File:The conquest of nature (1911) (14579659720).jpg

Identifier: conquestofnature00will (find matches)
Title: The conquest of nature
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Williams, Henry Smith, 1863- Williams, Edward Huntington, 1868-1944, joint author
Subjects: Industrial arts Machinery
Publisher: New York and London, The Goodhue company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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This loss, however, is com-pensated a thousandfold by the fact that the energy ofthe electric current may now be distributed in obedienceto mans will. step up and ^step down transformers The dynamos in operation at Niagara do not differ inprinciple from those in the street-car power-house, ex-cept in the fact that they are not supplied with commuta-tors. We have seen that these dynamos are of enor-mous size. Those already in operation generate fivethousand horse-power; others in process of constructionwall develop ten thousand. The generator which pro-duces this enormous current is about eleven feet indiameter, and it makes two hundred and fifty revolu-tions per minute. The armatures are so wound that theresult is an alternating current of electricity of twenty-two hundred volts. This current represents, it has beensaid, raw material which is to be variously transformedas it is supplied to different uses. To factories near athand, indeed, the current of twenty-two hundred volts (198)
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ELECTRICAL TRANSFORMERS. The upper figure shows Ferrantis experimental transformer built in 1888. Ithas a closed iron circuit, built up of thin strips filhng the interior of the coil andhaving their ends bent over and overlapping outside. The lower figure shows asimple transformer known as Sturgeons induction coil. The middle figure gives aview of the series of converters in the power house of the Manhattan ElevatedRailway. NIAGARA IN HARNESS is supplied unchanged; but for more distant consump-tion it is raised to ten thousand volts; and that por-tion which is sent away to the factories of Buffalo andother equally distant places is raised to twenty-twothousand volts. The transformation from a relatively low voltageto the high one is effected by means of what is called astep-up transformer. This is an apparatus which bringsinto play a principle of electric induction not very dif-ferent from that which was responsible for the genera-tion of the current of electricity in the dynamo. Thep

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