OCR Text |
Show PEAR FOIl NIAGARA IMMEN8E VOLUME OF WATER DIVERTED FROM FALLS. Commercial Enterprises are Making Heavy Drains on This Famous Show-Place Show-Place Its Tremendous Electrical Power the Inducement. Niagara Falls, August 7: Tho volumo of water being diverted from tbo historic Niagara Falls Is reaching Buch proportions that tho peoplo of tho State are trying to pass laws which will prevent the possibility possibil-ity of a practical wiping out of this sublime natural spectacle. Water sufficient to develop nearly flvo hundred thousand horse-power continuously, twenty-four hours per day, for Industrial purposes, Is now being taken from the river above the Falls, and further developments requiring re-quiring more water aro contemplated. Probably tho largest user of the electricity produced by the waters of tho mighty river Is tho concern which by the five or six thousand degree heat of tho electric furnace brings lime nnd coko Into unwilling union, thereby producing whnt Is known as Calcium Carbide. Dry calcium cnrbldo Is lifeless as so much broken rock, but in contnet with water It springs Into activity and begets abundantly tho gas Acetylene. Tho light resulting from tho Ignition of acctyleno Is the nearest approach to sunlight known. These facts, though of comparatively compara-tively recent discovery, were soon seized by men with an eye to the commercial com-mercial possibilities and to-day calcium cal-cium carbide Is being shipped everywhere every-where and used for dispelling darkness dark-ness In buildings of all descriptions, from tho ordinary barn of tho farmer to the country villa of the wealthy, as well as for lighting tho streets of a larno number of towns. Acetyleno can be easily nnd cheaply Installed, and the manufacture and sale of acetyleno generators has becomo a business of recognized stnndlng, has assumed lsrge proportions and Is etendlly growing. |