Work Done by British Association Committees. 6i 



The enormous strides made by the electrical industries 

 in the last twenty five years were referred to by the lecturer, 

 and it was shown that, until the matter was taken up by the 

 British Association, the commercially necessary means of 

 measuring electric quantities were so deficient as to be, for 

 most practical purposes, altogether wanting. For telegraphic 

 purposes — or at least most telegraphic purposes — the actual 

 amount of electric energy required to be supplied was too small 

 to call for any particularly accurate measurement, nor did the 

 apparatus involve, as a rule, any very close regulation of 

 voltage or current. Consequently although the scientific 

 principles on which the measurement of electric quantities is 

 made had been laid down, and some standards of measurement, 

 corresponding, in matters electrical, to the standard yard and 

 pound in matters of ordinary measurement, had been made or 

 proposed to be made, still the whole subject of dealing with 

 electricity on an industrial scale was practically as much in a 

 state of chaos as the buying and selling of coal would be if the 

 mines all sold it by the truck load, but every mine had a 

 different sized truck, whose capacity had never been measured, 

 to shippers who dealt in it by the shipload, every man according 

 to his ship, but the tonnage of the ships was not ascertained, and 

 the consumer received it bv the cartload, every dealer pleasing 

 himself as to the size of his cart, and building new carts when 

 the old ones were worn out, as near the former size as he could 

 judge by the eye. 



About thirty eight years ago the Association set itself 

 to rectify this state of things, and for that purpose appointed 

 a committee on Electrical Standards, with a view to pro- 

 viding means for doing with electricity what corresponds to 

 providing foot rules, weighing machines, and pounds or other 

 weights to measure the coal trucks, ship loads, and cart loads, in 

 the case of the coal. The Committee rightly judged the matter 

 to be one of international importance, and began by collecting 

 advice on the system of measurement to be employed, as well 

 as all other information relating to existing standards from 



