Page:Onward Sweep of the Machine Process (ca 1917).pdf/26

24 Diesel motor produces power at from a quarter to a half cent per horse-power-hour. In the United States the cost is rather less. This is far beyond the economy of any other form of engine, and four or five times cheaper than the ordinary steam engine. Its only concurrent is waterpower, and waterpower is not everywhere available, and often requires a heavy outlay that it may be utilized. Crude oil, on the other hand, may be shipped and stored much more easily than coal, and the supply of it is very large and widely distributed over the earth.

The escaping hot gas from the Diesel motor can be employed for heating, and the by-products which can be obtained from it will, it is estimated, under proper conditions, more than cover the cost of the original fuel, so that the Diesel motor promises to rival the waterfall in future as a producer of the world's power. Like the waterfall, it will, under the most favorable conditions, mean that the expense will be simply the fixed charges of a plant and the cost of maintenance.

It is already evident that the Diesel motor will largely displace steam and this will first make itself felt upon the ships, not merely because it realizes four or five times the power from the amount or volume of fuel, but it only occupies, together with the motor, about a quarter of the space required for a steam engine and its boilers and coal bunkers. This new motor has been successfully tried on railroad locomotives and experiments are under way with a view to introduce it for driving automobiles. Most of the leading engine works in Europe have taken up the construction of the Diesel motor in all sizes. A large number of middle-sized ships and various municipal power plants are already driven by it. In the United States a powerful company has just been organized for the purpose of constructing these motors, and the General Petroleum Company in California is going to erect a plant in San FrancisoFrancisco [sic] for the construction of motor