I have been thinking a great
deal about the matter, and I feel quite sure that even if you did
not get water or anything else that might prove of value to you,
it would be a great advantage to have a pipe sunk into the earth
to the depth of, say, one thousand feet."
"What possible advantage could that be?" I asked.
"I will tell you," he said. "You would then have one of
the grandest opportunities ever offered to man of constructing a
gravity-engine. This would be an engine which would be of no
expense at all to run. It would need no fuel. Gravity would be
the power. It would work a pump splendidly. You could start it
when you liked and stop it when you liked."
"Pump!" said I. "What is the good of a pump without water?"
"Oh, of course you would have to have water," he answered.
"But, no matter how you get it, you will have to pump it up to
your tank so as to make it circulate over your house. Now, my
gravity-pump would do this beautifully. You see, the pump would
be arranged with cog-wheels and all that sort of thing, and the
power would be supplied by a weight, which would be a cylinder of
lead or iron, fastened to a rope and run down inside your pipe.
Just think of it! It would run down a thousand feet, and where
is there anything worked by weight that has such a fall as that?"
I laughed. "That is all very well," said I. "But how about
the power required to wind that weight up again when it got to
the bottom? I should have to have an engine to do that.
Pages:
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211