Holyoke Testing Flume

The Holyoke Testing Flume was a hydraulic testing laboratory and apparatus in Holyoke, Massachusetts, operated by the Holyoke Water Power Company from 1870 to 1932, and used to test the performance of water turbine designs, completing 3,176 tests of efficiency in that time.^: 100 It was described by Robert E. Horton in court testimony as the only facility of its kind in the 19th and early 20th century, which made possible the standardization of American water turbines. Indeed Clemens Herschel, who managed and redesigned the facility in the 1880s, later described it in Congressional testimony as the "first modern hydraulic laboratory" in the United States and the world. It was through Herschel's need to determine the water power consumption of different mills, and in this testing system that he would invent the Venturi meter, the first accurate means of measuring large-scale flows, which still retains widespread use in modern technology today.