August 30, 1900] 



NA TURE 



415 



THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE AND THE 

 ENGLISH INSTITUTION OF ELECTRICAL 

 ENGINEERS IN PARIS. 



STARTING with a trip in electric launches up the 

 Thames on Sunday,. August 19, a lunch at Henley, 

 visits to electric works in London and its neighbourhood 

 on Monday, a dinner in the evening with many Anglo- 

 American patriotic speeches, a trip to Chatham on 

 Tuesday, inspection of the dockyard, a second lunch, 

 more speeches, and a reception by General and Mrs. 

 Fraser in the afternoon, the members of the two electrical 

 societies prepared themselves to encounter a somewhat 

 blowy passage in journeying together to Paris. 



On Thursday, August 16, the formal joint meeting 

 was held in the large hall of the American Pavilion at 

 the Exhibition, with Mr. Carl Hering, the president of 

 the American Institute, and Prof. Perry, the president 

 of the English Institution, as joint chairmen. The 

 American, unlike the British Royal Pavilion, is a large 

 circular building stretching uninterruptedly from floor to 

 dome with a series of galleries running round it, and it 

 is fitted up as a kind of huge commercial club, whereas 

 the British Pavilion has been designed to represent an 

 old English manor house, and contains a loan collection 

 of the finest examples of the British school of painting, 

 chiefly of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 



When one remembers the invasion of England with 

 American machinery— especially electric machinery — 

 one envies the commercial mstincts that have produced 

 the American Pavilion, with all its facilities for aiding 

 commerce, its lifts, the doors of which magically glide 

 open and shut again on touching a button, and in which 

 you are rapidly and noiselessly wafted to any of the 

 many galleries. 



In our Pavilion, on the contrary, commerce has been 

 relegated to a top room, reached by a back staircase, 

 entered literally through a back door, and the lift con- 

 nected with this commercial room has not advanced— 

 and never will advance — beyond the construction of the 

 well for it. But walk in at the front door, and you can 

 feast your eyes on the work of Gainsborough, Reynolds, 

 Romney, Constable, Turner, Lawrence, Hoppner, Opie, 

 Hogarth and of others ; and, after the roar of the Exhibi- 

 tion, the grinding of the moving platform running all 

 round it, and the rumbling of the electric railways, you 

 feel as if you had passed out of the whirl and money 

 making of a factory into the peace and grandeur of 

 Westminster Abbey. Why, however, has the British 

 Royal Commission made so little use of this treasure on 

 the Quai dOrsay ? 



Mr. Hering welcomed the members of the two elec- 

 trical societies present, and expressed the hope that this 

 meeting might be the forerunner of many joint meetings, 

 the next of which he hoped to see held in the United 

 States, and an invitation to attend that meeting he 

 daintily expressed in English, French and German. 



Prof. Perry followed, and stated that, although no 

 minutes could be read of any previous joint meeting, 

 minutes of the present meeting were being taken, as he 

 felt sure that there would be another joint meeting at 

 which they would have to be read. 



Prof. Mascart rose to express the thanks for the honour 

 which the English Institution had done him in electing 

 him one of their four vice-presidents some months ago. 

 He hoped that not only might there be a joint meeting of 

 the two societies in the United States— at Philadelphia, 

 for example— but that it would be one at which all the 

 Institutions of Electrical Engineering in the world would 

 be represented. And although he feared that advancing 

 age might prevent his being present, he would none the 

 less co-operate in spirit. 



The special subject dealt with at the present joint 

 NO. 1609, VOL. 62] 



meeting was: — "The Relative Advantages of Alternate 

 and Continuous Current for a General Supply of Elec- 

 j tricity, especially with regard to Interference with other 

 Interests," and the discussion was opened by Mr. Ferranti. 

 He stated that this was not a continuation of the old con- 

 tention between the relative advantages of direct and 

 alternating current, for the rivalry which formerly existed 

 between the two systems, and which led the advocates of 

 the one to regard everything as absolutely wrong which 

 was done by the advocates of the other, was luckily dying 

 out. Engineers had begun to realise that the direct and 

 the alternate current systems of electric distribution had 

 each their separate functions, and the object of the pre- 

 sent discussion was to elicit an expression of opinion as 

 to whether the " interference with existing interests" did 

 not furnish an important consideration in the choice of 

 the system to be adopted in a particular case. It was not 

 merely, he urged, the damage to water and gas pipes that 

 was 7toiv being caused by the employment of the direct 

 current that had to be taken into account, but they had 

 to bear in mind the value of the underground property 

 that might be injured ten years hence if the great develop- 

 ment of the distribution of electric energy, which must 

 necessarily take place in that period, were carried out on 

 a wrong plan. He concluded by expressing the opinion 

 that the difiference in the magriitude of the disturbance 

 caused by the two kinds of current was very great. 



Mr. Arnold next spoke as a member of the American 

 Institute— it being arranged that representatives of the 

 two bodies should speak alternately. He drew attention 

 to the difficulty of using the alternate current for general 

 distribution arising from the inability to satisfactorily 

 balance the load, and he considered, therefore, that the 

 direct current system was the better. And, in view of 

 the difficulties which attended the employment of the 

 alternating current for driving electric tramcars, he con- 

 sidered that in this case also the direct current was the 

 one to be adhered to. 



Sir William Preece reminded the meeting that he has 

 not given his adhesion publicly to either the direct or the 

 alternating current system, and, therefore, that he was 

 in a position to speak quite impartially. He considered 

 that the interference of alternating current circuits with 

 telephone lines could be entirely overcome by the em- 

 ployment of a metallic return for the telephone, but it 

 had to be admitted that the surgings which occasionally 

 took place in alternate current circuits disturbed the 

 block signalling on railways. He referred to a case in 

 France where the triphase alternate system of working 

 had supplanted the direct current one, and suggested that 

 this was an indication of the increasing appreciation of 

 the former method, and that the capacity of long cables 

 introduced a serious difficulty with alternate current 

 transmission. 



The variety of frequencies employed by the various 

 companies — the London Electric Supply Company, for 

 example, using a frequency of 67, while the City of 

 London Company employed 97 — he regarded as ob- 

 jectionable, and he hoped that this joint meeting would 

 deal with the importance of arriving at a uniform 

 standard of frequency. He also suggested that the 

 relative advantages of underground and overhead 

 conductors might well occupy the attention of the 

 meeting. 



Dr. Kennelly spoke of the relative fields for direct and 

 alternating currents, and gave as an example that with 

 an isolated plant of moderate size a direct current at a 

 pressure of loo volts might be employed, while if the 

 area to be dealt with was larger, the current might still 

 be direct, but a pressure of 200 or 2.:0 volts would 

 have to be resorted to, whereas when the area became 

 large, transformation became necessary, and for that the 

 alternating current was, of course, especially well adapted. 



