Super-Power

Manageable enough over short distances, electricity is a hard horse to drive a great way. The higher its voltage, the more perverse are its paces. Yet the higher its voltage, the more work it can do at long distances from its source. Big rivers will generate millions of volts, but the highest voltage, carried for the longest distance, is the 220,000 volts carried by the 550-mile Big Creek system in California.

Last week the Westinghouse Electric Co. announced that it had acquired, from Engineer Frank G. Baum of San Francisco, the rights to an invention by which "superpower" might be transmitted across the continent, if need be. At an added cost of 20%, the most high-powered line now known could be increased 75% in capacity and made part of a line of unlimited length.

The chief difficulty in transmitting high-voltage current arises from the fact that the natural leakage of the conducting line causes a loss of power at a certain distance from the source of the current, deadening the line if correctives are not applied. In addition, long distance high voltage lines are apt to behave erratically. To steady the operation of the line, automatic voltage regulators are added to it at regular intervals. Engineer Baum's invention consisted, broadly, in replacing all but a minimum of auxiliary regulating equipment, with synchronous condensers every 100 miles. In these condensers, the current is given opportunity to steady itself, and pick up whatever voltage* it has lost traveling from its source or from its last correcting station.

The Significance: possible use of Rocky Mountain waterpower current in the Mississippi Valley, of Niagara's power in Manhattan, of Muscle Shoals by the southern hinterland; power for farmers; de-centralization of industry.

*Last week was the death centenary of the man who first understood that electricity flows in currents measurable in pressure units. "Volts" and "voltage" were the work of Alessandro Volta (1745-1827), professor of experimental physics at the University of Pavia, Italy. His compatriot and contemporary, Luigi Galvani of Bologna, observing the spasms caused in dead frogs' muscles by contact with mixed metals and moisture had deduced that the muscles contained electricity. Volta examined the theory of "galvanism" and traced electricity, not to the muscles, but to the mixed metals and moisture. He piled pairs of silver and zinc discs together, with moist cloths between and a wire connecting top and bottom discs--the first battery. Napoleon called him to Paris, sent him home laden with honors.