OcrToBER 12, 1899] 
NATURE 
579 
money was spent in railway experimenting, which foreign 
countries were afterwards saved ; but meanwhile the railway 
industry had become established in England, and other countries 
were for many years practically compelled to purchase their 
railway equipments in England. It seems to the writer of this 
article that the position formerly occupied by England in 
railway matters has been taken by America in respect of 
electric traction, and by Switzerland in regard to the industry 
of the distribution of electric power. We now certainly profit 
by American pioneering in electric lighting and tramway work— 
but we do not get their experience for nothing, for meanwhile 
their manufacturing industries have become established, and 
America takes tithe of us when we become her customers. In 
Switzerland the absence of coal and the presence of an 
industrious and highly educated population has no doubt 
co-operated to bring about the;wonderful progress which has 
been made in developing water powers electrically, and in 
establishing the corresponding industry of the manufacture of 
electrical appliances. It was on all accounts a happy inspiration 
for the Institution of Electrical Engineers to visit Switzerland, 
and for its members to become personally acquainted with the 
great electrical works of that country ; it is only to be regretted 
that the remainder of the British public did not accompany the 
members. 
Of course we had long understood that the Swiss had done 
great things electrically, but a visit was necessary to enable us 
to form an adequate idea of the industrial revolution which has 
been effected, and whose importance it is impossible to over- 
estimate. It is also impossible to overestimate the kindly 
hospitality which was extended to the Institution by the great 
Swiss manufacturing firms, and indeed by the whole electrical 
fraternity of Switzerland. We were received everywhere with 
open arms, works were not only thrown open to our inspection, 
but every effort was made to explain everything that required 
explanation, and we were made to feel that not only were we 
guests, but welcome guests. The following brief account is not 
intended to be a technical description of our visit, for which the 
electrical journals may be consulted (an excellent account has 
already appeared in Engineering), but is rather in the nature of 
a record of the writer’s general impressions. 
September 1.—About half the party arrived at Bale in the 
morning and spent the afternoon in a visit to the Alioth works 
at Miinchenstein. There is a great similarity between these 
works and those of Brown, Boveri and Co. at Baden ; both 
are new, both are clean, both are worked for the most part by 
polyphase motors, both of them make excellently designed 
machinery, mostly of the alternate current three-phase type, and 
both of them seemed to have as much work on hand as they 
could carry out. Though a minor matter, the design of the 
brush holders for continuous current dynamos at Miinchenstein 
met with some attention; they were very neatly made of 
aluminium on correct dynamical principles. 
September 2.—The rest of the party having arrived we went 
to see the great Power Station at Rheinfelden on the right hand 
bank of the Rhine. This station has a capacity of twenty 
turbines of 840 horse power each, the power being supplied by 
the water of the Rhine with a fall of from three to five metres. 
To meet variations in the level of the river, the turbines are con- 
structed in a rather peculiar manner, and in fact consist of two 
turbines on one shaft. The turbine shafts are supported on an 
oil film, pumped in below a flange ; the same high pressure oil 
being also employed to work the differential governing gear, 
which it appeared to do very well indeed. However, the load 
on the dynamos at Rheinfelden is pretty steady, but we found at 
some other stations that regulation was performed by hand, 
especially when the power was used for railway or tramway pur- 
poses. Some of the power is used for lighting and motors in 
the villages round about Rheinfelden, and up to a considerable 
distance away, the three-phase system being employed at a line 
pressure of 6800 volts. The bulk of the power, however, is 
used for chemical works on the spot, viz., aluminium, soda and 
bleach, and carbide, but we were not allowed to see any of these 
works. The power is a good deal cheaper than at Niagara, and 
the whole installation gave one the idea that it had “‘come to 
stay,” the hydraulic works being very solid and the power house 
roomy and convenient and well kept, though no doubt it had 
suffered an extra clean up. 
The party was entertained at lunch by the directors of the 
Rheinfelden works ; and Herr Rathenau came from Berlin to 
welcome us, and give us an invitation to visit Berlin next year, 
NO. 1563, VOL. 60] 
an invitation which it is to be hoped the Institution will accept ; 
in any case, Herr Rathenau deserves our best thanks. 
In the afternoon we went on by train to the works of Brown, 
Boveri and Co. at Baden (Switzerland). The works are fairly 
large, 1300 men and a staff of 170 being employed, and are as 
much as possible under one roof. Here we saw much the same 
kind of work that we had seen at the Alioth works, but on 
a much larger scale. The most interesting exhibit was un- 
doubtedly Mr. C. E. L. Brown himself, who took great pains 
to ensure our seeing as much as possible in the time at our 
disposal. The bulk of the work appears to be the construction 
of three-phase generators and motors of the ordinary type. The 
large generators were mounted very conveniently with the fixed 
portion (armature) on trunnions so that it could be turned round 
for the convenient execution of repairs. The tools were very 
modern, but there was not nearly so much repeat work being 
done as the writer at least had expected: nor was there any 
show of automatic machines. In fact the works were more like 
an English than an American works, though on a larger scale 
and newer than any similar works in England. 
September 4.—The party being now at Ziirich, expeditions 
were made to the Ziirich central station, the works of the 
Oerlikon Company, the gas engine power house of the Ziirich- 
Oerlikon-Seebach tramway, and the works of Messrs. Escher, 
Wyss and Co. 
The Central Power Station.—The whole of the water of the 
river Limmat, which drains the Lake of Ziirich, is, or can be, 
turned through the turbines of the power station, the general 
construction being very similar to that at Rheinfelden. A good 
deal of the power is used for pumping water, the excess water 
being used in high pressure turbines for electric generation. 
The Oerlikon works are very like the works at Baden, but 
are much older, and the generators on the three-phase principle 
appeared to be chiefly of the inductor type. The design of the 
three-phase motors appears to depend very much on the size, 
the small ones having simple short circuited squirrel-cage rotors, 
while the larger ones have a regular winding, coupled up star 
fashion, and arranged for the introduction or removal of resistance 
by pulling or pressing a rod passing up the rotor shaft. We 
saw a nearly-finished locomotive for the Jungfrau railway, the 
motors being three-phase and provided with enormous rheostats 
for varying the speed and absorbing power when the cars run 
down hill. Who would have thought twenty years ago that 
the Arago disc contained such potentialities ? The steel castings 
in this works were good throughout. 
The works of Escher, Wyss and Co. do not demand any 
special note in so far as arrangement, &c., is concerned ; but 
the firm seems thoroughly to understand the art of turbine 
making, as it should do, seeing that most of the turbines in the 
country appear to have been made at their works. Special 
pains were taken here to show us everything that was to be 
seen, and we had an unrivalled opportunity of inspecting the 
details of turbine construction. 
Dowson Gas Central Station of the Ziirich Oerlikon Street 
Railway at Oerlikon.—It was rather a surprise to us to find the 
street railway driven by Dowson Gas in a land reputed to be 
covered with water powers. The writer must admit to feeling 
a certain amount of satisfaction at the idea that the water powers 
were getting exhausted in the neighbourhood of Ziirich before 
British Industry had become a thing of the past. The truth is 
that there will be no more cheap power for Ziirich until some 
one or other of the numerous schemes for converting valleys 
into lakes is actually accomplished and very likely not even then. 
With regard to the Dowson plant itself, there was nothing very 
striking about it. The engines were not particularly large, but 
they appeared well made and particularly well water-jacketed. 
Little or no information could be obtained of interest to Gas 
Engine people ; but economy of coal must be a great consider- 
ation when it costs 32 francs per 1000 kilos. 
At the Selnau Transformer Station we had an opportunity of 
seeing how high-tension three-phase currents are used for trans- 
mitting power to a sub-station at which continuous current at 
500 volts is generated for driving tramway motors. One of the 
most interesting things about this sub-station was the switches 
used for turning on the three-phase current, and so starting the 
continuous current generators to which the three-phase motors 
are directly coupled. As is, of course, well known, it is in 
general necessary that resistance should be inserted in the rotor 
circuit of a three-phase motor in order to enable it to start 
under any sort of a load. At the Selnau sub-station the switch 
