EDITORIAL. 
staff is enabled to profit by contact with men of affairs and receive the 
inspiration which comes from the capitalization of effort. The plan 
appears to be mecting with great success; already 190 agreements for 
esearch have been made, and a Division of Industrial Co-operation 
and Research has been set up to handle them. 
" POWER FROM THE TIDES. 
The British Cabinet, it is announced on high authority, has had 
before it preliminary plans prepared by the experts who are inquiring 
into the possibilities of utilizing water-power in the United Kingdom 
for generating electrical energy for the construction on the Severn, 
close to the new high-level bridge which the Great Western Railway 
proposes building, of a huge dam, in the centre of which would be a 
free space for the escape of the imprisoned tidal water, thus providing 
the power. The Cabinet has given instructions for further preliminary 
stages of the project to be undertaken. It is interesting to note in 
this connexion that a power-station is about to be erected on the Mersey 
to supply the Liverpool and Birkenhead area, and that a project is on 
foot to utilize the water-power of the Dee, from Llangollen.downwards, 
in the electrical development of North Wales. Discussing the Severn 
proposal, a leading South Wales engineer ventured the opinion that the 
harnessing of tidal-power could only be solved by interlinking the big 
waterways and making use of the difference in the times of the tides. 
“From a private enterprise point of yiew,” he continued, “it would 
be cheaper to produce electricity by means of coal, for the capital outlay 
would be tremendous. Such a scheme, when it comes, must be a great 
undertaking, and should be Yun on a national basis—not the estuaries 
of the Severn and Wye only, but every waterway that has any storage 
capacity. There is a big difference of tide between the Severn, Mersey, 
and Forth, for example, and if you could harness and link together 
these estuaries it would be a good thing, for it would stabilize the ebb 
and flow. This would require very careful calculations, and would have 
to be undertaken after close study of the tides and the various channels. 
The other means is by storage in accumulators at a terrific cost. ‘There 
must be a storage capacity of practically the full output of the station, 
for at the turn of the tide the plant would be absolutely useless.” 
“ Before any tidal-power scheme is a financial success,” said Professor 
Frederick Bacon, A.M.I.E.E., Professor of Engineering at the South 
Wales and Monmouthshire University College, Cardiff, “you must 
have some economical and cheap means of storing electricity. At 
present, the recognised method of storing energy during the time of 
high tide; when you can get no power, 18 by pumping water into a high 
reservoir, and the capital necessary is absolutely prohibitive unless the 
natural configuration of the district has special facilities to offer. If 
a scheme for the use of tidal-power were put forward, Chepstow would 
be a good place to start, for a 40-ft. tide is not to be found in many 
places; but the capital cost would be very great, and I doubt whether 
it could be economically worked.”—The Blectrical Review. < 
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