LONGITUDINAL AND TRANSVERSE VIEWS OF POWER HOUSES, Showing wheelpits, generators, shafts, turbines, penstocks and discharge tunnels.

that of carborundum in 1891 by Mr. Edward G. Acheson is of great practical value. This new product is made by chemically combining in the intense heat of an electric furnace of the resistance type common sand and ground coke. After the charge has remained in the furnace for about thirty-six hours in a temperature of over 7,000° Fahrenheit, the resulting combination is found in a beautiful crystalline form. Carborundum ranks next to the diamond in hardness and is therefore used as an abrasive. In its so-called amorphous form it is used as a substance of great refractory power.

Metallic silicon, which is largely used in the steel industry to absorb the gases of the molten steel, is made at Niagara Falls by a deoxidation or reduction process. Ordinary sand and ground coke are intimately mixed and subjected to the heat of an electric furnace. The carbon combining with the oxygen of the sand is evolved as carbon monoxide gas; the residue is the element silicon in almost chemically pure condition.

Another of Mr. Acheson's useful discoveries is the production of graphite by artificial means. Graphite is carbon, but not the only form of carbon. Carbon exists in the amorphous form as in coal,

charcoal and lampblack; in the crystallized form as diamond, and in the graphitic form as graphite. Until the discovery of a process for making graphite out of amorphous carbon the only source of supply

INTERIOR POWER HOUSE No. 1, NIAGARA FALLS POWER COMPANY (American side).

INTERIOR OF POWER HOUSE No. 2, NIAGARA FALLS POWER COMPANY (American side).

GENERATOR AND GOVERNOR (oil pressure operation). Niagara Falls
Power Company (American side).

INTERIOR POWER HOUSE, ONTARIO POWER COMPANY, NIAGARA
FALLS, ONTARIO, showing ten and twelve thousand
horse power generators and double turbines,

lay in graphite mines such as those in the United States, England and Ceylon.

Artificial graphite is now made from any amorphous carbon which contains an admixture of some carbide forming substance and though other carbonaceous substances are used anthracite coal has been found to be the most satisfactory and economical carbonaceous material from which to make graphite.

Graphite is made by heating anthracite coal to a very high temperature, approximating 7,500° Fahrenheit. Into a long fire brick furnace is placed anthracite coal and through it a carbon rod passes. The heat generated by the resisted passage of the electric current through the charge is so great that practically all the impurities of the coal are volatilized, leaving its carbon content in the graphitic form.

Mr. Acheson has lately perfected a process whereby artificial graphite can be treated with gallotannic acid in such a way as to produce graphite so fine that it is well nigh molecular.

In the year 1892 it was accidentally discovered that if ordinary quicklime and coke were fused together, the resulting chemical combination would, by the addition of water, produce an illuminating gas of great brilliancy. The gas formed in this peculiar way is acetylene gas and the material from which it is generated is calcium carbide.

Calcium carbide is made at Niagara Falls by placing an intimate mixture of about three parts of powdered quicklime to two parts of powdered coke into an electric furnace of the so-called arc type. The current of electricity generates an intense heat which chemically combines the calcium of the quicklime with the carbon of the coke, the oxygen of the quicklime uniting with some of the carbon to form carbon monoxide gas which escapes.

It is interesting to know that the discovery of calcium carbide was almost simultaneously announced by two independent workers in electrochemistry, Moissan, the great French chemist, and Thomas L.

Willson, an American. Willson's discovery of calcium carbide, however, antedated Moissan's announcement by about six months.

At Niagara Falls are also to be found an immense paper mill which produces annually thousands of tons of newspaper made from

spruce logs reduced to the proper consistency by the mechanical and the chemical or sulphite process, a plant where lead is economically separated from its ore by electrolysis, a laboratory where vanilla and other natural extracts are successfully prepared by synthetic chemistry, and furnaces where bauxite is crystallized into an extremely hard substance for abrasive purposes.

From the foregoing survey of some of the industrial enterprises at

Niagara Falls it is evident that that region is a very important electric and electrochemical center and that it is destined to increase in importance with every new discovery in the electrochemical art.