FORE:"Well, that I can't say for the present, sir," Prout replied. "I have only looked at one. Seeing that you are so interested, I came here at once. But one thing I have discovered--if I was a creditor of a certain Countess who shall be nameless, I should go and sit on the doorstep until I had got the money."A gravity wheel must have a diameter equal to the fall of water, or, to use the technical name, the height of the head. The speed at the periphery of the wheel cannot well exceed sixteen feet per second without losing a part of the effect by the wheel anticipating or overrunning the water. This, from the large diameter of the wheels, produces a very slow axial speed, and a train of multiplying gearing becomes necessary in order to reach the speed required in most operations where power is applied. This train of gearing, besides being liable to wear [38]and accident, and costing usually a large amount as an investment, consumes a considerable part of the power by frictional resistance, especially when such gearing consists of tooth wheels. Gravity wheels, from their large size and their necessarily exposed situation, are subject to be frozen up in cold climates; and as the parts are liable to be first wet and then dry, or warm and cold by exposure to the air and the water alternately, the tendency to corrosion if constructed of iron, or to decay if of wood, is much greater than in submerged wheels. Gravity wheels, to realise the highest measure of effect from the water, require a diameter so great that they must drag in the water at the bottom or delivering side, and are for this reason especially affected by back-water, to which all wheels are more or less liable from the reflux of tides or by freshets. These disadvantages are among the most notable pertaining to gravity wheels, and have, with other reasonssuch as the inconvenience of construction, greater cost, and so ondriven such wheels out of use by the force of circumstances, rather than by actual tests or theoretical deductions.
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