All of the functions of the body are operated by something very much
akin to electricity--mental energy--so that aside from the fermentation
which gluttony makes possible, the mere drag of handling of dead
material in the body, that the body cannot use, for two or three days,
is a wasteful draught on the available mental capacity.
Using an electric power-plant as analogous to the Mind Power-Plant of
the brain, and a trolley railroad as analogous to the machinery of the
body--analogies which are very close by consistent similarity--the
loading of the stomach with unprepared food, as in gluttony, is like
loading flat cars with pig iron and running them around the line of
the road in place of passenger cars, thereby using up valuable energy
and wearing out the equipment without any profit resulting from the
expenditure.
To those who are familiar with the modern electric power-plant the
analogy between it and the human individual equipment, or Mind
Power-Plant, seems very remarkable.
To those, however, who have not visited an electric power-plant a
description is necessary.
DESCRIPTION OF A MODERN ELECTRIC POWER-PLANT
Fuel, of course, is the source of the power. Furnaces which are capable
of producing heat with the least consumption of fuel, tubes within the
boilers that permit the freest possible contact of the heat produced
and the water to be turned into steam, steam pipes that are flexible
and yet strong, machinery that moves with the least friction in order
to concentrate and utilise the power of the steam, and dynamos out
of which electricity is evolved, together with auxiliary pumps and
hoists and blowers and whatnot other devices to help create, control
and economise the energy, are the essential parts of an electric
power-plant. To insure economy and accuracy these are made as nearly
automatic as possible.
At one end of the furnace house there is sunk in the cement floor a
large iron scoop or tray into which cartloads of lump coal are dumped.
This scoop-shaped receptacle is also the platform of a weighing machine
so that each load is weighed. In the bottom of the scoop there is
a trap-door, which, being opened, permits the coal to drop through
between the teeth of a crusher where the large lumps are reduced,
usually to the size of a small nut.
From the crusher the coal falls into the buckets of an endless
chain-hoist and is conveyed aloft to great hopper-shaped bins which
occupy the entire space under the roof over the furnaces. Leading
back from each bin to the constantly moving grate bars of the furnace
underneath is a pipe which delivers the crushed coal to the grate bars
and distributes it evenly over their surface as fast as it can be
received into the furnace, regulated, of course, by the consumption
that is going on inside the furnace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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