Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/211

 Popular Science Monthly

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���A view of Niagara Falls when, a few years ago, ice dammed the river above and shut off all but a small proportion of the water. One of Prof. Norton's plans would denude the falls each night still more than is shown here. When the water diverted by his dam to the running of his power plant, the "grand curtain would be rent and gashed as by invisible knives, a minute or two more, and rivulets here and there would pour over the brink . . . Another minute, and the rivulets have changed to drops . . . Niagara is silent!"

��Such would be the daily sequence of events. On holidays, on the Sabbath, the lovers of nature could view the falling sheet of water at all hours of day and night, in the twilight, at dawn, in the solemn quiet of midnight.

When used for motive power on rail- ways, street-car lines, etc., in many branches of electrochemical industry, continuity of current is imperatively nec- essary. Storage batteries may be em- ployed, but at an increased cost for each electrical unit.

It is, however, perfectly feasible to rescue a very large proportion of the power, ordinarily going to waste during the shorter period of the day, when the cataract resumes its normal activity, without affecting, to any noticeable de- gree, any elements of its scenic beauty.

In the deep recesses behind the fall- ing sheet of water at Niagara, the Cave of the Winds, etc.. a gigantic system of scaffolds could be erected. These would serve as the supports of a series of over-

��shot wheels or endless chain-bucket wheels. By careful disposition a consid- erable fraction of the available power — possibly thirty to forty per cent — could be utilized and directed to electrochem- ical or transportation centers without re- ^•ealing any portion of the mechanism to the eye of the beholder gazing at the cat- aract. There would be a noticeable in- crease in the volume of spray, which could tend only to heighten the scenic beauty of the waterfall.

The simplest means to accomplish the purpose would be a series of buckets, operating on endless belts, working on axes located immediately beneath the brink of the cataract and at the base of the falling sheet of water. Essentially an enormous overshot water wheel, with its modern effective devices on the per- iphery, distorted and elongated into the form of a belt, as used for the transmis- sion of power from one shaft to another. A complete series of such elongated wheels, closely adjusted side by side.

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