Electrical engineer

“ Two lathes of like size and scope, if manufactured by two separate organizations, will be different in their minor features, and each in some particular will be the work of a mechanical engineer whose ideas are at variance with those of the mechanical engineer who designed the other type. Engineers, like doctors, often disagree, which accounts for the many different types of machinery serving the same purpose which are found on the market.
Electrical engineering is, as its name implies, a profession embracing all construction whose basis is the electrical current. ”

“ To the engineer and to those who desire to know the trend of electrical development, the most interesting exhibit at the Fair will doubtless be the apparatus designed to show the long-distance transmission of power. Almost at the beginning of the modern electrical era, dreams were indulged in of the command which electricity was to give us of the natural sources of power. ”

“ II. The Electric Light.—It is clear that this wonderful application of electricity is thus far only in its infancy, and that it must either supplement or supplant gas-lighting in the near future. In it educated persons of either sex may, after a thorough course of training, easily find very remunerative employment in a fast-developing branch of the new profession. With all the older professions overcrowded, an electrical engineer's prospects are, to-day, undoubtedly bright, especially if he has some knowledge of mechanics, though this is not absolutely necessary. ”

“ We believe that the book will be of use to practical workmen, who will not be alarmed by finding mathematical formulæ which they are unable to understand."—Electrical Plant.
"Eminently practical and useful.... Ought to be in the hands of everyone in charge of an electric light plant."—Electrical Engineer.
"Mr. Urquhart has succeeded in producing a really capital book, which we have no hesitation in recommending to the notice of working electricians and electrical engineers."—Mechanical World. ”

“ It is probable, for instance, that the correct form of a dynamo -machine for producing the electric light can be calculated, and the plans drawn with as much certainty as the diagrams of a steam-engine are constructed. There is a department of electricity corresponding, perhaps, to hydraulics, in which the electrical engineer can find full employment in subjecting perfectly definite conditions to exact calculation. ”

“ The rapid progress that has been made of late years in the application of electricity to industrial purposes, and particularly in the transmission of power by means of the electric motor, has made it imperative for every engineer who wishes to keep up to date to have some knowledge of the way electrical currents are controlled and used for practical purposes. ”

“ The new profession of electrical engineering called to its service great numbers of able men. Manufacturers of electrical machinery established research departments and employed inventors. The times had indeed changed since the day when Morse, as a student at Yale College, chose art instead of electricity as his calling, because electricity afforded him no means of livelihood. ”

“ In consequence of the rapid development of that part of electrical science which may be termed "heavy electrical engineering," reliable measuring instruments specially suitable for the large currents employed in lighting and transmission of energy have become an absolute necessity. As usual, demand has stimulated supply, and many ingenious and useful instruments have been invented, the manufacture of which forms at the present day an important industry. ”

“ Any unit whatsoever, so long as it utilizes or eats27 up or carries forward a current of electricity, is the work of electrical engineers. The profession is a comparatively recent one perforce, owing to the fact that but very little of a practical nature was known about electricity until a very few years ago. ”

“ Electrical engineers are ready to prove that this standard element in Utopia is available at the present day on the basis which is the ultimate justification of all engineering projects in this workaday world—the basis of profit. ”

“ The majority of the allied trades that cluster round the business of electrical engineering are connected in some way or other with its power and traction branches. To members of such trades and callings, to whom some knowledge of applied electrical engineering is desirable if not strictly essential, the book is particularly intended to appeal. ”

“ For instance, many chemists thought that electrical engineering was largely chemistry on account of the storage batteries, the galvanic cells, and the electrochemical processes which formed an important part of the electrical operations in the early history of applied electricity. Others asserted that, since mechanical engineering attended to the design and the construction of electromagnetic generators and to the power plant which furnished the driving power, electrical engineering was, therefore, largely mechanical engineering. ”

“ Electrical engineering has developed largely and widely within a very short time and its many applications has created so great a demand for various kinds of electrical apparatus, that their manufacture forms one of the leading industries. ”

“ The work of testing and localizing faults in cables is of a more scientific and interesting character than work in other departments of telegraph engineering. The manufacture of cables is also a subject for particular study, and a fair knowledge of mechanical engineering may be gained by practice in it. Two of the many different departments of electrical engineering, telephony and electric lighting, are becoming especially important, and yet there is great difficulty in finding competent electricians to accomplish the work. ”

“ Crocker and I maintained that there is an electrical science which is the real soul of electrical engineering,280 and that every other abstract science or its application was an incident only in electrical engineering. We won out in spite of the fact that at other institutions of higher learning in the United States electrical engineering was taught in the departments of physics or of mechanical engineering. ”

“ The developments in the field of electrical engineering which have rendered feasible the transmission of high pressure currents over long distances, together with the reliability and efficiency of modern generating units, have resulted in notable economies in the generation and distribution of electric current. ”

“ There is plenty to be done in running the engine and dynamo, and in repairing and renewing the several installations, as well as in the more strictly quantitative work of the laboratory proper. To an active boy the attractions of electricity are simply irresistible, and this department, which in the early days was known by the too ambitious name of the electrical engineering department, has not only been a source of lively interest, but in no small measure a determining factor in the future career of many of the manual training graduates. ”

“ The problems and techniques associated with the production, delivery, utilization and control of energy in the electrical form are given the inclusive title of Electrical Engineering. Any general preparation for the recognition and analysis of these problems and the mastery of these techniques, in their infinite variety, must, of necessity, emphasize the basic conceptions and principles which are of widest application. Specific applications, sufficient in number and variety to maintain the student’s interest and broaden his point of view are, however, useful supplements. ”

“ Plotting 83 volts for 30 amperes will give one point for the external characteristic curve of this machine, and by determining in like manner the total voltages developed for six or eight different currents over the scale, sufficient data will be at hand for plotting and drawing in the curve O C B.
2107 In steam engineering, a man who did not fully understand the method of taking an indicator diagram would be considered not in touch with his profession, and in electrical engineering the same would be true of one ignorant of the method of obtaining characteristic curves. ”

“ Electricians now began to be sedulous in their experiments upon the new force by friction, then the only known method of generating electricity. In 1729, Stephen Gray, a pensioner of the Charter-house, contrived a method of making electrical signals through a wire 765 feet long ”

“ It not only rendered applications of electricity possible in the arts and industries, but by relieving experimental results from the vagueness of the specifications formerly in use, made the further progress of pure electrical science a matter in which every step forward, taken by an individual worker, facilitated the advance of all. ”

“ The controlling idea in its preparation was to provide brief yet reasonably complete sketches of the lives of the great pioneer workers in electricity, the ground-breaking investigators who went distinctly beyond the bounds of what was known before their time, not merely to add a fringe of information to previous knowledge, but to make it easy for succeeding generations to reach conclusions in electrical science that would have been quite impossible until their revealing work was done. ”

“ The ideas of several men, says Mr. J. L. Ricardo, are set in motion by exactly the same circumstances; and men who are in the habit of putting things together very often have the same ideas at the same time. The history of electrical inventions presents many illustrations of this observation; and at first sight it might appear as if the old world had, in like manner, vied with the new in designing apparatus for applying electricity to useful purposes. The study of electrical phenomena began in America about the same time as in Europe. ”

“ Just as applied electricity is a leading exemplar of the benefits to be obtained by an intelligent use of scientific knowledge, so electrical communication of intelligence is a leading exemplar in the field of applied electricity. This branch of applied electricity is a pioneer among those recognizing the practical value of scientific research. ”

“ In the first place, in moving a current of electricity to and from a coil of wire, or any other conductor, or (which is the same thing, since action and reaction are equal and opposite) in moving a coil of wire or any other conductor to and from a current of electricity, a sense of resistance will be experienced, and energy will have to be spent upon the process; in the second place, an electrical current will be generated in the conductor, and the conductor will be heated in consequence. ”

“ Electrical measurement has become a department of physical science by itself, and a technical, extensive and varied one. Already the electrical specialist, no more an original experimenter or investigator than the average physician is, has become professional. He makes plans, submits facts, estimates cost, and states results with almost certainty.
ELECTRICITY AS AN INDUSTRY.--Immense factories are now devoted to the manufacture of electrical goods exclusively. Large establishments in cities are filled with them. ”

“ Every one knows that when by means of an ordinary electrical machine electricity has been generated in sufficient quantity and under suitable conditions to prevent its dispersion, a spark of intense brilliancy and greater or less length, according to the amount of electricity thus collected, can be obtained when some body, not similarly electrified, is brought near to what is called the conductor of the machine. ”

“ Form a communication by a chain from the coating to the cushion, and the phial will charge.
For the globe then draws the electrical fire out of the outside surface of the phial, and forces it, through the prime conductor and wire of the phial, into the inside surface. ”

“ In the infancy of the science no country produced more electricians than Germany; in the discovery and exposition of its subtlest laws, as well as in their application to useful purposes, no country has done more than England; while in the most novel and most extensive use of electrical appliances for industrial purposes the New World may be said to have outstripped the Old. ”

“ The consequences of this demand for electrical knowledge, and of these experimental opportunities for acquiring it, have been already very great, both in stimulating the energies of advanced electricians, and in diffusing among practical men a degree of accurate knowledge which is likely to conduce to the general scientific progress of the whole engineering profession. ”

“ For example, questions relating to steam engines, boilers, boats, locomotives, railways, etc., are considered and answered by a professional engineer of distinguished ability and extensive practical experience. Inquiries relating to electricity are answered by one of the most able and prominent practical electricians in this country. ”

“ In telegraphy and in the new arts of applying electricity to lighting, to the transmission of power, and to metallurgical operations, problems arise at every turn, requiring for their solution not only an intimate acquaintance with, but a positive advance upon, electrical science, as established by purely theoretical research in the laboratory. In general engineering, the mere practical art of constructing a machine so designed and proportioned as to produce mechanically the desired effect would suffice no longer. ”

“ It is not our purpose here to describe at length the electrical machine, but we may state that it consists of two parts, one for generating electricity by means of the friction of a rubber against glass, and another consisting of a system of brass tubes, of considerable surface, supported on glass stems, for collecting and retaining the electricity so produced. This latter part of the machine is called its prime conductor. ”