 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(April 2008) |
John Forrest Kelly (born March 28, 1859 in the vicinity of Carrick-on-Suir, Ireland - died 1922) was an American electrical engineer who made early advances in alternating current equipment.
Kelly was the son of two Fenian schoolteachers, Jeremiah and Kate Forrest Kelly, who had eleven other children; he emigrated to America in 1873. He was educated in Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey, received the degree of B. L. in 1878 and that of Ph.D. in 1881. [1] His sister was the activist and surgeon Dr. Gertrude Kelly.
His first occupation was as assistant to Thomas A. Edison, in the Menlo Park laboratory, his work then principally relating to the chemistry of rare earths. Late in 1879 Mr. Kelly became electrical engineer of the New York branch of the Western Electric Company. This was the time when the telephone was being generally introduced, and when dynamos were being first applied to telegraphic purposes. In 1882 he became laboratory assistant to Edward Weston, then chief electrician of the United States Electric Lighting Company, and, with the exception of a year which he spent in connection with the Remingtons, Mr. Kelly continued his association with Mr. Weston (Westinghouse Electric Company) until July, 1886. Some of the most important work, such as the research which ended in the discovery of high resistance alloys of very low or even negative temperature co-efficients, were substantially carried out by Mr. Kelly under general directions from Mr. Weston, whom Mr. Kelly succeeded as chief electrician of the United States Electric Lighting Company, which, in 1889, passed to the Westinghouse interests; but Mr. Kelly retained his position as chief electrician until January, 1892, when he resigned to join William Stanley in experimental work. With William Stanley and Cummings C. Chesney, he was a partner in the Stanley Electric Manufacturing Company, which became the General Electric transformer plant in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
The work done by Mr. Kelly, in this connection, gave a great impetus to the alternating current business. The art of building transformers and generators of alternating currents was revolutionized, and Mr. Kelly and his colleagues were the first to put polyphase motors into actual commercial service. That success naturally led to long-distance transmission work, and the first long-distance transmission plants in California (indeed the first in the world), were undertaken on Mr. Kelly's recommendation and advice. He was the first to make a hysteretically stable steel, a matter of vastly more importance than the comparatively spectacular transmission work. He served as a consulting engineer to the Stanley Electric Manufacturing Company in Pittsfield and the Stanley Instrument Company in Great Barrington until 1905, then helped found the Telelectric Piano Company in 1905, serving as president until 1910. He experimented in electrical transmission, distribution and measuring procedures and equipment: with Chesney and Stanley, he developed the SKC transformer. [2]
After accumulating over seventy patents, and commercializing an electric player piano and a food dehydration system, he spent his later life supporting the cause of Irish nationalism, primarily by writing anonymous articles and editorials for the Irish World. Mr. Kelly was a thorough and unswerving Irish Nationalist, and his splendid generosity to the cause was well known. In the 1880s he was an individualist anarchist writer, in Liberty, Alarm and Lucifer. From 1916-18, he was the president of the Mass. State Council, Friends of Irish Freedom. From 1920-21, he wrote a third of the Irish World’s anonymous political commentary. From July to December, 1921, he promoted a nationwide boycott of British goods. He married Miss Helen Fischer, in New York City, in 1892, and they had two children - Eoghan and Domnall. He died October 15, 1922 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. [3]
Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.
A transformer is a passive component that transfers electrical energy from one electrical circuit to another circuit, or multiple circuits. A varying current in any coil of the transformer produces a varying magnetic flux in the transformer's core, which induces a varying electromotive force (EMF) across any other coils wound around the same core. Electrical energy can be transferred between separate coils without a metallic (conductive) connection between the two circuits. Faraday's law of induction, discovered in 1831, describes the induced voltage effect in any coil due to a changing magnetic flux encircled by the coil.
Alternating current (AC) is an electric current which periodically reverses direction and changes its magnitude continuously with time, in contrast to direct current (DC), which flows only in one direction. Alternating current is the form in which electric power is delivered to businesses and residences, and it is the form of electrical energy that consumers typically use when they plug kitchen appliances, televisions, fans and electric lamps into a wall socket. A common source of DC power is a battery cell in a flashlight. The abbreviations AC and DC are often used to mean simply alternating and direct, respectively, as when they modify current or voltage.
George Westinghouse Jr. was an American entrepreneur and engineer based in Pennsylvania who created the railway air brake and was a pioneer of the electrical industry, receiving his first patent at the age of 19. Westinghouse saw the potential of using alternating current for electric power distribution in the early 1880s and put all his resources into developing and marketing it. This put Westinghouse's business in direct competition with Thomas Edison, who marketed direct current for electric power distribution. In 1911 Westinghouse received the American Institute of Electrical Engineers's (AIEE) Edison Medal "For meritorious achievement in connection with the development of the alternating current system." He founded the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1886.
In electrical engineering, single-phase electric power is the distribution of alternating current electric power using a system in which all the voltages of the supply vary in unison. Single-phase distribution is used when loads are mostly lighting and heating, with few large electric motors. A single-phase supply connected to an alternating current electric motor does not produce a rotating magnetic field; single-phase motors need additional circuits for starting, and such motors are uncommon above 10 kW in rating.
The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an American manufacturing company founded in 1886 by George Westinghouse. It was originally named "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company" and was renamed "Westinghouse Electric Corporation" in 1945. The company acquired the CBS television network in 1995 and was renamed "CBS Corporation" until being acquired by Viacom in 1999, a merger completed in April 2000. The CBS Corporation name was later reused for one of the two companies resulting from the split of Viacom in 2005.
William Stanley Jr. was an American physicist born in Brooklyn, New York. During his career, he obtained 129 patents covering a variety of electric devices. In 1913, he also patented an all-steel vacuum bottle, and formed the Stanley Bottle Company.
Harold Pitney Brown was an American electrical engineer and inventor known for his activism in the late 1880s against the use of alternating current (AC) for electric lighting in New York City and around the country.
The war of the currents was a series of events surrounding the introduction of competing electric power transmission systems in the late 1880s and early 1890s. It grew out of two lighting systems developed in the late 1870s and early 1880s; arc lamp street lighting running on high-voltage alternating current (AC), and large-scale low-voltage direct current (DC) indoor incandescent lighting being marketed by Thomas Edison's company. In 1886, the Edison system was faced with new competition: an alternating current system initially introduced by George Westinghouse's company that used transformers to step down from a high voltage so AC could be used for indoor lighting. Using high voltage allowed an AC system to transmit power over longer distances from more efficient large central generating stations. As the use of AC spread rapidly with other companies deploying their own systems, the Edison Electric Light Company claimed in early 1888 that high voltages used in an alternating current system were hazardous, and that the design was inferior to, and infringed on the patents behind, their direct current system.
The utility frequency, (power) line frequency or mains frequency is the nominal frequency of the oscillations of alternating current (AC) in a wide area synchronous grid transmitted from a power station to the end-user. In large parts of the world this is 50 Hz, although in the Americas and parts of Asia it is typically 60 Hz. Current usage by country or region is given in the list of mains electricity by country.
Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov was a Russian electrical engineer, businessman and the inventor of the Yablochkov candle and the transformer.
Power engineering, also called power systems engineering, is a subfield of electrical engineering that deals with the generation, transmission, distribution, and utilization of electric power, and the electrical apparatus connected to such systems. Although much of the field is concerned with the problems of three-phase AC power – the standard for large-scale power transmission and distribution across the modern world – a significant fraction of the field is concerned with the conversion between AC and DC power and the development of specialized power systems such as those used in aircraft or for electric railway networks. Power engineering draws the majority of its theoretical base from electrical engineering and mechanical engineering.
Lucien Gaulard invented devices for the transmission of alternating current electrical energy.
Edwin James Houston was an American electrical engineer, academic, businessman, inventor and writer.
The Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant, constructed in 1890 near Ophir, Colorado, was one of the first commercial system to produce and transmit alternating current (AC) electricity for industrial use and one of the first AC hydro-electric plants ever constructed. It became operational in 1891 and was built by Westinghouse Electric around two of their large alternators. One was set up in the valley as a generator and driven by water. It was connected by a 2.6-mile (4.2 km) transmission line to the second alternator used as a motor up at the Gold King Mine to drive the mining operation. The facility has been changed and upgraded over the years but is still in operation. It is now on the List of IEEE Milestones.
An electric power system is a network of electrical components deployed to supply, transfer, and use electric power. An example of a power system is the electrical grid that provides power to homes and industries within an extended area. The electrical grid can be broadly divided into the generators that supply the power, the transmission system that carries the power from the generating centers to the load centers, and the distribution system that feeds the power to nearby homes and industries.
Electric power transmission, the tools and means of moving electricity far from where it is generated, date back to the late 19th century. They include the movement of electricity in bulk and the delivery of electricity to individual customers ("distribution"). In the beginning, the two terms were used interchangeably.
Oliver Blackburn Shallenberger was an American electrical engineer and inventor. He is associated with electrical inventions related to alternating current. He is most noted for inventing the first successful alternating current (AC) electrical meter, the forerunner of the modern electric meter. This was critical to general acceptance of AC power.
The World Wireless System was a turn of the 20th century proposed telecommunications and electrical power delivery system designed by inventor Nikola Tesla based on his theories of using Earth and its atmosphere as electrical conductors. He claimed this system would allow for "the transmission of electric energy without wires" on a global scale as well as point-to-point wireless telecommunications and broadcasting. He made public statements citing two related methods to accomplish this from the mid-1890s on. By the end of 1900 he had convinced banker J. P. Morgan to finance construction of a wireless station based on his ideas intended to transmit messages across the Atlantic to England and to ships at sea. His decision to change the design to include wireless power transmission to better compete with Guglielmo Marconi's new radio based telegraph system was met with Morgan's refusal to fund the changes. The project was abandoned in 1906, never to become operational.
John Dixon Gibbs (1834–1912) was a British engineer and financier who, together with Lucien Gaulard, is often credited as the co-inventor of the AC step-down transformer. The transformer was first demonstrated in 1883 at London's Royal Aquarium. At the time the term "transformer" had not yet been invented, so instead it was referred to as a "secondary generator". Although he is usually credited equally with Gaulard, Gibb's role in the invention appears to have been more that of a financial backer and businessman.
| Authority control: People |
|---|
