Part 20

The wet meter is composed of an outer box about three-fifths filled with water. Within this is a revolving four-chambered drum, each chamber being capable of containing a definite quantity of gas, which is admitted through a pipe in the center of the meter, and, owing to the arrangement of the partitions of the chambers, causes the drum to maintain a constant revolution. This sets in motion a train of wheels carrying the hands over the dials which mark the quantity of gas consumed.

The dry meter consists of two or three chambers, each divided by a flexible partition or diaphragm, by the motion of which the capacity on one side is diminished while that on the other is increased. By means of slide valves, like those of a steam engine, worked by the movement of the diaphragms, the gas to be measured passes alternately in and out of each space. The contractions and expansions set in motion the clockwork which marks the rate of consumption. The diaphragms in all the chambers are so connected that they move in concert.

What is a Game Preserve?

Game preserves have only been introduced comparatively recently in the United States, for the hunting grounds have been freely open to the hunter, but they have been common in Britain and other countries of Europe for centuries.

Their purpose here is the preservation and increase of wild animals instead of their destruction.

Deer parks have long been kept in this country, but the first systematic attempt to foster wild game was made about 1860 by Judge J. D. Caton in a park of Ottawa, Ill.

Chief among those that followed on a large scale is the great game park of Austin Corbin, near Newport, N. H., an enclosure of 36,000 acres, in which a wire fence eight feet high encloses an oblong tract twelve by five miles, through which passes a mountain range 3,000 feet high. American game of all kinds are kept here, from buffalo, elk, and moose to the smaller and more timid varieties, and there has been a rapid increase.

Dr. J. Seward Webb has a 9,000-acre preserve in the Adirondacks, and various other large parks have been established elsewhere, in which our fast-disappearing game animals are augmenting in numbers and game birds of foreign origin have been introduced.

The Story of the Building of a Silo[17]

What is a Silo?

A silo is a place or receptacle for storing green feed to preserve it for future feeding on the farm. In this way green fodder, such as corn and similar crops, are preserved in a green state to be fed in the winter or next summer during an extremely dry season. The silo has the same relation to cattle feed as the glass fruit jar that mother uses has to the food she preserves in it.

The First Silo.

Silos have been used since very early times in one form or the other, and probably the first we have ever heard of are traceable back in ancient history to the Syrians, who had pits in the ground for the storage of animal feed. These pits have been used in various parts of the Old World ever since and have also been used in the United States. The pit does not give the best results.

In order to overcome these defects we soon began to see silos erected above ground. Cement, brick, tile and wood were used as building material, with various results. The industry developed rapidly and soon demonstrated what was necessary to keep the silage pure, sweet, clean and succulent. Science and research have helped, until now we can produce silos that will keep this green fodder in a sweet and succulent state until the owner is ready to use it.

What is Put in the Silo?

The principal silage crop is corn, but in different parts of the country there are other crops which can be used to great advantage as substitutes for corn. Among these are kaffir corn, sorghum, alfalfa, clover, millet, cowpeas, soy-beans, sugar beets, oats and even weeds and thistles. All of these make good silage when properly harvested and stored. Any green fodder can be mixed with the above to make quantity and secure good results. The main point to be remembered is that the crops to be put away in the silo must contain a certain percentage of sugar and starch in every combination.

Elements of Success or Failure.

There are several things to be remembered by farmers when putting fodder into the silo, if they want to have perfect silage to take out. One of the main things is to see that the silage is cut to proper lengths, which would be about half-inch or one-inch pieces. It should also be well packed, especially next to the wall of the silo. It should have a certain amount of moisture, which it naturally would have if put in at maturity. Good silage is a result of proper cutting, proper packing and a correct amount of moisture, because when the silage is stored it begins to ferment. Heat is generated in the process of fermentation. If the heat is lost through the silo wall, the fermentation is not correct. If the silage is not packed properly and tightly, especially next to the wall, it does not settle in a compact mass and air is admitted that spoils the silage; or if the silo wall is porous this is apt to occur. All these things must be guarded against or a great loss to the owner is probable.

The Story of the Advance of Electricity[18]

It is often remarked that the history of electrical development is the history of modern industrial development. This is true, except that the terms should be reversed. Electric lighting was not invented to equip skyscrapers and the huge apartment buildings of today. In point of fact, the invention of these structures was possible only because electric light already existed. Electric motive power was not devised to supply the great manufacturing establishments of the present. On the contrary, such institutions were erected precisely because such a thing as the electric motor was available. The history of modern industry is thus seen emphatically to be the history of electricity.

The First Commercial Central Station.

The first central station for the commercial distribution of electricity was set going on the 4th of September, 1882, by Thomas Edison himself, at 257 Pearl Street, New York City. Newspapers of the following day had much to say. Wonder was expressed over the “blazing horseshoe that glowed within a pear-shaped globe.” Another told of “the dim flicker of gas supplanted by a steady glare, bright and mellow.” A third observed, “As soon as it is dark enough to need artificial light, you turn the thumb-screw and the light is there; no nauseous smell, no flicker, no glare.”

Among the five or six buildings supplied with the new lighting were the _Herald_ offices and the Drexel Building, at the time one of New York City’s show places. The illumination of the latter was held to be a truly momentous achievement owing to its great size. The equipment, in other words, reached the grand total of 106 lamps. In comparison, it is interesting to mention the lighting equipment of the new Municipal Building, in New York City, numbering something over 15,000 lamps.

The Old Pearl Street Plant.

This primitive central station in Pearl Street was a converted warehouse of brick construction, four stories high, and it was separated in two parts by a fire wall. One of these parts was used for the storing of underground supplies, while the other was occupied by the generating machinery, for the support of which a special foundation of steel and concrete was provided. The necessary steam boilers were accommodated in the basement, while the second floor was occupied by six generators of 125 horse-power each, nicknamed “Jumbos.”

Simple as sounds this original Edison equipment, it nevertheless represented years of research and experimenting on the part of Edison and those associated with him.

Edison and the Electric Light.

In 1878 Thomas A. Edison, at his experimental laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey, where he had already invented the carbon telephone transmitter and many other things, undertook the task of devising a general system for the generation, distribution and utilization of electricity for lighting and power purposes.

The first marked accomplishment in operative detail was a lamp with a platinum wire burner of high resistance, protected by a high vacuum in an all-glass globe, and with the leading-in wires sealed into the glass by fusion. Such a lamp necessarily had a small illuminating power compared with that of the arc light, which was the only electric light then in commercial use.

The next step in the development of Mr. Edison’s electric-lighting system was taken on October 21, 1879, when he discovered that if a carbonized cotton thread were substituted as a burner for the platinum wire of his earlier lamp, the slender and apparently frail carbon was mechanically strong, and also durable under the action of the electric current. The announcement of the invention of the carbon filament lamp was first made to the public in December, 1879.

With the experience gained by an experimental system at Menlo Park, Mr. Edison began, in the spring of 1881, at the Edison Machine Works, Goerck Street, New York City, the construction of the first successful direct-connected steam dynamo. The development of an adequate underground conduit proved also most serious. The district selected for lighting was the area--nearly a square mile in extent--included between Wall, Nassau, Spruce, and Ferry Streets, Peck Slip and the East River in New York City. In those days such electrical transmission as existed--this of course related largely to telegraphy--was accomplished by means of a veritable forest of poles and wires augmented by the distribution equipments of fire alarm, telephone, burglar alarm and stock ticker companies. So used had people become to this sort of thing that even the most competent electrical authorities of the time doubted extremely whether Edison’s scheme of an underground system could be made either a scientific or a commercial success, owing to the danger of great loss through leakage. However, the Edison conduits once in use, both the public and even the telephone, telegraph and ticker companies acknowledged their feasibility. Such, in fact, was the success of the new method that the city compelled at length the removal of all telegraph poles.

In the Trenches.

The systematic laying out of street mains in the first company district was begun in the summer of 1881. It must not be thought, of course, that these old-time conduits resembled strikingly those of the present day. The method then used was to dig a trench in which were laid the pipes measuring twenty feet in length. Through these the conductors were drawn, two half-round copper wires kept in place first by heavy cardboard and afterward by rope. The conductors having been drawn in, a preparation of asphaltum and linseed oil was forced into the piping to serve as insulation. The spending of three and four arduous nights a week in these trenches by Mr. Edison and his associates suggests the rigor of the later European warfare. This work, together with that incident to the operation of the new station, often proved too much even for Edison’s phenomenal endurance. At such times he slept on a cot close beside the running engines, while the rest of the crew crawled in on the lower row of field-magnet coils of the dynamos, a place warm enough, though a trifle bumpy. One of the inventor’s early assistants tells of going to sleep standing up, leaning against a door frame--this, after forty-eight hours of uninterrupted work.

September 4th saw a full 400 lamps turned on from the Pearl Street station. From that day on the station supplied current continuously until 1895, with but two brief interruptions. One of these happened in 1883 and lasted three hours. The other resulted from the serious fire of January 2, 1890, and lasted less than half a day. The record in the second case would appear astounding, as no less a handicap occurred than the burning down of the station itself. The situation was saved, however, by the presence of an auxiliary plant that had already been opened on Liberty Street.

Edison as a Central Station Pioneer.

The layman, while appreciating the tremendous advance in generating machinery since the early eighties, is surprised to learn that the great Edison system of today is conducted upon principles that Edison developed and put into practice at that time. Edison’s, in truth, was the master mind, the forming spirit of all the advances made in the seventies and eighties. Exceedingly much, on the other hand, is due the energy of his fellow workers, many of whom figure conspicuously in the country’s electrical affairs at present.

In this manner Edison and his assistants became established in New York City. Current at first was supplied free to customers for approximately five months, which speaks quite as much for Edison’s Scotch “canniness” as for his inventive genius. Well before the period was over the new illuminant had justified itself, until today it shows itself an element indispensable in every phase of the country’s activity.

Early Growth.

Within two years from the opening of the station the demand for service had so increased that over one hundred applications were filed in excess of what could be accepted, because the plant was taxed already to its utmost capacity. Allusion has already been made to the auxiliary plant at Liberty Street, a station of 2,000 lights’ capacity which was instituted in 1886. By 1887, not only a second but a third district had been mapped out, the whole extending from Eighteenth to Forty-fifth Street. All the underground system in the two new districts was laid according to Edison’s new three-wire patent; and it was presently announced that customers would be supplied with power as well as with light.

Six months after the disastrous fire of 1890, in which the Pearl Street station was burned, the site was chosen for the Edison Duane Street building on which operations were so hastened that machines were installed and current turned on the first of May the following year.

The Waterside Stations.

For some time the need of a central generating plant had been apparent to all familiar with the company’s facilities and prospects. Already during the summer of 1898 an engineering commission had visited all the chief electrical stations of Europe and consulted the best-known experts of the industry, and in 1902 the first waterside station in New York was opened upon a site bordering the East River between Thirty-eighth and Thirty-ninth Streets. The new operating room contained sixteen vertical engines with a capacity each of over 5,000 horse-power. From these current was generated by 3,500 kilowatt generators and sent out to the various distributing centers.

As a very natural consequence of such development, the company by 1902 had 420 miles of underground system supplying installation amounting to 1,928,090 fifty-watt equivalents.

Electricity a Living Factor.

To talk about electrical development in terms of power consumed tells but one side of the story. More impressive even than figures are the immense number of uses to which electricity is put. Electric lighting, introduced in 1882, has become practically the standard for illumination, not only here, but for the entire civilized world.

In the Printing Trade.

Electric power was introduced, timidly, by way of a few fans in 1884 and following this, in 1888, motor drive for printing presses was undertaken. At the present moment in New York City there is hardly a printing establishment worthy the name that is not electrically operated throughout. Among the largest customers of the central station in New York City are the great daily newspapers, among them the _Times_, the _World_, the _Sun_, the _Evening Post_, and the _American_.

Construction.

Not only are passengers conveyed up and down by electric elevators in skyscrapers, but the buildings themselves are erected by means of electricity. Recent examples of such construction are the Woolworth and Equitable buildings in New York City; in this last instance a thousand horse-power was used in digging the foundations alone.

Not only are New York City’s subways operated by electricity; they were also built by electricity, a statement which applies to the new subways as well as the parts of the first system. In digging for the new Broadway subway, an electric company supplied 25,000 horse-power. The mammoth new aqueduct system by which water is carried from the Catskills to the Battery is another example of electricity as a source of power for large construction work. Still more picturesque is the use of electricity in building the under-river tubes. Indeed, it is doubtful whether this particular form of operation could have been carried on without the aid of electricity.

Loft Manufacturing.

Aside from these special instances of electricity in construction, one must think of electricity as responsible for nearly all the manufacturing, large and small, that goes on in the ever-increasing number of loft-buildings throughout all large cities. For example, New York City serves as the center of the garment-making industry for the entire country, there being fully a quarter of a million garment-trade workers in the Greater City. Along Fifth and Fourth Avenues are found the large establishments, electrically equipped throughout for cutting, stitching and pressing, while even in the smallest shops on the East Side foot-power machines have become almost a thing of the past.

Electric Heating.

The commercial use of electric heating is one of the more recent electrical developments. For the most part, this also applies to the garment trade and its closely allied clothing industries. In the modernly equipped factories one finds electric flat irons, velvet steamers and coffee urns. In the printing trade, electrically heated linotype melting pots are being introduced successfully, while glue-pots and sealing-wax melters can be seen in binderies and banking institutions. Absence of fire risk accounts for the introduction of electric heating units of different kinds into the motion-picture film manufacturing industry, a rapidly growing province. The same element of safety where inflammable substances are employed has produced the electric japan oven and similar apparatus.

Electricity and Safety.

The importance of electricity in factory work cannot be over-estimated. A shop fully equipped with electric machinery is the best possible kind of shop for employee as well as for the owner. Motor-driven machines are the safest possible kind, while absence of overhead shafting and dangerous belts mean health as well as security. In the electric shop, motor-driven blowers carry fumes and dust away from the worker and bring fresh air in. Electrically driven machinery is now regarded as the standard machinery. In the various vocational schools in New York City at present both boys and girls are taught to operate electrically driven machines, it being assumed that those will be what the pupils will be called upon to operate when they leave the school for the shop.

Electricity in Medicine.

Another domain of electric enterprise of the greatest value for the country at large is the increasing use of electricity in medicine. The most conspicuous element in this is the wide-spread acceptance of the X-ray as a necessary tool of the medical profession. Newspapers and magazines were full of the remarkable X-ray achievements of surgeons in charge of the various European war hospitals. Those, of course, were spectacular instances, but it should not be forgotten that every day, in our great hospitals, the X-ray is proving itself almost indispensable in the examination of the sick and injured. Besides utilizing X-ray in the diagnosis of disease, the rays themselves are employed in treatment of cancer and skin diseases. The oculist, the dentist, indeed medical specialists of all kinds, are coming to recognize the immense aid that electricity can give in its various forms and applications.

Electric Vehicles.

The electric truck has already demonstrated itself as a safer and less expensive rival of the gasoline delivery truck in many kinds of service. In the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx alone, in New York City, there were more than 2,000 such trucks in operation in 1916. Counting both pleasure and business vehicles, the borough of Manhattan boasted about 2,500 storage-battery driven wagons in active use. It is rather interesting to note that Chicago operates many more electric pleasure cars than New York, while New York does far more of its business by means of the electric vehicle. Recently, there was established in New York an electric co-operative garage, the joint enterprise of the electric passenger car manufacturers and an electric company. It was believed that by providing proper and adequate facilities for garaging electric pleasure vehicles the use of passenger-electrics in New York City would be greatly increased.

Electricity and the Home.

In emphasizing the important part which electricity plays in the business of a great metropolis, the home should not be forgotten. It is now possible, by means of electric appliances, practically to eliminate all drudgery from housework. The use of many of these domestic machines is familiar to all: vacuum cleaners, washing machines, fans, and the more usual electric cooking devices. Within the next decade, one looks to see a remarkable advance in this direction. One anticipates the more extensive use of electric refrigeration and other electric labor-saving devices, to the great improvement of city homes, making them pleasanter and more healthy as toilsome operations are done away with. And it must not be forgotten that the city home, like the country home, is the backbone of the well-being of the community. Electricity can have no greater mission than improving, strengthening and upbuilding good homes.

Decreased Cost of Electricity.