. There will be at least one 

 hundred lots in a most desirable location, 

 whose total value should run close to 

 one h und red 

 thousand dollars. 

 The cost was only 

 nominal. 



The reclaiming 

 of many acres of 

 useless land has 

 been effected in 

 many American 

 cities, notably 

 Washington and 

 New York, and 

 in many ways ; 

 but the use of 

 hydraulic power 

 for that purpose 

 is an innovation. 



when about two years ago he bought 

 twenty acres of the most useless land on 

 the outskirts of Battle Creek, Mich. 



The property was about evenly divided 

 between rolling hills and squashy marshes. 

 To-day the hills have been dumped 

 into the marshes and leveled off, and 

 soon Mr. Whitney will open his new 

 addition of six blocks, which are less 

 than three quarters of a mile from the 

 business district, and only a block from 

 a street-car line. 



It is doubtful whether the power of hy- 

 draulics has ever before been used in the 

 State of Michigan for this purpose. One 

 hundred and twenty-five thousand yards 

 of earth have been washed away, and 

 about twenty acres graded. Some hills 

 were twenty-five feet high. 



The apparatus used was simple — so 

 simple in fact, that it caused about as 

 much ridicule as the suggestion that the 

 land could be reclaimed. Two two- 

 inch streams from an eight-inch well 

 were pumped with a two-stage centrifu- 

 gal pump. The water was carried some- 

 times as far as six hundred feet, sheet- 

 iron sluices conveying away the used 

 liquid with the sand and gravel driven 

 before it. For a long time the water was 

 turned back into the well, allowed to 

 settle, then pumped over again. 



His application of hydraulic mining 



How the work was done. The hills were 



washed away with water which carried the 



mud formed down into the marshes 



Purifying Iron in a Vacuum 



AN entirely new method of producing 

 L pure iron is reported to have been 

 discovered by Trygve Yensen, an as- 

 sistant in the engineering experiment 

 station at the University of Illinois. 

 This discovery was made during an 

 investigation of the magnetic properties 

 of iron and iron alloys. His method con- 

 sists in melting electrically refined iron 

 in a vacuum, which reduces the impuri- 

 ties far below any point which had been 

 reached by any previous investigator. 

 The magnetic properties of this vacuum- 

 fused iron have proved to be remarkable. 



