NIAGARA LIT UP BY ELECTRICITY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 61, 2 November 1907, Page 3

NIAGARA LIT UP BY ELECTRICITY.

1,115,000,000 CANDLE-POWER RAYS THROWN ON THE FALLS.

New York, September 5. The world's greatest spectacular advertisement was the illumination last evening of the Niagara Falls by 1,115,000,000 caudle-power, an experiment made at the instance of Mayor Dougias, of the American town Niagara Falls, the power being generated by the falls themselves, if the plant is approved, the town will buy the plant for £520,000, and operate it at a cost of £(j00 a year.

The batteries of illumination consist of lifty powerful searchlights, equipped with 30iu and COin projectors, operated by electrical engines of 300 h.p. The lifty rays, when thrown together in a vertical column, make a shaft of light visible at Syracuse, 150 miles away. The rest of tlic plant consists of color scintilators, which give the shafts of light all the colors imaginable. Thousands o( people sought points of vantage to sec the illumination. The white light was turned on first, then the red, with a rose-tinted cloud of mist above it. Green, cange blue, violet followed, and then all were blended. A score of rainbows spanned the river at the same time. If the illumination is continued, it is expected that the falls, which have hitherto been attractive only in the daytime, will be visited by hundreds of tourists at night. A dramatic incident was the suicide of an unknown man in the crowd on the upper arch of the steel bridge, who poised on the bridge a moment and then leaped into the chasm. His body struck the water 192 feet below and disappeared in the rapid.