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Allied to screws are turbine wheels, much the most efficient of water motors. The shaping of their vanes as volutes minimizes the loss of energy in shock as the water comes in, and lessens to the utmost the velocity of the stream as it leaves the wheel. Now that steam turbines are scoring a success both on land and sea the contouring of their vanes with extreme nicety is an important problem of the engineer. A perfected form means the highest economy.

Curves of turbines.

Niagara Power Co.

It is interesting to note how the screw propeller, the fan, and the turbine wheel have each led to a converse invention. Mr. Edwin Reynolds, of Milwaukee, has devised a pump in screw form of capital efficiency under low heads. The fan has long had its converse in the windmill, now more popular throughout America than ever before, mainly because shaped with new excellence. In the best models, built of steel, the sails are each a section of a volute carefully designed to discharge the wind evenly, just as in the parallel case of emission from a water mover, such as the Worthington pump. This capital pump is simply a turbine wheel reversed. Its impeller and diffusion vanes take up water from rest, lift it to a height which may be as much as 2,000 feet, and then deliver it at rest, with little loss from internal eddies or slippage.

Steel vanes of wind-mill.

Fairbanks, Morse & Co., Chicago.

The Pelton wheel, pre-eminent among water-motors of the impulse type, owes its economy chiefly to each bucket being divided in halves and curved with the utmost nicety.

Pelton water wheel.

Jet for Pelton wheel.