Abstract
THE issue of the third and final report of the Water-Power Committee of the Conjoint Board of Scientific Societies is a timely reminder of the importance of a matter which has strangely failed to engage the attention of the community at large, notwithstanding its general perspicacity of judgment in regard to industrial enterprise. It was pointed out in these columns in September, 1918, that the national stores of solid fuel were far from inexhaustible, and that they were being depleted with reckless prodigality, while, simultaneously, another source of energy, viz. water power, ready to hand and only awaiting development, was being allowed to run to waste. Inevitably, sooner or later, the value of this natural supply of energy would be bound to demonstrate itself, but meanwhile no spendthrift could be more indifferent to the squandering of his patrimony than the average citizen to the loss of this form of his country's wealth. Although by no means so well endowed as some other countries, it is estimated that Great Britain has a potentially utilisable amount of water power of more than a million horse-power. Less than a tenth of it is actually developed. This means that some nine hundred thousand horse-power is being dissipated, minute by minute—the equivalent of the consumption of at least four to five million tons of coal per annum.
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Imperial Water Power. Nature 108, 457–458 (1921). https://doi.org/10.1038/108457a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/108457a0