SPIDER OF STEEL

CD 2055090 E&MP10.009

Dynamos

Jan. 1938

These mighty spider-legs of steel being built in the East Pittsburgh Works, Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company are part of the rotor for the waterwheel generator which will help harness the waters of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Pickwick Landing Dam on the Tennessee River in Hardin County, Tennessee.

A 50 ton electric crane had to move it from one part of the huge aisle in the works to another before it could be machined.

The spider weighs forty-five tones. Its overall diameter is twenty-six feet.

The complete generator will be forty-four feet in diameter and 16 feet in height above the floor.

The rotor will turn at the rate of nearly ninety miles an hour or 81.8 revolutions per minute. It is a part of the vertical waterwheel generator which will generate 40,000 kilovolt amperes or roughly 54,000 electrical horsepower.

This spider will be driven by a waterwheel at the bottom and will generate electricity as it whirls about inside the stator.  

Original Caption by Science Service
^©Westinghouse