Power line

“ And now, electricity—this mysterious agent-has multiplied the muscular strength of man a billion times. The tasks of Hercules are now but chores to be accomplished by the closing of a switch. Mighty rivers roar through intake and turbine to drive the wheels of industry in a distant city and turn the night into day. Any attempt to chronicle all the applications of this wondrous power would be absurd. Such is electricity to-day. ”

“ When it comes to transmission of electricity across the power grid, so that when one region is experiencing an electricity shortfall and people may suffer blackouts, another region can pick up the slack -- another region of the nation can pick up the slack and send the energy across the grid. ”

“ When they are worked from a power station the great advantage is gained that the same plant which drives them can be used for many other purposes, such as working machine tools and supplying current for lighting. For dock-side jib cranes the use of electric power is making rapid strides. For overhead travellers in workshops, and for most of the cranes which fall into our second class, electricity as a motive power has already displaced nearly every other method. ”

“ Young Halsey, dull white, simply sat staring at him as he went on.
"We all know what the old ideas of fuel and power are—they're obsolete. Electricity is the power of the future, the power of to-day. Speed, speed, speed is what we want. Power, power, power is what every industry needs, as well as what every man craves. ”

“ The change in the distribution of the load would allow us to adopt a cheap, light form of load. The wide distribution of weight, entails many small trains in substitution for a single heavy train; these small trains could not be economically run if a separate driver were required for each. But, as I have already pointed out, electricity not only facilitates the distribution of power, but gives a ready means of controlling that power. ”

“ But the obtaining of power is only one problem of the mechanician. Of almost equal, if not quite equal, importance is that of applying power at the place where it is needed, and the careful reader will not have overlooked the fact that while we have been discussing the use of electricity as a source of power we have already been anticipating, and perhaps anticipating a good deal. For, when we now speak of machinery and locomotive engines being “driven” by electricity, we are really only employing a sort of convenient periphrasis. ”

“ No mechanical method of distributing power, so as to pull trains along at a distance from a stationary engine, has been successful on our railways; but now that electricity has given us new and unrivaled means for the distribution of power, the problem requires reconsideration. ”

“ The company, needing electric power for its own use, has developed a system deriving its power from a point about thirty miles from the city, where a small stream plunges down the sea coast from the mountain range that runs along it. ”

“ So that you have mechanical power, electricity, and heat; mechanical power and heat being the two extremes of the circuit.
“When you have electricity developed, the connection of heat and light is necessarily accompanied by resistance to the passage of the electricity. The action of lightning conductors, for example, is entirely dependent upon that fact. The chimneys that the conductors protect offer resistance to the passage of the discharge, and therefore would be destroyed by that discharge ”

“ The electrical transmission of power is exemplified in everything which is based on the generation of electricity. The ordinary electric light is power coming from a generator in the building or a public street-dynamo.
However, when we talk in general terms of electric transmission we mean the transmission of energy on a large scale by means of overhead or underground conductors to a considerable distance and the transformation of this energy into light and heat and chemical or mechanical power to carry on the processes of work and industry. ”

“ Now that power, generated at any point, however inaccessible for freight handling, may be transmitted in the form of electricity on a simple piece of wire to any convenient point within a hundred or even two hundred miles of the place of production, and by a simple process applied to the operations of machines small or large, simple or complex, the possibilities of the waterfall in supplying power for the manufacturer are greatly enlarged. ”

“ To the engineer and to those who desire to know the trend of electrical development, the most interesting exhibit at the Fair will doubtless be the apparatus designed to show the long-distance transmission of power. Almost at the beginning of the modern electrical era, dreams were indulged in of the command which electricity was to give us of the natural sources of power. ”

“ I believe that the time is coming, though we may not live to see it, when that mysterious power or force, used now only for telegraphy, will eventually supply the power for running railroad trains and steamships, for lighting, and, in a word, electricity will do all the work of the world. ”

“ But when the power is obtained from a single stationary source we do away with the dead weight of the power equipment on the car, and secure the very vital advantage that the capacity of the stationary source need not be so great as the sum of the maximum demands. ”

“ The cables which radiate from the central electric power-house in all directions can be very readily devoted to the furnishing of power to new mines as soon as it is found that the older ones have been proved unprofitable. ”

“ Before I dismiss this interesting topic, I would ask whether the transmission of the power called electric, to a particular spot, does not always afford evidence, that at that spot there exists, beneath the surface of the earth, either a vein of metallic ore, a spring, or some other competent conductor, which the power called electric is seeking to reach, when the antagonist non-conductors exhibit their destructive phenomena? ”

“ Since we are going into this work as pioneers, we shall have to be dependent upon our own efforts for the production of the electrical apparatus, so as to be able, with our home-made factory, to provide the power, the heat and the electricity. ”

“ Of the light and heat, she will use the lion's share; and for the power, she will discover heretofore undreamed-of uses. So she must be a full partner when it comes to deciding how much electricity they need. ”

“ But an easily portable substance, the decomposition of which would evolve energy, or—what is, from the practical point of view, much the same thing—an easily portable substance which could be decomposed electrically by wind or water power, and which would then recombine and supply force, either in intermittent thrusts at a piston, or as an electric current, would be infinitely more convenient for all locomotive purposes than the cumbersome bunkers and boilers required by steam. ”

“ Now, electricity is a very exact science. There is no mere theory about it; and a unit is a definite quantity of power, known in that science as a “kilowatt hour.” Thus, a kilowatt, or 1,000 watts, is the equivalent in measured work of 11⁄3 horse-power, equal to the lifting of 44,000 lbs. per minute, or the doing of so many units of work, either electric lighting, heating, machinery driving, or traction. ”

“ The electric system, in which power is generated at a central source and distributed to cars which take power in proportion to the work being done, possesses a higher degree of flexibility, convenience and economy than any other system. ”

“ A great deal is being spoken of substituting steam plant by electricity, and of utilising waterfalls, etc., for obtaining electric motor power. In order to distribute correctly the electrical energy obtained, it is of course necessary to estimate, weigh and measure where and how much of this energy is to be directed, so as to derive the greatest possible advantage therefrom. ”

“ The people of this far away orb have greatly surpassed us in controlling and utilizing the three distinct forces which are quite similar to electricity, and these are the wizard forces that furnish the power used to drive the motors and engines, not only of the floating cities, but also of the fixed abodes. ”

“ With the set operating continuously, power drainage is small, but begin changing your signal beam and the power has to break down the grid resistance several hundred times for every short signal sent. ”

“ Those already in operation generate five thousand horse-power; others in process of construction will develop ten thousand. The generator which produces this enormous current is about eleven feet in diameter, and it makes two hundred and fifty revolutions per minute. The armatures are so wound that the result is an alternating current of electricity of twenty-two hundred volts. ”

“ Indeed, a close examination will show that wherever power is expended in developing current in a circuit, cutting lines of force, the energy expended is first employed in stretching the lines, which thus receive the energy required to permit them, in shortening, to cut the conductor and set up currents in the electric circuit in accordance with the potential difference developed in that circuit and its resistance. ”

“ The production and distribution of light, heat and power simply mean the production and distribution of energy in the form we call electricity, and since transport is simply motion we see that the future of lighting, heating, transport and power is the future of electricity. ”

“ The energy of this falling water is prodigious. It is used to generate thousands of horse-power in great electrical installations. The power is used to drive electric trams in cities 150 to 250 miles away. ”

“ The almost universal adoption of the alternating current system of distribution of electrical energy for light and power, and the many inherent advantages of the alternating current motor, have created the wide field of application now covered by this type of apparatus. ”

“ One of the most convenient uses to which electricity is put is in producing motive power for driving all kinds of machines, from a sewing-machine to a railway train, and we will now try to explain how we can get this kind of work from electricity. ”

“ Use of Alternators.—The great increase in the application of electricity for supplying power and for lighting purposes in industry, commerce, and in the home, is due chiefly to the economy of distribution of alternating current. ”

“ In our cities and towns where the current has only to go a short distance from the power house, the conductors are generally placed in cables underground and the maximum electro-motive force scarcely ever exceeds 11,000 volts. ”

“ The most important problem connected with this subject is to imagine, if we can, how electrical power will be applied. It is quite evident that the device of long conductors, either overhead or below ground—the “live wires” of alarmed America—is too clumsy and too dangerous to be long tolerated. ”

“ After the generators have developed the electrical energy the current controlled by appropriate switching devices is transmitted to the power tenants in the immediate vicinity and to the more distant tenants in Buffalo, Lockport and elsewhere. ”

“ Of the feasibility of economically distributing the electric current there is a growing confidence among electricians, and the advantages of so transmitting power have been frequently urged of late, not only for moving light machinery, but for doing all the work now done in our factories by the steam-engine. ”

“ On the Rio Grande River in Colorado they are constructing several plants where water power will be utilized to generate electricity for use more than one hundred and fifty miles away. For transmitting electricity to such a distance they step up the voltage, or electro-motive force as it is called, to 100,000 volts. ”

“ Franklin's experiments in electricity were followed at once by the common lightning-rod, but a century passed before the electrical power was utilized, and made subservient, in some degree, to the control of men. ”

“ A machine at Niagara receives mechanical power, and generates electricity. Call this the generator. Let there be Wires to another electric machine in New York, which will receive electricity, and give out mechanical work. Now this machine, which may be called the motor, produces a back electromotive force, and the mechanical power given out is proportional to the back electromotive force multiplied into the current. ”

“ Power depends on good connections. In mechanics: the train with the locomotive; the machinery with the engine; the electrical mechanism with the power house. In the body: the arm with the socket; the brain with the heart. In the christian life the follower of Jesus with the Spirit of Jesus. We have been talking together about making connections, and I believe some of us have made the vital connection this hour, which means new inflow and outflow of power.
Now there will be time for only a brief word about breaking connections. ”

“ Such generators and motors, however, possessed inconveniences that prevented extensive commercial transmission of power, since, as we have seen, high pressure was necessary for efficiency in such transmission, and the collecting-brushes and commutators employed in all direct-current generators and motors to carry the current from the machine or to the motor, were a constant source of trouble and danger. ”

“ Whatever motive power is employed, whether water-power, [141] steam or gas, it is essential that it should be steady and unfailing; steady, because the regularity and uniformity of the light depends upon the evenness of the speed with which the power works, and unfailing, because a stoppage means the immediate extinguishment of the lights: electricity, unlike gas, is not stored after manufacture, but is used as fast as it emanates from the producing power. ”