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196 Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries
whirlpools, galaxies and countless other formations. The hyperbolic spiral
was everywhere, as if acting out some underlying universal motion. In
uncaged rivers, the spiral was seen in the horizontal tightening twists of
the layered current. He became certain that the contracting vortex created
a very real energy in the water as it flowed.
Schauberger learned how colder, denser, stronger water in streams carried
heavy natural debris without silting, and how undisturbed rivers managed
seasonal torrents without seriously eroding their banks.
Schauberger proved to be a skilled engineer who turned his insights
into practical devices. But even his first invention was controversial.
PRINCE NEEDED CASH
While Schauberger was studying nature's habits, outside the forest others
were more entranced by worldly ways. The aging prince who owned the
wilderness had a young wife who liked to gamble, so he needed quick
cash to pay his wife's debts. The prince eyed his remote forests and saw
lumber which could be sold. The prince's predicament placed a challenge
before his forester—could Schauberger make a miles-long wooden waterslide
which would carry logs from the high mountain slopes down to the
valley
Experts said it was impossible—heavy logs would scrape to a halt on
the wooden slide. Or if they somehow gathered speed, they would smash
the sides of a flume. However, from his father and from observing wild
rivers, Schauberger knew how to bolster the strength of water just as
nature does, so that even heavy beechwood would ride high on the shallow
stream. He hired men to build a strange structure which curved and
twisted down the steep mountain. At points along the route, his design
included valves for inlets and outlets which poured in cold water from
other streams and released sun-warmed water from the chute.
The day before the deadline, a log started down the new chute for a test
run, then it stalled and stuck in place. The workmen snickered, they had
no faith in this zigzagging construction.
Schauberger sent them home so that he could think. While sitting on a
rock looking down at his log-sorting dams, he felt a snake under his
leather trousers. After he jumped up and threw it away, it landed in the
dam. Observing it through binoculars, he wondered how a snake can swim
so quickly without fins. As if in answer to his problem of transporting
logs, the snake twisted in both vertical and horizontal curves.
"Understand Nature, then copy Nature," was Schauberger's motto.
From the sawmill he ordered lengths of wood, and his workers hammered
all night, nailing short timbers within the curves of the flume to add the
up-down snakelike motion to the water.