August 19, 1922J 



NA TURE 



257 



of unique historical duration, furnished him, as they 

 did other investigators, with the data for the con- 

 struction of charts, which showed, for example in 

 scarlet fever, not only a short cycle for that country of 

 four to six years, but also a long undulation of from 

 fifteen to twenty years or more, which, as he said, 

 might " be likened to a vast wave of disease upon which 

 the lesser epidemics show like ripples upon the surface 

 of an ocean swell " (Epidemiological Society's Trans- 

 actions, 1881-82). 



Dr. Ransome wrote much also on general public 

 health subjects, always with a keen appreciation of the 

 value of vital statistics and of the pitfalls to be avoided. 

 Thus, in any population, except that of a life-table, 

 in which births equal deaths and migration is absent, 

 a death-rate of 10 per 1000 does not mean an average 

 duration of life of 100 years. As he put it : " under 

 present conditions such figures . . . can only be looked 

 for in the millennium, when, as Isaiah says, the child 

 shall die an hundred } r ears old." 



Dr. Ransome taught at an early date that " pre- 

 ventible " mortality extended far beyond epidemic 

 diseases ; and was singularly accurate in his forecast 

 that infant mortality, which " had not yet received 

 full attention from the sanitary administrators of the 

 country," would hereafter prove largely controllable. 



In a paper contributed to the Lancet, July 11, 1896, 

 Dr. Ransome drew a striking comparison between 

 leprosy and tuberculosis, arguing that in view of the 

 close analogy between the two diseases there is reason 

 to hope for a diminution of tuberculosis as striking as 

 that already experienced in leprosy. The subject is 

 too large to be expanded in this column, but this paper 

 deserves to be consulted. 



The above illustrations of some portions of Dr. 

 Ransome's life-work show how wide were his studies 

 and how prescient his teaching. A special shelf will 

 always be reserved for his writings by students of 

 tuberculosis and of general epidemiology. Many years 

 ago Dr. Ransome retired to Bournemouth, where, until 

 a few weeks before his death, — when the present writer 

 received a letter from him on an epidemiological point, — • 

 he maintained his interest in his life-studies. 



Prof. Gisbert Kapp. 



By the death on August 10 of Prof. Gisbert Kapp, 

 the country loses one of the few remaining pioneers of 

 electrical engineering. Prof. Kapp was born at Mauer 

 near Vienna in 1852, his father being German and his 

 mother Scottish. At the Zurich Polytechnic he was 

 a pupil of Zeuner and Kohlrausch. In 1875 ne came 

 to England, but spent several years afterwards in 

 travelling on the Continent and in North Africa. He 

 was appointed engineer to the Chelmsford Works of 

 Messrs. Crompton and Co. in 1882, and in conjunction 

 with Mr. (now Colonel) Crompton he invented a system 

 of compound winding for dynamos. At this period 

 England was the leading country in the world in 

 electrical engineering. In 1886 — the year in which 

 John and Edward Hopkinson published their classical 

 paper on dynamo design — Kapp read a paper on a 

 similar subject to the Institution of Electrical Engineers. 



NO. 2755, VOL. I 10] 



He pointed out clearly the analogy between the mag- 

 netic circuit of a dynamo and an ordinary electric 

 circuit. In this year also he published his book on the 

 transmission of electrical energy which gave a very 

 clear introduction to the whole problem. In the 

 autumn of 1894 he accepted the post of secretary to 

 the German Association of Electrical Engineers. He 

 was also a lecturer to the Technical School at Charlotten- 

 burg and was editor of the Elektrotichnische Zeitschrift. 

 In 1904 he was appointed the first professor of electrical 

 engineering to Birmingham University. 



As an inventor Kapp was in the front rank. The 

 Kapp dynamos were very useful in their day. The 

 Oerlikon Company, of Switzerland, built many large 

 Kapp machines. But like all the other early types 

 they are now superseded by machines with revolving 

 fields and armature windings embedded in slots. Kapp 

 also invented many types of measuring instruments, a 

 method of making dynamos self-regulating, several 

 types of transformer, a high-speed steam-engine, a 

 system of distributing alternating currents, and a 

 method of boosting the return feeders on electric rail- 

 ways. This last method has still considerable vogue 

 in this country and in Germany. 



Kapp was an excellent teacher. Many of the present- 

 day electricians acquired their first ideas of the working 

 of electric machinery from his books. His mathe- 

 matical theorems were original and in several cases 

 strikingly simple — for example, his formula? for the 

 free period of coupled alternators. He invented many 

 laboratory methods of testing machines. His test for 

 the efficiency of dynamos and his method of getting 

 the moment of inertia of the rotor of a machine are 

 particularly valuable. He also invented a method of 

 getting the insulation resistance of a three-wire net- 

 work without the necessity of shutting down the supply. 

 He was one of the earliest to recognise the importance 

 of the phase difference between the alternating current 

 and the alternating potential difference. Developing 

 the theory of the power factor he gave a very simple 

 geometrical explanation of electrical- resonance. In 

 recent years he invented a vibratory type of phase 

 advancer and pointed out that considerable economies 

 might be effected by using these machines in everyday 

 supply. 



Kapp was a past president of the Institution of 

 Electrical Engineers and was president of the Engineer- 

 ing Section of the British Association in 1913. Person- 

 ally he was of a very kindly disposition and was always 

 pleased to give his colleagues the benefit of his great 

 engineeringexperience. He was most hospitable, and 

 was learned in many branches of study outside his 

 professional work. A. R. 



Mrs. J. A. Owen Visger. 



Readers of natural history works at the end of the 

 last century were somewhat mystified as to the author- 

 ship of a number of books published under the pen- 

 name of " A Son of the Marshes," with the editorship 

 of " J. A. Owen." The latter was the name under 

 which Mrs. Jean A. Owen Visger preferred to be known, 

 whose death at Ealing on July 30, in her eighty-first 



