W

HEN the gigantic Mauretania makes her stately way into the harbor, or steams majestically out of the North River on her way to sea, there is nothing in her appearance to suggest the by-product-yet such she is. Her huge bulk is of steel, in whose manufacture waste steam was used, making energy equal in value to the steel itself. Though she was constructed but a stone's throw from the biggest coal-fired power-house in all Europe, the power which lifted her plates in place was derived, not from that power-house, but from waste gas captured in coke ovens, sixty miles or more away.

The ancient adage about carrying coals to Newcastle is proof enough that for centuries this Tyneside city has been, as she is today, the greatest coal export city in the world. Yet, while she exports

more coal every year, less and less is used at home, within her own boundaries. And, paradoxically enough, this diminution in the use of coal is coincident with an industrial progress unequaled in all Great Britain. One of the chief products of the district is coke. The coke, as exported today, is as valuable as ever it was, but the industries of Newcastle take their toll of power before they pass on the residue to less fortunate communities. Newcastle can give a demonstration on conservation of energy that shows what really can be done when a nation has felt the pinch that comes of waning resources.

America is now in the throes of controversy over the conservation of nattural resources. First the forests were sheared off with prodigal wastefulness, wood grew too dear to burn and coal took its place. When it became evident that the coal mines cannot last forever,

the cry rose "Save the coal by the development of Our unused water power." Now comes the water-power question, and so the argument travels round and round, like a squirrel in a cage, with every new reform discussion and doesn't get anywhere. What is perfectly clear, however, is that when the power is exhausted we shall have to get it elsewhere or do without. This problem has confronted England for a long time, but she was saved preliminary discussion because she had no natural resources to waste. It is the same problem as ours, but worse. Having no forests to chop down and no water powers to use, England's attention is directed toward but one object-making coal go as far as it can. The aim is to get every ounce of energy out of every pound of coal. Electricity, as usual, is the agent used to accomplish this end, and one of the great power companies in northern England has gone so far as to generate less than fifteen per cent of its energy direct from coal. All the rest of its huge output comes from coal which has already performed its ordinary industrial service.

The advantage of getting energy from a pound of coal, instead of a pound of flesh and blood, is that the coal cannot be overworked. There is no eight hour day for coal. It can do a fair amount of work and blow off steam the rest of the time, or it can be made to do more work after it has performed that service.

One of this company's generating stations is at an iron works on the river

Tees, where a tremendous amount of live steam is used in blast furnaces. For years this steam was allowed to blow off as exhaust, even though it contained an incalculable amount of energy. In devising methods for conserving the resources of the district, the power company set about to utilize the waste steam from these blast furnaces by transforming it into electrical energy. So now, when the steam has done its work in the blast furnace, it is not turned loose to shower the passer-by, but is piped across the yard into a steam turbine, where it becomes electric power, to be used perhaps fifty or sixty miles away in some Tyneside shipyard.

This new utilization is of no inconvenience to the iron works. In fact, it is a help, for now the steam is condensed by the power company and returned to the iron works as water, where formerly it exhausted into the air and was not recoverable in any form. The iron works, therefore, not only makes a profit on the steam sold, but has its water bill reduced as well, and the power company, of course, makes a profit on its own use of the waste steam. Thus, this live steam used in making the plates and ribs for the Mauretania, has become as valuable as those plates and ribs themselves. And, it still passes on to do other work and achieve other results quite as profitable as, though perhaps less spectacular than, the construction of a mammoth steamship.

In other cases-at collieries, for example the waste gases in the manu

facture of coke are captured and burned under boilers, creating steam which is turned into electricity. The utilization of these gases affects in no way the value of the coke, but it extracts enough energy, which formerly went to waste, to produce hundreds of thousands of horsepower to be used in the industries of the northeast counties. There is not a single shipyard on the River Tyne today which is not operated by electric power generated from waste heat. Every bit of mechanical power used in the construction of the Mauretania was created by forces which, ten years ago, were permitted to escape without any effort at utilization; every rivet was hammered by a force as intangible and elusive under old conditions as the fanciful Afrites and Genii of the Arabian Nights.

Newcastle has become the most cosmopolitan industrial city in the world. Instead of being simply a coal town, it has chemical works, shipyards, blast furnaces, rolling mills, machine shops, a dozen minor indus

the type of the "man with the hoe." In short, the utilization of waste power prevents the waste of human blood and bones and muscle in the old-time brutal fashion. Further than this, it tends to

tries, and the natural corollary of tradesmen. The very object of the use of power is the displacing of the dollar-a-day man by the skilled mechanic. A town in which electricity is the motive power does not develop, nor use, the human being of

and jails.

the district's chief exports-coal and coke. The toll taken by Newcastle's industries does not lessen the value of the exports - it merely increases the usefulness of England's too few natural

resources.

F

OLLOWING the example of the conventional society bud the Herrick balanced rotary engine made its formal debut at a dinner given in its honor by its doting inventor and backer at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York last May. The engine was present not merely in a figurative sense but in its own material self in a ball room where, embowered in roses, it held a reception before the guests sat down to dinner. The sweet young thing did stunts for the edification of the company with its cover off, being turned slowly over by a dynamo so the folks could see just how it worked. The reports of the testing engineers, the log of its six months service run and its patents from every important country in the world were on exhibition, too. When everybody ran out

able things. For instance, Luther D. Lovekin, Chief Engineer of the New York Shipbuilding Company, a distinguished authority on marine engineering, gives it as his opinion that it will work a revolution in the art of driving high powered, high speed vessels of large size. By using Herrick engines in connection with turbines, and high pressure

boilers with superheaters it would be possible, in the opinion of Mr. Lovekin, to increase the speed of vessels like the Lusitania and the Mauretania about one knot per hour without any increase in coal consumption. It should be remembered that to add a knot to any speed above twenty-one knots is a difficult and costly thing to do, the coal consumption increasing very much faster than the speed. To add another knot at present, to the 25.5 at which these giants are rated, without burning any more coal, borders on the marvelous. To maintain the present speed of the giant Cunarders the Herrick engine would effect a saving of twenty to twenty-five per cent in fuel, or about a thousand tons on each trip.

of technical small talk the reporters were admitted and given lists of those present with the usual caution to spell the names correctly. The only departure from immemorial custom was the substitution of oratory for dancing after dinner.

The Herrick balanced rotary engine seems to have been fully deserving of all the flattering attentions it received at its coming out, for even in the present stage of its evolution it promises to do remark

Perhaps it should be explained that while a steam turbine rotates it is not permitted to use the name "rotary engine." The turbine develops power by utilizing the velocity of steam blowing

against vanes on the periphery of disks. It runs at high speed and is fearfully wasteful except at one gait. A true rotary engine should develop from the expansive properties of steam exactly as a reciprocating engine does, only its piston should travel ahead in a continuous circle instead of churning backward and forward, and should be able to adjust itself to any load whatever without wasting steam. Moreover, it should be reversible, which a turbine is not, vessels equipped with that type of engines having a separate turbine for backing. In short,

a

rotary engine should be the ideal steam engine.

made by Hero, of Alexandria, about one hundred years before the birth of Christ. It did no useful work but it suggested what seemed to be the ideal principle upon which to build a steam engine. Hundreds of inventors have tried since

So far as can be ascertained no other notable invention in history was ever made the guest of honor at a society function as a means of announcing it to a waiting world. The social part of the Herrick engine's debut was the real thing, too. Among the guests were John D. Rockefeller and Admiral Cone, of the United States navy, not to mention a number of gentlemen whose names are of some weight in the mechanical engineering world. doubt the Herrick balanced rotary engine deserved something out of the ordinary, for men have been tinkering at the principle upon which it is based for two thousand years, which is a long time. The first steam engine mentioned in history was

No

ures

sity with a diploma stowed in his suit case he was fully resolved to do something that would make folks sit up and take notice. He was not the first college graduate who cherished a more or less open design to set the world on fire, but he was one of the comparatively small