WATERWORKS, systems of machinery and engineering structures, employed to supply water to individual manufacturing, mining and milling plants. and to municipalities, for domes tic and industrial uses and for irrigation. Such systems existed during very early periods of history, and the waterworks of ancient Greece, Carthage and Rome may be readily traced and studied by the ruins of their reservoirs and masonry aqueducts. In these earlier systems, gravity was depended upon for the delivery of the water, but force pumps were introduced about the middle of the 16th century, and ex tended greatly the general installation and use of waterworks systems. The waterworks built at London Bridge by Peter Maurice 1562 appear to be the first on record. The plant consisted of 16 force pumps, each 17 inches in diameter, and 30 inches long, which were driven by a cur rent wheel, and raised 311,000 gallons of water per day to a reservoir at an elevation of 120 feet above the pumps, and from which the water was delivered by gravity, through lead pipes to buildings in the immediate vicinity.
In the United States, the first pumping plant installed to provide water for municipal poses was that at Bethlehem, Pa., about 1760. It consisted of a five-inch wooden force pump, which raised water to a height of 70 feet through pipes' of bored hemlock logs. This was replaced in 1761 by three single-acting iron pumps, each four inches in diameter, and of 18-inch stroke, operated by an undershot water-wheel. The first municipal water-supply system built in America, however, was that of Boston, in 1632. It was built by the Works Company, and consisted of a reservoir about 12 feet square, to which the water from springs in the vicinity was conveyed through wooden pipes. From 1652 up to the close of the year 1800, the waterworks plants in the United States numbered 16, and had been located and built at the following named cities: Boston, Mass., 1652; Bethlehem, Pa., 1754-61; dence, R. I., 1772; Geneva, N. Y., 1787; mouth, Mass., 1796; Salem, Mass. 1795; ford, COML. 1797; Portsmouth, N. H., 1798; ass., 1798; Albany, N. Y., 99; Peabody, Mass., 1799; New York City, 1799; Morristown, N. J., 1799; Lynchburg, Va., 1799; %Vinchester, Va., 1799-1800; and Newark, N. J.,
1800. With the exception of the plants at chester and Morristown, they were all built by private concerns, but passed into the ownership of the respective municipalities from time to time up to 1860. The works at Winchester were built by the municipality, and those at Morristown were built by a private concern and still remain in private ownership. Up to the present time (1919) the number of plants stalled throughout the country amounts to nearly 4,000, of which four-fifths are under municipal control.A clear and concise consideration of the sub ject of waterworks may be facilitated by ar ranging the various requirements under the four general headings—quality of the water ; sources of supply; modes of distribution, and public policy.
Quality expresses the fitness of the water for the special purposes for which it may be re quired. A good quality of water is character ized by freedom from turbidity and color, un pleasant taste and odor, and undue sewage con tamination.
Taste is the first quality to be satisfied in drinking water. Even a perfectly safe water may be rejected because of nauseating flavor. This may often be remedied by dosing with chlorine and then removing the chlorine taste with sodium sulphite.
Turbidity is a condition caused by clay and silt suspended in the water. When the source of supply is a river, this condition is liable to great variation according to the amount and character of the rainfall over the watershed. Heavy rains of short duration are drained off with great erosive effect, and introduce into the flowing rivers vast quantities of finely divided inorganic matter. Such impurity, however, is more offensive than harmful, unless taken into the system frequently or in large quantities. It is removed by the use of settling reservoirs where the water is allowed to rest and deposit the heavier particles, before it is passed through the filter-beds by which the smaUer particles are removed. (See WATER SUPPLY). Color is a condition more offensive to the eye than harm ful to the health. The apparent color due so turbidity disappears under theof sed imentation and filtration, but true color, gen erally due to infusion of vegetable organic matter, such as leaves, grass, etc., is much more difficult to remove.