Coleman Sellers Biography 1827–1907 Page 9
POWER GENERATION — ENERGY PROJECTS
In 1889 Dr. Sellers was requested by Mr. Edward D. Adams, the well-known financier, of New York, to report on the practicability of generating electricity by water-power, and the electric transmission of power from Niagara Falls to Buffalo. This was in the interest of what afterward developed into the Niagara Falls Power Company. The proposed utilisation of the power of Niagara Falls was based upon a scheme that had been suggested by Thomas Evershed, an engineer upon the Erie Canal, who had conceived the idea of placing turbine wheels in a district more than a mile above the falls, discharging into an outlet tunnel that should inconspicuously debouch at the river edge below the falls. Legislation had been obtained upon this scheme from the State of New York, though capitalists were not immediately ready to believe that the project would be commercially profitable. Dr. Sellers’ report, however, so strongly endorsed the practicability of the scheme that capitalists were readily found who were willing to undertake the enterprise.
He was made consulting engineer of the Cataract Construction Company, a corporation formed to execute the work, and, in June of 1890, assisted in the establishment in London of the International Niagara Commission, with power to award $22,000 in prizes for plans for generation of power by water and its transmission to a distance by the most economic method, regardless of the medium of transmission. This commission consisted of Sir William Thompson (now Lord Kelvin) as chairman, with Dr. Coleman Sellers, Lieutenant-Colonel Theodore Turrettini, of Geneva, Switzerland (originator and engineer of the great water-power installation on the Rhone), and Prof. E. Mascart, of the College of France, as members, and with Prof. William Cawthorne Unwin, Dean of the Central Institute of the Guilds of the City of London, as secretary.
At that time great advances had been made in the transmission of power by wire rope and by compressed air; but
very little had been done in the utilisation of electricity for power purposes. Inquiries and examination into the best methods of developing and transmitting power then known in England, France, Switzerland, and Italy were made personally by the officers and engineers of the company, and competitive plans were received from twenty carefully selected engineers, designers, manufacturers, and users of power in Great Britain, on the Continent of Europe and in America. All of these plans were submitted to the commission in London on or before January 1, 1891, and prizes were awarded for such of the plans as were considered favourably by the commission.
The engineers who were engaged to carry out the plans of the company were organised into a board of which Dr. Sellers was made chairman. The work was begun on the construction of the tunnel, and also on the entrance canal
by which the water was to be brought to the turbines. In 1893, when the tunnel was nearly completed and the time for the installation of the machinery was near at hand, the object of the Board of Engineers had been accomplished, and it was dissolved. It then became pre-eminently the task of the mechanical engineer to consider and apply the devices best adapted to so control and utilise the forces as to secure the best engineering and commercial results. Dr. Sellers was accordingly made chief engineer of the Cataract Construction Company, and while its separate organisation was called for, he served also as president of the Niagara Falls Power Company. It thus devolved upon him to suggest and devise the various details of the installation at a time when its principal features were essentially experimental, and it is needless to say how successful has been the outcome of the course pursued by him his active connection with this work. [continue]