ES

The automatic plant most desirable--How an automobile
lighting and starting system works--How the same
results can be achieved in house lighting, by means
of automatic devices--Plants without automatic
regulation--Care necessary--The use of heating devices
on storage battery current--Portable batteries--An
electricity "route"--Automobile power for
lighting a few lamps 250

ILLUSTRATIONS

Even the tiny trout brook becomes a thing of utility as
well as of joy _Frontispiece_

Farm labor and materials built this crib and stone dam 17

Measuring a small stream with a weir 23

Efficient modern adaptations of the archaic undershot
and overshot water wheels 59

A direct-current dynamo or motor, showing details of
construction 92

Details of voltmeter or ammeter 128

Instantaneous photograph of high-pressure water jet being
quenched by buckets of a tangential wheel 194

A tangential wheel, and a dynamo keyed to the same
shaft--the ideal method for generating electricity 194

A rough-and-ready farm electric plant, supplying two
farms with light, heat and power; and a Ward
Leonard-type circuit breaker for charging storage
batteries 244

INTRODUCTION

The sight of a dozen or so fat young horses and mares feeding and
frolicking on the wild range of the Southwest would probably inspire
the average farmer as an awful example of horsepower running to waste.
If, by some miracle, he came on such a sight in his own pastures, he
would probably consume much time practising the impossible art of
"creasing" the wild creatures with a rifle bullet--after the style of
Kit Carson and other free rovers of the old prairies when they were in
need of a new mount. He would probably spend uncounted hours behind
the barn learning to throw a lariat; and one fine day he would sally
forth to capture a horsepower or two--and, once captured, he would use
strength and strategy breaking the wild beast to harness. A single
horsepower--animal--will do the work of lifting 23,000 pounds one foot
in one minute, providing the animal is young, and sound, and is fed
12 quarts of oats and 10 or 15