Giant Wind Turbines
Currents in Upper Air Form Unfailing Source of Power for “Windmills” of Future
WIND, at the surface of the earth, is proverbially uncertain; but recent researches show that, a thousand feet or more above the ground, wind is comparatively steady and unfailing. This has given new life to the hope of finding a substantial source of natural power, even more universally available than water power; and the designs illustrated here have been prepared by a German engineer, Honnef, the erector of several huge radio towers. As shown here, the structure carrying the power plant would be higher than any other building man has yet been able to erect.
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Putting Nature’s Power to Work
Methods of Harnessing Natural Energy Described by DICK COLE
Upward of 40,000 inventions a year are granted patents by Uncle Sam, but not one of these offers a practical solution of the problem which scientists agree is the most pressing of them all— that is, how to harness natural sources of energy for power. Mr. Cole does not profess to have solved the problem, but the methods he describes here point out the trend of probable development.
WHAT is the most needed invention? Not television—not new kinds of airplanes—not speedier automobiles. Men of science are agreed that what the world needs most is a motor which converts the sun’s rays and other forms of natural energy into usable power. Orville Wright, Lee De Forest, Elihu Thomson, and other leading scientists are among those who proclaim the need for a new motor.
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New Schemes for Harnessing the Winds
INVENTORS PROPOSE STRANGE PLANS TO BRING THE OLD DUTCH MILL UP TO DATE
IS THE windmill coming back? With strange, unconventional types, inventors are seeking to adapt it to a modern age. Their experiments may bring new success in man’s effort for 800 years or more to harness the wind for power.
Centuries ago, people milled their flour, sawed wood, and pumped water with the picturesque European windmills whose enormous “sails” swept from earth to sky. This country contributed the smaller and more practical narrow-bladed type that pumps water on farms today. A new miniature design shaped like an airplane propeller charges storage batteries for radios and for lighting rural homes.
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Super-Windmills
Plans are being made to harness mankind’s oldest and cheapest source of power for industry by means of huge aerogenerators.
By Frank Tinsley
THE next few years may see a decided change in the landscape of our country. In certain strategic places which promise a constant, strong wind such as mountain passes, will grow strange structures resembling the Martian machines of H. G. Wells. But these will be instruments of construction, rather than destruction —tall, steel towers supporting fans to convert wind energy into electrical power.
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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.
Sun’s Rays Harnessed to Run Steam Engine
One of man’s great ambitions— to harness the sun to a steam engine—has been achieved. Dr. C. G. Abbot, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, has developed a solar heater and demonstrated that it would operate a one-half horsepower steam engine with sufficient efficiency for commercial purposes. The sun’s rays are his fuel. Caught in three parabolic cylindrical mirrors of sheet aluminum, the rays are reflected in high concentration upon tubes of Pyrex glass.
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