BUILDING BY ELECTRIC POWER

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 83, 24 August 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

BUILDING BY ELECTRIC POWER

A GREAT AMERICAN SKY-SCRAPER The tallest sky-scraper not only defies the lightning, but actually uses the electric ''fluid" to lift itself skyward. All the work not done by hand on the great Wol worth Building in New York is accomplished by electric power. The structure, when finished, will be .55 storeys high, 750 ft, eclipsing both the famous Singer and Metropolitan towers, and ranking next to the Eiffel tower as the loftiest thing ever reared by the hand of man. A writer in the Edison Monthly tells us that, in the construction of this sky-scraper, electricity is lifting no less than 130,000 tons of steel, brick and stone, some of it to the full height of 750 ft above the side-walk. Six, eight and ten-horse trucks are required to haul the giant girders from the docks to the building; there they are fastened to a slender cable and hoisted to their posi- i tion at the top of the structure. In the jompleted skeleton will be 21,000 tons of steel, while to cover it will be required 50.000 tons of bricks, 7500 tons of which ire glazed-finish terra-cotta for the exterior. ,Says the writer, in part: "To hoist the steel and set it in place ire six derricks driven by eighty-horse-jower motors. Four of these followed 'lie course of construction to the twentyiixtli floor, the limit of the building proler, after which two proceeded with the :ower as far as the fortieth floor, from ivhich one of the derricks kept pace with lie work. The hoisting-engines and mo;ors are seldom moved. They remain several floors below the working level, ;he cables, of course, running through ;he structure from the drums to the >lock itnd tackle on the lifting apparatus tself. A telephone system, supplementid by pull-bell signals, is employed by lie operators in directing the work, for he motorman of the derrick acts entirely m signals, just as the engineer of an icean liner drives his ship entirely by he bells from the bridges. Only in the ■rection of a modern sky-scraper the iridge, is seldom more than a plank exending over the edge of the floor, while lie look-out, instead of being in the row's-nest at the masthead, rides lirough space on the see-sawing girder. ?he work of the hoist is by no means ompleted with the safe delivery of the teel at the top floor; it must all be itted together, and so skilled have the corkers become, and so expert are they vith their signals, that the beams are ;uided into place with little friction and oss of energy.

"Although steel-hoisting is thrilling, and to a certain degree picturesque, as it is watched daily by thousands from the City Hall Park and the Post Office, it is far from being the heaviest part of the work. Seventeen million bricks, weighing 45,000 tons, and 7500 tons of terracotta are also used, but they are carried to the bricklayers in prosaic wheelbarrows, and on everyday hod-hoists. Six of the hoists are operated by forty-horse-power motors. "Cement and concrete, are mixed in the j basement, the machines, four in number, being operated by fifteen-horse-power motors. A plumbing system is necessary, and temporary pipes lead to hydrants, two fifteen-horse-power motors keeping the water in circulation. Another motor of fifty-horse-power pumps rain-water j and leakage out of the basement. "There are two compressor plants on the work; one for the steam rivetters and drills and the other for shooting cement. Seventy-five horse-power are required for the rivetters, and all day long their gatling-gun fusilade is heard. The electrical installation amounts to about twelve-hundred horse-power in motors, two hundred' are lights, and about two thousand incandescent lamps. A force of six electricians is kept constantly busy looking after the wiring,"