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Abstract
Excerpts: Last year there was set up in the Bureau of Agricultural Engineering a research project in rural electrification. The project as planned was believed to be broad enough to include practical, every-day problems and also studies of a more fundamental nature, the results of which, it is hoped, will have sone influence upon the future use of electricity on farms. The project has as its objective a study of uses that will pay, or at least give promise of paying, their own way and perhaps also net a profit, keeping in mind the low-income farm. As the building of rural power lines reaches the less prosperous farmers, the problem of finding, or developing uses of electricity that aid in increasing income gets more and more exacting upon the investigator. Not only must equipment of a readily adaptable and practical nature be developed, but studies must be made which will lay the foundation for developing equipment for the future. In the Bureau's effort to reach its objective it has set up several goals, the first of which is to survey and collate information on research, both active and completed, on agricultural enterprises in which electricity plays a part. Second, to make case studies of actual farms in various parts of the country and by careful analysis, discover how the farm program may make the use of electrical appliances profitable, or as a corollary to that study, a study of the appliances themselves, to see how they may be modified or developed to fit into the present farm schedule in such a way as to make them profitable to the farmer, keeping in mind always, safety, convenience, beauty and the fact that we must concern ourselves with the low-income farm. Third, as previously stated, to study the more fundamental problems, such as those relating to the influence of electricity, light, heat and magnetism, and other associated phenomena upon plants and animals.