Section A.— ASTRONOMY, MATHEMATICS, PHYSICS. 

 METEOROLOGY, GEODESY, SURVEYING, ENGI- 

 NEERING, ARCHITECTURE, AND GEOGRAPHY. 



President of the Section. — H. J. Holder, M.I.E.E. 



WEDNESDAY, JUEY 3. 



The President delivered the folowing address : — 



RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN ELECTRICAL 

 ENGINEERING. 



In making my first appearance before you to-day, which I 

 do with much diffidence, I wish to express a sincere appreciation 

 of the honour done me, and to say that I shall endeavour to 

 merit the confidence placed in me by taking a full interest in 

 the work of this Association and by adding, if I can, some 

 modicum of knowledge to its garner. 



My everyday work and the duties of my office are, as you 

 may be aware, of a practical nature, and consist, for the most 

 part, in the application of electrical science, which has been 

 elaborated by others, to industrial and domestic needs. I can- 

 not, therefore, expect to be able to devote much time to follow 

 along lines of original enquiry, and have consequently thought 

 it best, for the purpose of this address, to take a brief review 

 of the progress made in engineering — especially the electrical 

 branch of it — during the last decade or two. 



The first instance of public electric lighting in England was 

 the lighting of the Victoria Embankment on December 13th, 

 1878, but electric lighting really dates from the Paris Exhibition 

 of 1881. In those days the plant used was of small dimensions, 

 being of only from 10 to 20 kilowatts' capacity, and the dynamos 

 were driven by slow-speed steam-engines of the horizontal type. 

 The appearance of the dynamo, which was required to be driven 

 at a comparatively high speed, began soon to make itself felt 

 as regards the design of steam-engines, whereby the slow-speed, 

 belt-coupled engine gave place to the high-speed, short-stroke 

 engine which was coupled direct to the shaft of the dynamo 

 Engine speed had to be increased to suit the dynamo. The next 

 great step in steam engineering was the production of the tur- 

 bine by the Honourable Chas. Parsons, which was of so high a 

 speed that it was found to be very difficult to design a satis- 

 factory continuous current dynamo for it. Indeed, even now 

 the turbo-dynamo is not nearly so satisfactory a set of machinery 

 as the turbo-alternator is, but the former is being rapidly im- 

 proved. The economy of electric generators driven by recipro- 

 cating steam engines, expressed as the ratio of the energy in 

 the coal to the electrical energy produced, may be taken as a 



