[CityBoyDoug]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

What in the world is this contraption at Cawson's Ostrich Farm!?!


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Photo-Ostric...item1e89f9b5dd


It's in the next pasture so it's really HUGE. I stared at this for a long time and can't figure it out.
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This huge machine is a solar heater for a steam engine.

Cawston convinced Eneas [the inventor] to move to California (Eneas later set up his business, the Solar Motor Company, in downtown Los Angeles) and Eneas convinced Cawston to buy one of his machines for about $2,500.

Cawston wanted the motor so he could pump water onto his property. In the age before aqueducts, the area was "dry as a bone," said Kryza.

Eneas installed the six-story high apparatus on a sunny hillside in 1901. The device, which resembled a radar dish, was 33 feet in diameter at its widest point and lined with 1,788 mirrors. The mirrors funneled the sun's rays onto a boiler containing 1,000 gallons of water. The resulting steam was used to power an engine that pumped between 1,400 and 1,500 gallons of water a minute from a deep well on the farm. The dish was attached to a track on a supporting tower so it could be kept trained on the sun.


The monstrous magnifier only heightened the farm's exotic quality. "No extra charge to see the Solar Motor!," declared printed handbills. "The only machine of its kind in the world in daily operation! 15-horsepower engine worked by the heat of the sun!"

Test for type size.