physics

London Hydraulic Power Company

London Hydraulic Power Company is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand London Hydraulic Power Company rather than just read about it. In short: The London Hydraulic Power Company was established in 1883 to install a hydraulic power network in London. This expanded to cover most of central London at its peak, before being replaced by electricity, with the final pump house closing in 1977.

Key takeaways

London Hydraulic Power Company belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect London Hydraulic Power Company to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of London Hydraulic Power Company from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The London Hydraulic Power Company was established in 1883 to install a hydraulic power network in London. This expanded to cover most of central London at its peak, before being replaced by electricity, with the final pump house closing in 1977.

History

The company was set up by an act of Parliament, the London Hydraulic Power Act 1884 (47 & 48 Vict. c. lxxii), sponsored by railway engineer Sir James Allport, to install a network of high-pressure cast iron water mains under London. It merged the Wharves and Warehouses Steam Power and Hydraulic Pressure Company, founded in 1871 by Edward B. Ellington, and the General Hydraulic Power Company, founded in 1882. The network gradually expanded to cover an area mostly north of the Thames from Hyde Park in the west to Docklands in the east. The system was used as a cleaner and more compact alternative to steam engines, to power workshop machinery, lifts, cranes, theatre machinery (including revolving stages at the London Palladium and the London Coliseum, safety curtains at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the lifting mechanism for the cinema organ at the Leicester Square theatre and the complete Palm Court orchestra platform), and the backup mechanism of Tower Bridge. It was also used to supply fire hydrants, mostly those inside buildings. The water, pumped straight from the Thames, was heated in winter to prevent freezing.

Pumping stations

The pressure was maintained at a nominal 800 pounds per square inch (5.5 MPa) (55 bar) by five hydraulic power stations, originally driven by coal-fired steam engines. These were at:

Falcon Wharf Pumping Station at Bankside, east of Blackfriars Bridge on the south bank of the River Thames (opened in 1883) Kensington Court and Millbank (1887) later (1911) replaced by a station in Grosvenor Road Wapping Hydraulic Pumping Station (est. 1890), using the defunct Tower Subway to carry pipes under the Thames (closed on 30 June 1977, the last to be used) City Road Basin on the Regent's Canal in Islington (1893), later used as the Marico furniture factory Renforth Pump House (Rotherhithe, Canada Water) (opened in 1904), now residential accommodation Short-term storage was provided by hydraulic accumulators, which were large vertical pistons loaded with heavy weights.

Cross-River Thames mains The mains crossed the River Thames via Vauxhall Bridge, Waterloo Bridge and Southwark Bridge and via the Rotherhithe Tunnel as well as the Tower Subway.

Decline The system pumped 6.5 million gallons of water each week in 1893; this grew to 32 million gallons in 1933. From about 1904, business began to decline as electric power became more popular. The company began to replace its steam engines with electric motors from 1923. At its peak, the network consisted of 180 miles (290 km) of pipes, and the total power output was about 7,000 horsepower (5.2 MW). The system finally closed in June 1977. The company, as a UK statutory authority, had the legal right to dig up the public highways to install and maintain its pipe network. This made it attractive to Mercury Communications (a subsidiary of Cable & Wireless) who bought the company and used the pipes as telecommunications ducts. Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, the last of the five to close, later became an arts centre and restaurant.

See also Liverpool Hydraulic Power Company Manchester Hydraulic Power

References

Further reading McNeil, Ian (1972). Hydraulic Power. Longman Group. ISBN 978-0-582-12797-5. Pugh, B. (1980). The Hydraulic Age. Mechanical Engineering Publications. ISBN 0-85298-447-2.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with London Hydraulic Power Company

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what London Hydraulic Power Company claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to London Hydraulic Power Company before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about London Hydraulic Power Company ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of London Hydraulic Power Company

In research: London Hydraulic Power Company appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses London Hydraulic Power Company in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: London Hydraulic Power Company is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1883 establishments in England, Companies disestablished in 1977, Electric power companies of the United Kingdom, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for London Hydraulic Power Company outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study London Hydraulic Power Company in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what London Hydraulic Power Company means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain London Hydraulic Power Company out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is London Hydraulic Power Company in simple terms?

Why does London Hydraulic Power Company matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study London Hydraulic Power Company?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on London Hydraulic Power Company.