It doesn’t seem like much of that light would actually hit each individual wire does it?
Contracting Wires Harness Sun’s Rays
THE long, exhausting search of scientists for a method of harnessing the rays of the sun has yielded the solar machine illustrated in the artist’s drawing above.
Operation of the machine is based upon the principle of contraction and expansion of tungsten wires. These wires are arranged lengthwise of a revolving drum, and the sun’s rays are directed against them by means of a parabolic mirror on each side.
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That’s a really nifty way to pump water!
CHINESE WINDMILL WATERS FARM
Adapting an Oriental idea for raising water for his own needs and to irrigate his fields, a California farmer has constructed the curious apparatus shown in the accompanying photographs. Power from a windmill, transmitted through gears, revolves a spiral-shaped tube of pipe open at both ends. The outside end dips into a water-filled ditch at each revolution. Water is thus picked up, and runs by gravity around the spiral to the hub as the wheel revolves. An opening in the hub dis-charges the water into a trough four feet above the level in the ditch, giving a sufficient lift for the irrigation purposes desired.
Make posted a few articles on solar furnaces yesterday. (link, link) Here’s a companion peice from 1954 with a few that get up to 8,000 degrees F. I particularly like the solar cigarette lighter on page two.
Sun Furnace Goes to Work
A man-made inferno tries out materials for jet and rocket engines—and shows one way to capture free solar power.
By Alden P. Armagnac
ATOP a 6,000-foot mountain near San Diego, Calif., they’re harnessing the sun to help build airplanes. A solar furnace newly installed there focuses the sun’s rays, with a 10-foot-diameter mirror of polished aluminum, upon a spot smaller than a dime. It surpasses by far the temperature of the hottest blowtorch or electric furnace.
Researchers of the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation apply the sun furnace’s terrific heat to materials under trial for jet and rocket engines and for guided missiles. Aim of their experiments is to develop substances more resistant to heat and thermal shock than any yet known—stuff that won’t soften and flow, say, when a long-range missile screams back to the earth from dizzy altitudes.
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Well, maybe not perfected. G.E. makes a wind turbine that generates 3.6MW; 36 times the output of this windmill. Of course it does have a diameter of 341 ft, making each of it’s blades almost as tall as this entire plant.
Mounting a 98-foot wheel atop a steel tower 82 feet high, Soviet Engineers have successfully operated a 100-kilowatt wind-electric plant in the Crimean sector for more than a year. The windwheel has self-regulating variable-pitch blades which are automatically operated by centrifugal force. The Entire machine rotates on a spherical pivot in the top of the tower. The device is kept into the wind by a small motor actuate by a weather vane.
