284 



NATURE 



[March 2, 1922 



The Jubilee of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. 



T T is now fifty years since the Society of Telegraph 

 ^ Engineers held its first meeting. The title of the 

 Society was changed to that of the Institution of 

 Electrical Engineers in 1883, and it has grown from 

 a membership of about 100 in 1872 to one of more 

 than 10,000 in 1922. Last year the Institution was 

 granted a Royal Charter, and it celebrated its jubilee 

 last week by holding meetings at which some of the 

 pioneers of electricity gave recollections of the early 

 days of the industry. 



Prof. Fleming gave fascinating lectures on Michael 

 Faraday. He showed how well this great investi- 

 gator laid the foundations on which the impressive 

 superstructure of modern electrical practice has been 

 built. In particular he laid stress on the marvellous 

 thoroughness with which Faraday stated the physical 

 laws of electrolysis and electromagnetism. Many 

 of Faraday's statements which survive intact in our 

 modern text-books are models of lucidity. For its 

 rapid development the industry is largely indebted 

 to the unselfish labours of this great physicist. 



Electrical engineering more than any other branch 

 of engineering is based on pure science. The ease 

 with which measurements of the highest accuracy 

 can be made has been the greatest boon to engineers. 

 It is not surprising, therefore, that electrical machines 

 have gradually been evolved the efficiency of which 

 approximates to a hundred per cent. No one appreci- 

 ates more highly than the electrical engineer the 

 value of scientific research, and no one takes a keener 

 interest in every discovery in pure science. 



Many of the reminiscences given by speakers at 

 the commemoration meetings carried us back to the 

 earUest days of the industry. It has to be 

 remembered that the incandescent lamp was invented 

 and the first telephone exchange was built only 

 44 years ago. Many of the speakers, therefore, had 

 watched the growth of the industry from the start. 

 Several tales were told of the founding of the Insti- 

 tution. It was pointed out that the ideas underlying 

 any new movement are usually present in a vague 

 way in the minds of many people and, therefore, it is 

 difficult to assign the credit for the original idea 

 with any degree of certainty. We think that greater 

 stress might have been laid on the work done by 

 Lord Lindsay — afterwards the Earl of Crawford 

 and Balcarres — in founding the Society. He had 

 a laboratory in a slum called Eaton Place (now 

 swept away), lying between Green Street, Grosvenor 

 Square, and Oxford Street. Some of the apparatus 

 used is still in use at Faraday House, a college and 

 testing institution which he helped to estabUsh 

 in 1889. It was in this laboratory that the first 

 inception of founding a Telegraph Society was made 

 in 1869. Cromwell and Arthur Varley, who worked 

 in it, were anxious that the Society should be started 

 at once, and they particularly wished that Sir William 

 Thomson, who was then the leading electrical expert, 

 should be the first President. It was not, however, 

 until 1872 that the Institution got under way, the 

 first President being Dr. Carl Siemens (Sir William 

 Siemens). In 1874 Sir WilUam Thomson became 

 President for the first time. Lord Lindsay being one 

 of his Vice-Presidents. 



Listening to the speakers brought vividly back to 

 the memory the halo of wonder that surrounded 

 many of the early discoveries. The telephone, 

 invented by Alexander Graham Bell, is regarded 

 to-day as a mere domestic appliance. In 1876 the 

 fact that you could hear a whisper at a distance of 

 ten miles was rightly regarded as an almost super- 

 natural achievement. Mr. Kingsbury recalled that Bell 

 and his associates stated in 1877 in their first business 



NO. 2731, VOL. 109] 



circular that they were " prepared to furnish tele- 

 phones for the transmission of articulate speech 

 through instruments not more than 20 miles apart." 

 To-day conversation has taken place over 5000 miles, 

 and if the necessity ever arose an Indo-European 

 telephone could be made without the need of further 

 research. 



Mr. Judd, who has been intimately connected with 

 submarine telegraphy for more than 50 years, 

 pointed out that notwithstanding the fact that 

 hundreds of thousands of miles of submarine cable 

 are now in existence, yet so well had the foundations 

 of the industry been laid by British engineers and men 

 of science that the cables of to-day are of the same 

 general type as in 1866. Sir WilUam Thomson 

 solved the problem of operating submarine cables, 

 first with the mirror galvanometer and then with 

 the siphon recorder. Both instruments remain 

 practically unaltered. The first great change in 

 cable operation was the introduction of duplex 

 working by which messages could be sent simultane- 

 ously from both ends of the cable. Judd was con- 

 vinced that submarine telegraphy would continue 

 to play the vole assigned to it by the early pioneers 

 of drawing together all the nations of the world. 



Col. Crompton began electrical work 44 years 

 ago by instalUng Gramme dynamos and Serrin 

 lamps. He said that he had to learn the technicalities 

 of his art from the telegraph engineers. Accustomed 

 to working with primary batteries they told him 

 that the resistance of the armature should never 

 be less than the resistance of the external circuit. 

 In the year 1883, as the result of an escape of gas, the 

 Ring Theatre in Vienna was burned down with a 

 lamentable loss of life. The Austrian Emperor 

 issued an order that gas lighting would not be allowed 

 in any of the Imperial Theatres. The Vienna Gas 

 Company, therefore, decided to take up the supply 

 of electric light, and they invited Col. Crompton to 

 assist in the design and erection of their Central 

 Supply Station. This installation was the prototype 

 of many central stations built in this country in the 

 early 'nineties. 



Mr. Partridge narrated how the Earl of Crawford 

 and Sir Coutts Lindsay installed a portable electric 

 fight plant in a yard behind the Grosvenor Gallery 

 in 1883. From this small beginning emerged the 

 Grosvenor Gallery Station, which was the first to 

 adopt the parallel system of using transformers, thus 

 revolutionising all the methods then in use. This 

 station was burned down in 1890. In this year, after 

 overcoming many difficulties, Ferranti successfully 

 transmitted electric power at 10,000 volts from 

 Deptford to Trafalgar Square. 



Sir Charles Parsons gave an interesting account of 

 the first turbo-alternator. This machine ran at 

 18,000 revolutions per minute, the armature of the 

 dynamo being less than three inches in diameter. 

 It was essential to have the diameter small, as other- 

 wise the centrifugal forces called into play would have 

 been prohibitively high. These small machines were 

 used on board ship ; they were far from economical, 

 but they worked satisfactorily for several years. 

 The modern large turbine-driven generator con- 

 structed on the lines of Parsons' inventions is the 

 most economical generator of electricity from steam 

 at present in existence. All the proposed " super- 

 power " steam stations will be, equipped with these 

 sets. 



Sir OHver Lodge directed attention to the invalu- 

 able pioneering work in electrical theory done by 

 Ohver Heaviside, who has shown how to calculate 

 the eddy-current losses in cores, and the effects pro- 



