Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The First President Street Power Station South Africa

 This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was no consensus. Tony Sidaway|Talk 13:39, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The First President Street Power Station South Africa
Tagged as unencyclopedic. Seems to describe an ill fated South African power station from the early days of the 20th century. I do not understand how it could be notable. Zzyzx11 | Talk 03:12, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Delete It might have made the local news a century ago, but there seems to be nothing of any enduring significance even in that area, wherever it was. Maybe something that was news when the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica was written, when electric power was something new?  I'm the one who stuck that uncyclopedic tag on; later I saw something about use of that being discouraged, but it sure seemed appropriate here.  Gene Nygaard 03:46, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Copyvio of [] Still it's a very interesting story of engineering malpractice, whereby the engineers spec'd an expensive though elegant system, giant internal combustion engines powered by producer gas. Except that they intended to use bituminous coal (Instead of coke) in the producers without concern for the massive amount of coal tar fouling and corrosion that would result from the direct gasification of bituminous coal. When the fouling and corrosion started; hilairity ensued and by mid 1907 the City Council had to reject the whole scheme and instituted legal proceedings against the suppliers to recover their losses.
 * Keep (once the copyvio has been dealt with). Totally encyclopedic (with a bit of context added) - there are lots of historical items in Wikipedia far more trivial than this. But possibly better merged into an appropriate article on South African history. If they really mean gas turbine that would be a remarkably early use (I think they mean reciprocating gas engine). -- RHaworth 07:16, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC)
 * Yes, basicly a very big for the time four stroke engine. Gas Turbines would require WWII era metalurgy/enginnering. All this takes place in 1906. Seems like the city had a good case against the engineers. People knew that if you used anything but coke in a producer, the output gas would contain the volitiles from the feedstock coal. And unless you planned to install a full getup to scrub the gas, primitive gas treatment equipment was going leave fairly large amount of tar and condensibles in the gas. Whats interesting is that the city purchased this system over a steam one, on the basis of saving fuel. I'm guess the reason then went with the producer gas engines, is that the system could easily adapt to fluctuations in demand whereas a steam boiler requires a pretty much constant fuel input to maintain high steam pressure. Big savings on high pressure piping since a producer gas system runs at almost atmospheric pressure. BTW if you are interested please take a look at Town gasKlonimus 09:55, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete the copyvio, but if someone writes a good stub then it sounds like an encyclopedic topic. --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 17:13, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm a bit busy right now, but if this stays up for a little while, I'll rewrite it. Klonimus 20:24, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Wow. Fix the copyvio, but any power station that can be made this interesting in its vfd discussion deserves an article. FreplySpang (talk) 20:30, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC) (Did that sound sarcastic? I meant it sincerely. FreplySpang (talk) 15:55, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC))
 * Double wow. Klonimus, if your new article is half as interesting as your above comment, we'll have us an instant feature. Delete the copyvio (natch) and let's make room for a great original article! - Lucky 6.9 04:46, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, if somone is willing to contact the person mentioned in the copyvio'ed article we could get some more information. A hobby of mine is the history of coal gasification and related technologies. Thats how I was able to make a good hypothesis as to what happened in the article. I dont want write an article that is mostly hypothesizing on my part, even if I am pretty sure I am correct. What we need is a Request for knowledge I'd be happy to work with somone who knew more about early electric power systems. Klonimus 12:10, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Copyvio must go but the subject may deserve an article - Skysmith 08:46, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.