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| Canal Society of Indiana posted Even when the Canal Transportation Era for canals came to an end, there were still economic uses for the waterways. Some felt that the dirty old ditch should be drained and filled in. Others sought to use the waterpower via a hydraulic canal. In Wabash, Indiana a Hydraulic Company was created to bring the canal water from the Lagro Dam #3 into the town of Wabash and empty into Charlie Creek. There was a 10 ft head of water at Lock Mills in the city. Of course, there was great concern for the Lagro dam which was the key structure to feed-in the canal waters. This hydraulic only lasted for a brief period. See CSI website indcanal.org - Historical Archives, The Hoosier Packet November 2016 pages 6-7, Pictured [above] is the Hydraulic Canal in Connersville, IN using the old Whitewater Canal that operated into the 1920s. |
This source says Connersville Furniture Company was built in 1832 near the intersection of Illinois and Mount Streets to build black walnut bedroom suites using water power from the Whitewater Canal. But canal fever didn't start in Indiana until 1836, and the canal did not arrive in Connersville until 1845. Furthermore, a topology map doesn't show much of a grade difference there. (The Big Four built through town just east of the canal in 1850 so we can use those tracks to determine where the canal was. The Big Four was just west of Western Ave in the northern part of town. The east/west tracks were the B&O and the other north/south tracks close to Central Avenue were the Lake Erie & Western, which was bought by the Nickel Plate Railroad.)
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| 1956 Connersville Quad @ 1:24,000 |
Then I learned that the Connersville Furniture Company was actually organized in 1882. [Historic-Structures-furniture] While using street view to check out the grades near the Mount-Illinois Streets intersection, I discovered this building. A photo at the bottom of this page shows that this building predates 1906. And I did not find a grade deep enough for a waterwheel.
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| Street View |
In 1846, Alanson Roots bought water-rights and set up a woolen mill. Historic-Structures-roots claims the mill was between 6th and 7th Streets along the canal. However, that is in the middle of the downtown. Instead, I think the mill was the building shown by the river at the end of the branch canal on the south side of the town as portrayed by this 1856 map. (Note that the river has been moved! It no longer runs this close to town.)
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| Historic-Structures-maps Map of Connersville from 1856 |
Alanson's sons, Francis Marion and Philander H., experimented with better waterwheels because their over-shot wheel at the woolen factory required attention. I did not understand the text description, but as soon as I saw a cross section, I knew how it worked because I have seen a model of this design. More on the blower later. However, their prototypes were made with wood and the water made the lobes swell so that it did not work as a waterwheel. But during their testing, they noticed that it was good at moving air when run the opposite of a waterwheel. That is, using mechanical force to move a fluid rather than using a fluid to create mechanical force. They got two patents in 1859 as a waterwheel and one in 1860 as a blower. In 1864, they got their first significant order. [Historic-Structures-roots] So the site of their woolen mill morphed into the site of a blower manufacturing plant.
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| Historic-Structures-roots3 Illustrated Circular of Roots' New Iron Blower, Jan 1880, p.14 |
On this map, we can see the manufacturing buildings at the end of the hydraulic canal. We can also see that the river was moved by 1888. The old buildings have been torn down to make way for a self-storage facility.
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| Historic-Structures-maps Original 1888 Map of Connersville |
As to how the Roots blower works.
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| tec-science In this modern cross-section of a Roots blower, we can see that the shape of the impellers has been refined to continuously retain a close contact. An animation shows how the blower works. |
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| tec-science The impellers are gear driven so that they never touch each other. This reduces wear and loss of power due to friction. |
In addition to pumping gas and liquids, they are also used for foodstuffs such as rice or cereals. [tec-science]
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| tec-science Additional lobes and a spiral shape can be added to remove pulses from the output flow. |
To construct a two-lobe curve, the rolling circles are one-fourth the size of the base circle.
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