Industrial Niagara 



of the power work will be the lighting of the city of Buffalo. 1894 

 This is at present done by the ordinary direct-current arc machines 

 operated by engines of some three thousand horse power. In 

 changing over to the Niagara Falls power the whole electrical 

 system will be untouched, but the engines will be replaced by 

 motors operated by current from the falls station. 



The voltage at which the first installation of generators is to 

 operate is somewhat over two thousand. Considering the per- 

 fection to which European practice has been carried in the con- 

 struction of alternating-current machines for much higher elec- 

 trical pressures than the above, it seems strange that this voltage 

 should have been decided on in a situation where one would 

 expect the very highest degree of perfection to Le attained. It is 

 stated, however, that it was largely on account of the compara- 

 tively backward condition of that branch of electrical engineering 

 construction in America that the voltage had to be placed so low. 



In a case like the present one, where the power station will be 

 under the supervision of skilled engineers, and not merely of men 

 whose chief qualifications are those of sobriety and an ability to 

 stay awake at night, there appears no sufficient reason why the 

 generators should not be operated at five times the voltage named. 

 The fact of the armatures in these machines being fixed gives, 

 moreover, additional security against danger consequent on such 

 high voltage on account of the very much more perfect insula- 

 tion possible. 



The advantage, of course, of using a very high electrical 

 pressure lies in the principle stated above of the loss in sending 

 a given amount of energy over a given wire being inversely pro- 

 portional to the square of the voltage. 



Intimately associated with this question is the problem of how 

 to convey current at this tremendous potential of twenty thousand 

 volts to distances. An idea of what it means may be had from 

 the facts that two thousand is relied on to be sufficient to instantly 

 kill a human being, and that the energy of a current given up in 



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