I was riding my bike through Harpers Ferry, West Virginia today with a friend and stopped at the site of an old textile plant.
Everyone is familiar with 19th century water wheels powering small grain mills, but what was interesting about this pre-1850 installation was that they used four efficient turbines (see picture below) to drive an entire factory through mechanical transfer.
Water was gradually constricted by narrowing water tunnels, condensing the volume of water creating more power. Think of your finger squeezing over an open garden hose.
It was said that the factory could make fabric cheaper than mills in Baltimore.
Free power harnessed by American innovation 150 years ago ran an entire factory.
No worries about a 30% increase in the cost of natural gas. No hostile foreign governments to feed with our dollars. No commodity speculators to profit by escalation of price brought on by an energy monopoly strangling the economy. No competing for oil with India and China.
Free domestic power by harnessing the flow of nature.
Tunnels that brought water to the mill.
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