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World Tallest Fountain
By the end of the 19th century, as indoor plumbing became the main source of drinking water, urban fountains became purely decorative. Mechanical pumps replaced gravity and allowed fountains to recycle water and to force it high into the air. The Jet d'Eau
in Lake Geneva
, built in 1951, shoots water 140 metres (460 ft) in the air. The highest such fountain in the world is King Fahd's Fountain
in Jeddah
, Saudi Arabia, which spouts water 260 metres (850 ft) above the Red Sea
The Fountain was built in 1970, first operating on December 15th of that year. For more than a decade after its debut, it was the world’s tallest fountain. Its three pumps are driven by three electric motors that each delivers 600 horsepower. All three pumps operating at once require over 1.3 million watts of electrical power. This is equivalent to almost 300 house air conditioners running at once! Normally only two pumps are run which still requires almost 900,000 watts. To put this into perspective, if electricity costs 10 cents per kilowatt hour, it would cost $90.00 to run the Fountain for one hour!
When the Fountain operates at night, lights illuminate the plume from top to bottom. There are lights installed on the concrete fountain head that not only light the structure itself but also shine up on the rapidly ascending stream of water. Two banks of lights on the shore of Fountain Lake light up the plume of water as it widens at the top.
Ancient civilizations built stone basins to capture and hold precious drinking water. A carved stone basin, dating to around 2000 BC, was discovered in the ruins of the ancient Sumerian
city ofLagash
in modern Iraq. The ancient Assyrians
constructed a series of basins in the gorge of the Comel River, carved in solid rock, connected by small channels, descending to a stream. The lowest basin was decorated with carved reliefs of two lions
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