Smith Fulton, (center) of Peach Bottom township, was all excited when he showed up at the Old Trading Post today for lunch to socialize with the regulars. He had a piece of a hydraulic ram pump (the green piece sitting on the table) and an historic piece of rural York County energy independence.
Like Cross Mill that I wrote about earlier, A grist mill grinds the googleplex, the water-powered cyclic pump was an early innovation that put water power to work, keeping many rural farms with a constant source of water when it needed to be moved uphill without the need for a power source.
What is so cool about the device, invented about 1800, is that it requires no external source of power other than the kinetic energy of falling water.
By the use of valves and an air chamber, the kinetic energy of falling water is translated from an air hammer to moving water up a pipe.
Fulton described the early operation on his farm as continuous, which was necessary by design. It would feed the house and then the barn and then spill away adding that the all lead pipes were no problem, because the water kept moving.
Self-sufficiency in the 19th century.
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