Show of lei 14 IN IN fell lei lei IN 14 leffellad lef fella il IN lei IN lei IN fall fell lell THE TRAINING OF THE HIGH TENSION ENGINEER it BY P M LINCOLN E E wei IN lei IN IN IN lei lei lei lei lei lei lei lei lei IN 1 IN IN IN IN IN IN loom lei 1011 im lei there are two schools in which the electrical engineer may receive his training but only one in which he must receive a course before he can be called a high tension engineer those things which w aich are learned in the schools equipped with professors and laboratories and mathematical text books must be supplemented by the things which can be learned only in the school of experience these two schools are quite different in method the college instructs in theory and in those methods of doing things which have become standard by universal adoption the college 41 teaches positive knowledge in the school of experience peri ence on the other hand one is more apt to learn how not to do it and by the elimination of the unsuccessful arrive at the goal of success the knowledge gained by experience is more often negative put to the fresh college graduate the problem of the amount of distance to be left between the conductors of a high h gh tension transmission line his answer will involve most likely likely the lumping jumping distance of the voltage to be used the length of span the sag and perhaps a liberal factor of safety it is experience only that will show that his premises are wrong and that the equation to determine spacing of high tension wires depends very little on the voltages to be carried and almost entirely on such things as the average length and resistance of cats the spread of wing of owls and cranes and eagles and the average length of scrap baling wire together with the strength of the average small boys throwing arm the college graduate enters practical work invariably bly feeling that the greatest danger of his work lies in his liability of receiving a shock from the high tension conductors not until he has had experience with accidents of an electrical nature does he learns that it is the danger af pf of being burned that he has to fear more t than a the danger of shock my own experience a and n d I 1 think it will be checked by the large majority of those in a position to know has been that the number of electrical acci ants in which the victim has been injured by burning in incomparably greater than the number from shock the graduate has learned how to make lac curate measurements of power he finds latter after fter he has been up against it that it is easier asler to measure power accurately than it aig is to persuade the customer that his power Is being seeing accurately measured the man fresh from the college laboratory ory enters his practical duties with the idea dea that rubber is one of the best insulators that exists it is not until he has seen rubber insulation break down in the most unaccountable manner that he finds that rubber as a high tension insulator is extremely treacherous the deterioration of fabber rubber insulation is probably due to chemical reactions on the rubber induced by the brush discharges which are in turn caused by the high voltage of the conductor v the newly made graduate usually has ahagh a high opinion of efficiency and can calculate the economy of a transmission to an excessively small fraction when he becomes responsible for the operation of a iran transmission line however it does not take hiim him long to find out that efficiency is a vanishing quantity when compared to continuity of operation and that economy is t not hot to be considered as being in the same class class as good service the technical graduate in short may jiahe have knowledge a plenty but his wisdom is to 0 come i it is further from my thoughts to cast any slur upon the technical graduate I 1 look back back upon my own course in electrical engineering gi and feel that it is the most valuable le asset I 1 ever possessed posse sed the technical ourse course is the best of foundations but it is ply only a foundation the end of the college ourse course is rightly called commencement the great advantage of the technical education is that it gives theman proper equipment for overcoming the difficulties with I 1 which his experience is bound to bring him k ra into anto contact it gives him as nothing else arvill will the power of initiative that most v valuable a 1 u quality that a high tension engineer can possess there is nothing like the college education to equip a man for making every accident a lesson in how not to qa do it and every failure a stepping stone to success P r take for instance the recent accident K to the niagara plant in which a fire destroyed the cables on the bridge connecting the power house with the transformer house h ouse the lesson to be drawn from this accident so plain that he who runs may yead is that where many cables are run together extreme precaution should be laken to protect against danger of fire be tore the occurrence of this fire there was tittle little suspicion that the insulation of cables when lead covered or protected by fire proof braid as was the case at niagara is sufficient to maintain so fierce a blaze without the aid of some other combustible beside the insulation one accident of this kind should suffice not only for the niagara falls people but also for any others who have occasion to run many cables together the art of long distance electric transmission as it exists today is the result of the accumulated experience of all those who have had to do with transmission work and the process of accumulation is still going 0 on n those men who today are designing and operating transmission plants are the of the art their expedients for improving service or reliability or for cheapening cost are noted and when successful have their influence on future installations stal lations the experiences of today are incorporated into the textbooks text books of tomorrow but although the result of experience may be taught to the college student allowing always for a considerable angle of lag the college curriculum can never become the substitute for the school of experience I 1 the high tension engineer no less than the man in any other department of human endeavor may find in failure the why way to better things it was roosevelt the strenuous who gave expression to the sentiment that absence of failure accompanied only i lack of eff effort ort the uses of adversity are sweet heweet and the engineer may well weil heed the words that shakespeare puts into the mouth of the duke who exiled to the forest of arden finds tongues in trees books in brunnig brooks sermons in stones and good in everything this paper by mr lincoln a representative senta tive of the westinghouse electric manufacturing company was read before the thirteenth annual convention of the canadian electrical association at its meeting held on the alth and dinst |