Waterwheel

“ The cups transfer the velocity of the jet to the wheel, and the water drops from them with very little velocity left in it.
Impulse Type of Waterwheel
Showing jet of water striking cups. Wheel illustrated is
very powerful, but principle of small wheels is the same
In general, the turbine type of wheel is best adapted to low heads, or falls, and the use of comparatively large volumes of water, and the impulse wheel is best adapted to the use of a comparatively high head, or fall, and a comparatively small amount of water. ”

“ The breast-wheel is the next in power and is used where the fall of water is not so great. The undershot wheel is employed in a rapidly running brook or stream where there is no dam or body of headwater. This form of wheel is the least powerful and the most unreliable, for the height of the watercourse is liable to change according to seasons and storms. While at one time it may be flushed up to the hub, at another the water may hardly touch the blades of the wheel. ”

“ We shall, therefore, only remark, that such wheel, if intended for mills, is by the inventor stated to be preferable to all others turned by the tide; for its velocity is not only greater and more uniform, but a similar quantity of water also constantly acts on the wheel, which is so constructed, as to turn the same way, both with the ebb and flow, and in a more simple manner than any hitherto contrived. Thus, it moves horizontally, while the generality of tide-wheels revolve vertically ”

“ A wheel is generally forty feet in diameter, and eight feet from disk to disk. In place of paddles, there are three buckets or pouches of strong wire screening. The wheel, attached to a shaft, may be raised or lowered at the will of the operator; and the buckets are so constructed that whatever enters them is thrown to the centre of the wheel, where an opening above water-line delivers them into a large tank. Each bucket, when fish are running well, will turn into the tank seventy-five fish per minute, or two hundred and twenty five for one wheel every sixty seconds. ”

“ It depends for its power on a combination of the action of gravity and the impulse of the water striking the blades, or buckets. The water is fed into the wheel a little below the height of the axle and usually enters with considerable velocity, a part of which is transformed into useful work by the wheel. ”

“ I kept the axle down in the crotches or "journals" formed for it, by means of greased straps of rawhide, so that it could not jump upward, and yet would revolve easily without being bound or cramped. My next task was to connect my water-wheel with a series of pullies on the shore and near to the blast-furnace, so as to force a column of air into and through the ore that I intended to smelt, by means of the different channels that I had left for that purpose when building it, all of which ended or entered into one opening in the side nearest the water-wheel. ”

“ In an undershot wheel the water acts only by its momentum, or moving power. The circumference of the wheel, instead of being supplied with buckets, as in the overshot, and breast or balance wheels, is furnished with floats, or float boards, as they are called, and, being exposed to the action of a running stream, generally, if not always, increased in rapidity by making an artificial fall, is thus driven round, and in flour-mills its force is communicated by cog-wheels to the stones employed in reducing corn to meal. ”

“ The paddle-wheel really acts as a continuous oar. Such a wheel is shown in Fig. 33 . As the wheel goes around the paddle dips into the water and pushes the boat forward. If the direction of the boat is to be reversed, the rotation of the paddle-wheels is reversed.
Before passing onto the screw, it may be well to explain just how a paddle-wheel causes a boat to move. When a man gets into a rowboat, he generally pushes himself off by placing his oar against the dock or shore and pushing on it. That is just what the paddle does in the water. ”

“ The wheel, some eight feet in diameter, was attached to the end of a long, heavy shaft, projecting two or three feet over the current, and supported at a single point by an iron bolt passing through a stout post set firmly among the rocks at the edge of the canal into which the river had been diverted. By means of this shaft, we could raise or depress the wheel at pleasure. The earth we proposed first to wash was a gentle slope, rising from the river towards our bank, and consisting of a fine sand almost free from stones, and paying from three to ten, or even twenty cents to the bucket. ”

“ The pumping in most cases is done by men or buffaloes, and the clumsy-looking but effective Egyptian water-wheel, a rough wooden contrivance that as it revolves, raises the water from below and pours it from holes in the side into a wooden trough, from whence it flows over the field. ”

“ At an rate we suppose that water is provided rising and falling with the tide, without much wave-motion: A cylindrical float, usually a hollow metallic box or a block of greenheart wood, hangs and floats in the well, and is of such density as just to sink without support. The float hangs under very light tension by a platinum wire, or by a metallic ribbon, or by a chain. The suspension wire is wrapped round a wheel, and imparts to it rotation proportional to the rise and fall of tide. By a simple gearing this wheel drives another, by which the range is reduced to any convenient extent. ”

“ In the breast wheel, the water strikes the paddles half way up the wheel on the rear side and drives the wheel in the same direction as that of the undershot wheel.
When we speak of water power we are apt to think of the water as actually furnishing the energy. As a matter of fact, it is not water but gravity that drives the wheel, the water being merely the medium [77] that gravity acts upon. By having the water drop from a great height, its velocity is greatly increased and the power it imparts to the wheel is much higher. ”

“ When the water wheel is an iron one, it usually has light iron suspension arms incapable of resisting the bending action due to the transmission of the turning effort to the axle. In that case spur segments are bolted to one of the shrouds, and the pinion to which the power is transmitted is placed so that the teeth in gear are, as nearly as may be, on the line of action of the resultant of the weight of the water in the loaded arc of the wheel. ”

“ IT is impossible for the most careless spectator to look at a steam-vessel making her way along a lake, a boy’s boat skimming across a pond, or even a duck paddling on a stream, without noticing that the moving body is accompanied in all cases by a trail of waves or ripples, which diverge from it and extend behind. In the case of a steamer there is an additional irregular wave-motion of the water caused by the paddle-wheels or screw, which churn it up, and leave a line of rough water in the steamer’s wake. ”

“ Fig. 24 represents a very complete floating motor, in which the floats are wedge shaped at the stem, for the purpose of increasing the current between them, the wheel being an ordinary current wheel, as shown in Fig. 23, with a curved shield or gate in front, which can be moved around the periphery of the wheel for the purpose of regulating its speed or stopping its motion by cutting off the stream from the buckets.
The float, rising and falling with the stream, is held in position by a braced frame swinging on anchorages within the mill on shore, and parallel with a swiveled shaft. ”

“ By the side of the {19} works is a water-wheel, the earliest and the latest harnessing of water-power, a striking illustration of the return of industry to its oldest helpmate. It will be a curious instance of history repeating itself if manufactures again plant themselves by streams as in the days before water-wheels were superseded by steam. ”

“ Further, a b, in both figures, is a circular slit of the whole diameter, through which the water rushes at once on all the floats of the wheel; whose axis goes up into the building through a kind of barrel, that prevents the water from escaping in any other part than the aforesaid circular aperture. The wheel itself is represented at e f, fig. 2; and fig. 4 is an elevation of it, with it’s shaft, and a few of the floats, to shew the manner of their receiving the stroke of the water. ”

“ Boys and girls four or five years old assist in the working of the boat, while girls of twelve or fourteen are experts in handling the oar and in using the long bamboo boat hook that serves to carry the small craft out of the tangle of river activity.
A type of river steamer which will amaze the American is an old stern-wheeler run by man power. It is provided with a treadmill just forward of the big stern wheel. Two or three tiers of naked, perspiring coolies are working this treadmill, all moving with the accuracy and precision of machinery. ”

“ The arms of the water wheels I would make of wood, to which I attach floats or paddles of cast iron or thick boiler plate sheet iron, though they may be made of wood. These floats I make move up and down on the arms by means of screws and holes, so as to make them deeper or shallower in the water, in taking a hold on the water, agreeably to the depth of the water the boat may draw, or the lading there may be on board, or agreeably to other circumstances. The supporters of the outer 6 ends of the water wheel shaft to be made of iron with braces, though they may be made of wood, if required. ”

“ Quick, for your lives, hang on, all!' A mountainous wall of black water suddenly leaps up and crashes through the windward rigging. The watch goes down to a man, some hanging on to the rope as if suspended in the middle of a waterfall, for the deck is nearly perpendicular, while others wash off altogether and fetch up with a dazing, underwater thud against the lee side. Inch by inch the men haul in, waist-deep most of the time and often completely under. ”

“ No fences or high barriers break the even level, and those strange contrivances, the primitive Persian water-wheels, may be seen every few rods. This Persian wheel, with its row of hanging boxes, is put in motion by a man who climbs it in treadmill fashion, the boxes scooping up the water from the lower level and discharging their burden into a trough at the top, whence the stream flows from field to field by almost imperceptible changes of level. ”

“ There is a fall of water of about ten feet, which, instead of being applied to an overshot or breast-wheel, is allowed to rush out of a longitudinal aperture at the bottom, against the narrow floats of a wheel only twenty inches in diameter, which thus revolves with great velocity, and communicates motion by means of a crank and connecting-rod directly to the saw, which of course makes a double stroke to each revolution of the wheel. ”

“ Round their faces floatboards are fixed, which, on being struck by the current of the river, make the wheel turn as they move, and thus, by raising the water in the boxes and bringing it to the top, they accomplish the necessary work through being turned by the mere impulse of the river, without any treading on the part of workmen. ”

“ These are used where the height from which the water comes is not great enough to flow on the upper part of the wheel. The lower part of undershot wheels dips in the flowing water which strikes against their float-boards and carries them along. Such wheels are used in swift-flowing streams which have a scarcely perceptible fall, as, for instance, on the Rhine. In the immediate neighborhood of such a wheel, the water need not necessarily have a great fall if it only strikes with considerable velocity. ”

“ I passed 220 of these spider-web wheels between Ta Sala and Zimmé. Similar water-wheels are found in the Chinese provinces of 76Kweichau and Ssuchuan, as well as in Upper Burmah and the Shan States. They are used for pounding and grinding rice as well as for irrigation, and lifting water for household purposes. It is a singular spectacle to watch several of these wheels, placed within a few feet of each other, in ceaseless motion, their shafts humming loudly, and the water splashing and sparkling all over them. ”

“ It consists simply of a grooved wheel, 3 feet in diameter, which is fixed on an axis that revolves horizontally over the well: an endless rope, sufficiently long to reach into the water, is passed over the wheel. Farther, a winch is attached to one end of the axis, by means of which it may be turned; and, on its opposite extremity, there is another wheel, weighted with lead, that acts as a fly, and serves to increase the velocity. ”

“ It is well known that a body can be carried over the water much faster than through it. With this in mind, builders at first constructed light framework decks on large water-tight wheels or drums, having paddles on their circumferences to provide a hold on the water. ”

“ A.--In all paddle vessels, whatever be their subordinate characteristics, a great shaft of wrought iron, s, turned round by the engine, has to be carried from side to side of the vessel, on which shaft are fixed the paddle wheels. The paddle wheels may either be formed with fixed float boards for engaging the water, like the boards of a common undershot water wheel, or they may be formed with feathering float boards as they are termed, which is float boards movable on a centre, and so governed by appropriate mechanism that they enter and leave the water in a nearly vertical position. ”

“ A wheel was so fixed in a small trough that when it was turned the water was raised from a little pool, and flowed over the land it was desirable to irrigate. The turning process was performed by a man who stood above the wheel, and stepped from one float to another. ”

“ The plan, however, where economy of water is of any importance, is very objectionable; because the wheel must move at by far too great a velocity to act to advantage as a water-wheel.
The wash or dash-wheel, now driven by power in all good bleach and print-works, is represented in fig. 129., upon the left side in a back view, and upon the right side in a front view (the sketch being halved) . Fig. 130. is a ground plan.
a a is the washing-wheel; b b its shaft-ends; c c their brass bearings or plummer-blocks, supported upon the iron pillars d d. ”