THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA. 1 



By Thomas Commerford Martin. 



The broad idea of the utilization of Niagara is by no means new, for 

 even as early as 1725, while the thick woods of pine and oak were still 

 haunted by the stealthy redskin, a miniature sawmill was set up amid 

 the roaring waters. The first systematic effort to harness Niagara was 

 not made until nearly one hundred and fifty years later, when the 

 present hydraulic canal was dug and the mills were set up which dis- 

 figure the banks just below the stately falls. It was long obvious that 

 even an enormous extension of this surface canal system would not 

 answer for the proper utilization of the illimitable energy contained in 

 a vast stream of such lofty fall as that of Niagara. 



Niagara is the point at which are discharged, through two narrowing 

 precipitous channels only 3,800 feet wide and 160 feet high, the con- 

 tents of 6,000 cubic miles of water, with a reservoir area of 90,000 

 square miles, draining 300,000 square miles of territory. The ordinary 

 overspill of this Atlantic set on edge has been determined to be equal 

 to about 275,000 cubic feet per second, and the quautity passing is 

 estimated as high as 100,000,000 tons of water per hour. 



The drifting of a ship over the Horse Shoe Fall has proved it to have 

 a thickness at the center of the crescent of over 16 feet. Between Lake 

 Erie and Lake Ontario there is a total difference of level of 300 feet 

 (fig. 1, PI. VIII), and the amount of power represented by the water at 

 the falls has been estimated on different bases from 6,750,000 horsepower 

 up to not less than 16,800,000 horsepower, the latter being a rough cal- 

 culation of Sir William Siemens, who, in 1877, was the first to suggest 

 the use of electricity as the modern and feasible agent of converting 

 into useful power some of this majestic but squandered energy. 



It may be noted that the water passing out at Niagara is wonder- 

 fully pure and "soft," contrasting strongly, therefore, with the other 

 body of water, turbid and gritty, that flows from the north out through 

 the banks of the Mississippi. The annual recession of the American 



'Read at extra evening meeting of Royal Institution of Great Britain June 19, 

 1896, by Thomas Commerford Martin, esq., of New York, American Delegate to the 

 Kelvin Celebration. The Right Hon. Lord Kelvin, D. C. L., LL. D., F. R. S., vice- 

 president, in the chair. Printed in Proceedings of the Institution, Vol. XV, pp. 



269-279. 



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