THUNDERBOLTS

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6409, 1 November 1923, Page 2

THUNDERBOLTS

SECRET OF PERPETUAL POWER Laboratory lightning* requires a place by itself—off where it will not disturb other electrical experimenters. This is the conclusion reached by the General Electric Company, which has made plans to add such a place to the general engineering laboratory. The place is being* constructed on the top of a five-storey building* at the companys plant at Schenectady, New York.

In this room Dr. Charles R. Steinmetz, the originator of the so-called “lightning generator,” will carry on his experimental work. There investigations into transient electrical phenomena, more thorough than any previously undertaken, will be directed by Dr. Steinmetz. A new lightning 'generator, by means of which is reproduced in miniature an actual flash of lightning, will be utilised. The apparatus is the most powerful so far made use of, and comes much nearer to stimulating the magnitude of actual lightning than did the original generator used by Stpinmetz which gained him the name of “lightningmaker” during his experiments in 1922.

The first lightning generator produced a “flash of lightning” with an energy rate of a million horse power. The voltage back of it was* 125,000 and the current amounted to 10,000 amperes. It lasted for a hundredthousandth of a second.

With the new lightning- generator it is possible to cause a “lightningdischarge” of considerably more than a million horse power and so instantaneous in time that the discharge lasts only five-millionths of a second. Half a million volts are let loose at the moment of the discharge. The rates of increase in the voltage and current of this artificial lightningflash during the inconceivable fraction of time that it lasts' are declared to be so tremendous as to stagger comprehension. The mode of operation will be the building up or storing of electrical energy until a predetermined amount of pressure or voltage is reached, whereupon a discharge takes place. This whole process corresponds to the storing of vast quantities of ecectric energy by countless raindrops in a thunder cloud until a pressure is reached sufficient to cause a discharge. TEN MILLION HORSE POWER Prom this work, it is hoped, the present high efficiency of electrical systems that serve the public with light, heat and power will be Immensely increased.

1 The recent demonstration .at the Pittsfield works of the General Electric Company, where a voltage of 2,000,000 was made effective as nature’s own lightning, are but isolated instances proving the tremendous energy at the command of man’s will and direction., Thunderbolts and fear —inspiring flashes issued within laboratory walls at the pushing of a button. Those who were witnesses to that made to order thunderstorm and lightning are not likely to soon forget how the scene impressed them. This man-made flash of lightning releasing for an instant a force greater than the total electric power /used by the entire United States with its 2,000,000 volts concentrated for a fraction of a second the enormous force of horse power. Is this not startling enough to make us speculate as to 'what the twentieth century alchemists are in then’' sacred, ?

Associated 'with Giuseppe Faccioli in the experimentations that brought about the securing of the high voltage was Mi? F. W. Peek, junr., who is the titular director of the high voltage engineering laboratory at Pittsfield, as Mr Faccioli is designated the works engineer. Mr Peek says that 1,000,000 volts may never be necessary for power transmission or other purposes, “but if the. time comes we will be prepared. These tests, using voltages up to 2,000,000 have shown us the characteristics of such high voltages, and we know how to proceed if we are ever called ypon to use them.” Transmission voltages of 1,000,000 volts werd investigated in September, 1921,” he states, “and to-day we have achieved this powerful lightning voltage of 2,0*00,000. After more than 11 years 220,000 volts transmission has been realised in. practice in California.”

Commenting on various phenomena accompanying the recent demonstration, when pieces of wood were split by a stroke of lightning at the direction of the man at the controller Mr Faccioli says: “We do not know what the smell is when the lightning leaves it path through the block of wood but we will ’have to know some day. Wo do not .know what conversion takes place hut it opens a won-

derful field for research. What are the gases that come from the wood we do not know. Some day we will catch them and analyse them if we can. But from these tests we do know that we are handling lightningsuch as is witnessed in the disturbance of nature.”