The Power of Water

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 14, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 15.

The Power of Water

THOSE who look into the future with prophetic eyes predict that an age of water-power is dawning. They point wisely toward the great water-power developments already completed or in course of construction all over the world, from the rivers of Maine to the canyons of California, from Alaska to Argentine, and from the Kashmir Valley in India to the outlet of Victoria Nyanza in Africa. . . . Amid all this prognosticating and arguing arises a host of questions about this water-power.

Every stream of running water, from the trout brook sporting through the farm meadows to the largest rivers, is capable of producing more or less power. A hundred years ago, when steam-power was still in its infancy, water-power was quite extensively developed in this country, but the steam-engine, with cheap wood and coal fuel, quickly reached the practical stage and the old “over-shot” and “under-shot” water-wheels were abandoned. Up to a few years ago it was not practical to develop most water-power because this power had to be utilized on the spot and very naturally the very best waterfalls were located in the wilderness, scores of miles away from the seaports, the railroads, and the cities which needed it. But the invention of the electric transformer changed all this and made it possible to transmit this energy for hundreds of miles without serious loss.

The power of water is greater than any one without experience can imagine. For many of us have, when in swimming, struck the water a sharp blow with the flat of the hand, or, when learning to dive, struck the water flat instead of head first only to learn that the liquid offered considerable resistance.

A stream from a fireman’s hose will knock a man down. The jet from a nozzle in placer mining in the West eats away a large piece of land in a day and toys with great boulders as if they were pebbles.

There is a story of an Eastern blacksmith who went West and made a bet that he could knock a hole through the jet of one of these nozzles with a sledge-hammer. He lifted his arms, swung the sledge and came down on the ten-inch stream with a force that would have dented an anvil. But the jet, never penetrated, whisked the massive hammer out of the blacksmith’s hands and tossed it several hundred feet away into the debris of gold-bearing gravel beneath a crumbling cliff.

There is a power-plant near Durango, Colo., where a United States cavalryman one day thought he had an easy job in cutting a two-inch stream with his sword. He made a valiant attack. The result was that his sword was shivered in two and his wrist broken.

A little thinner jet of water descending 1,600 feet to a manufactory at Grenoble, Spain, and traveling at the moderate speed of 100 yards a second fractures the best blades of Toledo.

If it were possible to surround a battleship with an inch sheet of water of sufficient velocity it would ward off the largest bombshells better than the best steel plate.—Electric News Service.