HISTORY OF WOOD COUNTY



owned by the company, at Wisconsin Rapids, Biron, Appleton, and Stevens Point
respectively. The company owns several large timber tracts in northern Wiscon-
sin, in Minnesota, and in Canada, and owns the Newaygo Co., Ltd., a timber
holding concern in Port Arthur, Ont., tbgether with the Newaygo Tug Line,
op-
erating the largest tug on the Great Lakes.
   In the Wisconsin Rapids plant there are four paper machines and 24 grinders.
Their steam equipment has a capacity of 2,700 horse-power in addition to
the water
power available from a 1,707 foot dam with an average head of approximately
32
feet. Full utilization of the water power available at this dam would produce
about 12,000 horse-power. They produce their own sulphite, a mill for this
pur-
pose having been built in 1920. Their business is conducted in one of the
most
beautifully appointed offices in the country, located apart from the main
buildings
of the plant, in the midst of a beautiful park maintained by the company
for the
use of the public. The name of Wisconsin Rapids became known in all parts
of
the world when, in 1921, the company installed in its Wisconsin Rapids plant
one
of the fastest paper machines ever built, a machine capable of running 1,200
feet
of news-print paper per minute and producing approximately 100 tons daily.
Some
conception of the importance of this installation in the history of paper-making
can be gained by a few figures from that history. Weeks, in his " History
of Paper
Manufacturing in the United States," quotes in his chapter on "
Modern Expansion"
an authority who remarks, in 1872, upon the fact that while the ordinary
speed of
the Fourdrinier was from 60 to 80 feet per minute, there was one machine
running
175 feet per minute, producing 25 tons of paper weekly. In 1880 one was built
running 200 feet. An English writer in 1897 said, " A modern machine
will produce
a piece of paper 300 to 400 feet long and 120 inches wide in one minute and
will
turn out about 55 tons of paper per week." Another writer about the
same time
doubting the report that machines in the United States were running at 500
feet
per minute, said, "It may some day happen that construction of paper
machines
will be so improved as to enable paper makers to work with advantage at this
high speed; but I think I am right in saying that the general consensus of
opinion
is strongly against such high pressure for profitable work." It took
less than 20
years for the Americans to confound these Doubting Thomases across the ocean
with machines with a speed of 600 and 650 feet per minute, and early in 1921
a
speed of 1,000 feet was attained at the plant of the Wausau Sulpihte Fibre
Co.,
Mosinee, Wis., on a machine built by the Bagley'& Sewall Co. Considerable
prog-
ress along this line had also been made in Germany, and it is doubtful if
the machine
at Wausau was not preceded in attaining the thousand foot mark by a German
machine; but there is no question but that the Consolidated Water Power &
Paper
Co.'s machine at Wisconsin Rapids is the pioneer in the field above that
figure;
and this was the fact that carried the name of Wisconsin Rapids around the
globe
when the machine was put into successful operation, July 5, 1921. The machine
was built by the Beloit Iron Works, of Beloit, Wis., it is 325 teet long
and weighs
1,230 tons. It is driven by 61 electric motors, having a total of 1,462 horse-power.
Forty-four railroad cars were required for its transportation from Beloit,
besides
three cars for accessory machinery, and eight cars for the electrical machinery
operated in conjunction. In its installation 46 carloads of stone were used;
100
cars of sand; 32 dars of cement; 61 cars of brick; 11 cars of concrete reinforcing;



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