Deep in the prehistory of green energy technologies now being researched by Alexis Madrigal for his forthcoming book, there is a whole series of devices intended to generate power from the sea. Precursors of today's interest in tide power, these were "wave motors" and mechanized basins that turned the coast into a series of timed catchment reservoirs. The landscape itself became a machine.One of the earliest patents filed for such technology was by Oakland resident Henry Newhouse in 1877. The purpose of his machine was "[t]o utilize the tide for a water-power," his patent text read, as quoted by the San Francisco-based Western Neighborhoods Project, "and preserve a continuous power by means of the arrangement of a reservoir to catch the water at high-tide, and a discharge-basin to let the water out at low tide and shut it out while the tide is rising."Like something designed by Smout Allen, tunnels would be drilled through littoral rockfaces, even as natural bays were both expanded and reinforced. The coastline is soon a linked sequence of valves through which the tides can flow, generating electricity as they pass through a maze of elevated waterwheels and pumps.A great example of this type of wave motor comes to us from "the Armstrong brothers"; it was built on the coast of Santa Cruz in 1898. Quoting the Western Neighborhoods Project's description of that project:
The
Armstrongs' wave motor, an oscillating water column, was built inside the
cliff. They had dug a thirty-five by six foot hole into the side of the cliff
that ran to a level below low tide. From there another tunnel connected it with
the ocean. Inside of the thirty-five-foot well was a pump, and attached to that
a 600-pound float. When the waves crashed on the shore, they forced water
through the tunnel and up the well, lifting the float, opening the valve and
filling the pump. As the water receded, the well water would fall, dropping the
pump and the float. The valve would close and the piston, under the weight of the
float, forced the water through a pipe to a tank on the hill.
Certain to puzzle future archaeologists, "The only part of the wave motor that remains today is the thirty-five-foot deep well in the cliff."In other words, what now appear to be eroded cliffs and chipped coastal plateaus are actually derelict machine parts from the 19th century.