Niagara by night

[farnz]

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This is a 3-picture panorama of Horseshoe Falls from my hotel window.  It is so difficult to convey the sheer majesty and raw power of this extraordinary place.  The fully-grown trees to the right of the falls offer some sense of scale.

Pete.

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M8 with 28/2.8 Elmarit-M asph v1

[stuny]

Lovely. 

I remember sitting at the edge of the Horseshoe having a snack, and for some reason desperately needing to visit the loo.

The building in the left foreground, the Queen Victoria Bldg , has always housed the illumination of the falls.  Until the mid 1970s there were huge carbon arc lamps (16 if I recall).  My father did the first renovation to it.  I accompanied him on several trips to capture the results of tests.  For the first test he had a 10KW xenon lamp and generator mounted on a flatbed trailer to test back lighting the plume from up river, and to front light the plume down in the gorge.  He also and three more xenon lamp atop the QV building to test illumination of the falls, along with a huge Kliegl Brothers theater spot to project images on the cliff between the two falls (I cut a metal plate to have an aperture shaped like the Canadian maple leaf symbol which we projected on the cliff).  We carried the xenon bulbs as carryon luggage from Newark, NJ to Niagara, and had no trouble getting them through customs since the provincial government provided clearances, which were also useful before going to the boarding gate in New Jersey.  His tests were a huge success, of course, and the final installation had 36 xenon lamps and the Klieg light atop the QV Building, plus another xenon in the gorge and one more up river, both to illuminate the plume.  Each of the xenon lamps was brighter than the combined illumination of the original 16 carbon arc lamps.  By the time you got there the entire array changed to LEDs, but my father's work lasted about 40 years.

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[Louis]

Wonderful.

[RoySmith]

On 6/1/2020 at 7:44 AM, stuny said:

Lovely. 

I remember sitting at the edge of the Horseshoe having a snack, and for some reason desperately needing to visit the loo.

The building in the left foreground, the Queen Victoria Bldg , has always housed the illumination of the falls.  Until the mid 1970s there were huge carbon arc lamps (16 if I recall).  My father did the first renovation to it.  I accompanied him on several trips to capture the results of tests.  For the first test he had a 10KW xenon lamp and generator mounted on a flatbed trailer to test back lighting the plume from up river, and to front light the plume down in the gorge.  He also and three more xenon lamp atop the QV building to test illumination of the falls, along with a huge Kliegl Brothers theater spot to project images on the cliff between the two falls (I cut a metal plate to have an aperture shaped like the Canadian maple leaf symbol which we projected on the cliff).  We carried the xenon bulbs as carryon luggage from Newark, NJ to Niagara, and had no trouble getting them through customs since the provincial government provided clearances, which were also useful before going to the boarding gate in New Jersey.  His tests were a huge success, of course, and the final installation had 36 xenon lamps and the Klieg light atop the QV Building, plus another xenon in the gorge and one more up river, both to illuminate the plume.  Each of the xenon lamps was brighter than the combined illumination of the original 16 carbon arc lamps.  By the time you got there the entire array changed to LEDs, but my father's work lasted about 40 years.

Wonderful story- thank-you for sharing. 

[david strachan]

Great picture Pete, and super story Stuart.

The whole Niagara mystique is fabulous from barrels over the falls to gorgeous Monroe in her famous film, and the electricity competition also.

You've both captured the spirit so well.

...

[jdlaing]

Nicely done.

The main reason I am back in Texas since the 1970’s is one day while working on the Niagara Power Project in that gorge I had to chop ice off the scaffold with an axe in 4 below zero weather while it snowed sideways to be able to climb. About a week later I packed up everything I own And went back South. I put an ice scraper on the dashboard and when someone asked what it was I stopped.