BIG STEEL SPIDER HAS TO BE PLACED ON A SPECIAL LOW-CENTER TO BE MOVED FROM PLACE TO PLACE

CD 2055091 E&MP10.011

Dynamos

Jan. 1938

Workmen tightening one of the huge legs of the mighty spider as it is placed on a special car so that it can be moved from place to place on the floor of one of the big aisles of the East Pittsburgh Works, Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company for the necessary machining and assembly operations.

These immense spider-legs are part of the rotor for the waterwheel generator which will help harness the waters of the Tennessee River in Hardin County, Tennessee.

The spider weighs forty-five tons. 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 [sic] waterhweel 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 spins about inside the rotor.  

Original Caption by Science Service
^©Westinghouse