HUGE pipe, six feet in diameter and one hundred and seventy feet long, is what may be said to form the backbone of a project of English engineers which promises so many things that they cannot be summed up in a sentence. To cut the price of fuel in half and so split the cost of power and of all power-produced articles of manufacture; to rid our cities, big and little, of smoke forever; to sweep coal dust and ashes from our streets and to relegate the coal wagon to the scrap heap are a few of the things they blithesomely tell us will be among the benefits the patient race will immediately realize by extension of the plan; and then, while

we are getting our breath and blinkingly trying to believe half what we hear, they add a list of dream-tales to their prophecy that once again wake our hopes of a near-at-hand age of real comfort in living.

Seriously, however, the plan opens up such a tremendous and wonderful vista before us and, if even partly successful, will work such enormous economies that it is a thing to marvel at and to base great hopes upon. The transmission of natural gas great distances through pipes for heating, lighting and power purposes has become so common in the West that little attention is attracted by it; but the transmission of manufactured gas long distances for supplying fuel for cities has sufficient novelty about it to make the subject of more than passing value. Recently at a meeting of one of the scien

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tific institutes in London, the project was discussed of transmitting fuel gas from the South Yorkshire coal fields to London, a distance of one hundred and seventy-three miles, through a six-foot pipe to supply the city with all the fuel it needed for its various purposes. This scheme included the complete displacement of coal in the city for all uses. Gas engines would utilize the gas fuel and drive all the machinery required, even the lighting being obtained from electricity derived from generators driven by gas engines.

It was estimated that to do this sufficient gas to displace 15,000,000 tons of

coal annually would be required, and at an initial pressure of four hundred and eighty pounds to the square inch this could be obtained through four large pipe lines or a single one six or more feet in diameter. diameter. Owing to the higher practical efficiency of the gas it would not take nearly so much coal as now consumed in the city of London, but as the consumption of gas would be immeasurably increased through cheaper cost and efficiency for power purposes the plant would have to be arranged for a maximum supply of 900,000,000 cubic feet per day. Such a plan a few years ago would have seemed more like a wild dream than

a possibility, but the engineering society which discussed the scheme were earnest in their belief that within another decade this would

be the solution to the coal problem. Instead of carrying coal long distances, it would be converted, at the mouth of the coal pit, into gas which would be piped in sufficient quantity to supply all needs. It was not long ago that the transmission of electricity from the coal field to the city was considered the ideal method of the future, but the loss of energy through electrical transmission a long distance would be much greater than with gas. In other words, gas may come to supplant long-distance electrical transmission where the energy is originally derived from coal and not from water power. Of course electricity is an essential part of the new power scheme. Gas engines innumerable would be employed in the gas-supplied city for driving dynamos and generators, but the long-distance transmission would be in the form of gas rather than of electricity.

The improved gas engine has made such a scheme practical and economical. With a cheap and abundant fuel always on hand which will cause no smoke, dust or ashes, the industrial activities of a large city would immeasurably increase. A great many manufacturers are compelled to give up light and heavy manufacturing in large seaport and river cities, owing to the ordinances against smoke, and also by the cost of fuel. The generation of electrical power in such cities is also too costly a process for the general use of electric motors in manufacturing. Heating and lighting by gas and electricity are rapidly excluding all other forms, but their extension would be rap

THREE EXAMPLES OF THE SMOKE NUISANCE IN LARGE CITIES.

idly increased if an abundance of gas could be obtained at relatively low cost.

The gas as fuel would be used in gas engines both for direct driving of machinery and for the generation of electricity for various uses. The scheme proposed for London is not to pipe the gas extensively in distributive pipes, but rather to supply numerous central stations with large quantities for operating electric machinery. The electricity would then be distributed to the houses for heating, lighting and for power purposes. The initial cost of the plant for distributing the electricity to private houses would be less than for piping for gas. At the central stations and in manufacturing establishments gas engines. would be the only fuel-consuming machines. These could be used directly or indirectly for operating the power plants.

The transmission of such an enormous quantity of gas a great distance is a problem which theoretically is simple and promising. If it could be successfully applied in London it could be duplicated

in hundreds of cities in this country. Most of our large cities are situated somewhere within a hundred and fifty miles of some coal fields, and if gas could be transmitted such distances at a much higher efficiency and far more economically than the transportation of coal many of the problems of today would be solved. The nuisance of burning soft coal in our cities would no longer come up to perplex its inhabitants. Soft coal could be utilized at the mouth of the coal pit for generating gas, and this could then be forced to the nearest cities without dirt

MURKY TWINS.

or smoke of any kind. Americans have solved the problem of transmitting natural gas and transporting crude and refined petroleum great distances through pipes, and it is natural that the solution of the vexed problem of heat and power in our cities should receive similar solution from their hands.

The idea of the English scientists is to conserve the supply of coal in their native land, which some predict will begin to fail long before the country is thoroughly prepared to adopt some other fuel. The most recent estimate places the supply

of coal in England at something like 193,000,000,000 tons, including Ireland, but at the present enormous consumption of the fuel the day when coal will become almost prohibitive in price will not be so far distant. Anything which will tend to economize in the use of coal is therefore popular with the inhabitants. With a saving of twenty per cent a year through the burning of the coal at the mouth of the pits and transmission of gas through pipes for fuel, a gain would be made which would put the fatal day of high fuel off many years.

It was estimated that the cost of a compressor plant to supply London with sufficient gas to displace the fifteen million tons of coal now annually used in the city would cost upward of $13,000,000, and the annual cost of operating it about a million and a half. It would be necessary to compress a maximum supply of 625,000 cubic feet of gas per minute to five hundred pounds per