(Electric power transmission, a practical treatise for pra...)
Electric power transmission, a practical treatise for practical men. This book, "Electric power transmission", by Louis Bell, is a replication of a book originally published before 1906. It has been restored by human beings, page by page, so that you may enjoy it in a form as close to the original as possible.
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Electric Railways: A Series of Papers and Discussions Presented at the International Electrical Congress in St. Louis, 1904
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Louis Bell was an American engineer and pioneer in the field of electricty.
Background
Louis Bell was descended from John Bell, a staunch Scotch-Irishman who in 1719 left County Antrim, Ireland, to join, in 1720, the small colony of his countrymen already settled at Londonderry in the southeastern corner of New Hampshire. Here the family prospered and became prominent in the public affairs of county and state. The grandfather of Louis Bell was Samuel Bell, twice elected senator from New Hampshire and Daniel Webster's intimate friend, while his father was Col. Louis Bell, educated at Brown University, a man of commanding physique, clear head, and scientific tastes. In the final charge by which the Union troops captured Fort Fisher, North Carolina, on January 15, 1865, Col. Bell took part, and died of wounds received in action on that day. It is little wonder that the son, then only six weeks old, always regarded his father as a hero. His broken-hearted mother, Mary Ann Persis (Bouton) Bell, died a few months later; the boy Louis and his sister, four years older, grew up in the home of their grandmother, the widow of Gov. Samuel Bell, at Chester, New Hampshire.
Education
Twelve years in a quiet, remote village where Louis was in close contact with nature and enjoyed the privileges of a well-stocked library, breathing the atmosphere of a family acquainted with men of large affairs, turned the child into a lad with a mind which was as clear and alert as his body was strong and vigorous. At Phillips Exeter Academy he prepared for Dartmouth College, where he matriculated in 1880 and graduated in 1884.
Career
A year of graduate work at Dartmouth preceded three years of residence at Johns Hopkins University. In Baltimore, he began serious work in physics and chemistry, taking an active part in the Journal Club, investigating the absorption spectrum of nitrogen peroxide, the ultra-violet spectrum of cadmium, and other similar problems. His most important work at Baltimore was his determination of the wavelength of the D1 line in the spectrum of sodium. Rowland had just completed his atlas of the solar spectrum and had spent several of the best years of his life in measuring relative wavelengths throughout this spectrum. It was clear that the value of this work would be greatly enhanced if these relative wavelengths were all referred to one standard line whose length was known with high precision.
Bell spent two years of skilful and careful work, with four of Rowland's finest gratings, in an attempt to arrive at just such a value for the D1 line. To his result, Rowland gave a weight equivalent to that of all four of the best previous observers and used this mean as the base of his justly celebrated Preliminary Table of Solar Spectrum Wavelengths. The accuracy of Bell's value at the time of its publication in 1888 was estimated to be of the order of one part in 100, 000. Within three or four years, however, the interferometer method was employed by Michelson - also by Perot and Fabry - for the same purpose. The fact then emerged that the grating method used by Bell was inevitably, if not inherently, affected with an error of at least one part in 30, 000.
On leaving Johns Hopkins University in 1888, Bell spent two years in finding himself, one of these at Purdue University in charge of the recently initiated course in electrical engineering. Two years later he accepted the editorship of the Electrical World. In the same year he was appointed chief engineer in the Power Transmission department of the General Electric Company. Polyphase transmission which at this time was just coming into practise challenged and fascinated Bell's admiration; he made himself an authority on the subject and installed at Redlands, California, the earliest three-phase transmission plant for general service.
After 1895, however, Bell maintained a private office, as consulting engineer, in Boston. Here, as he once remarked, a large part of his business was "to diagnose sick electric railways. " Along with his engineering practise he found time to join O. T. Crosby in the authorship of The Electric Railway (1892). In 1896 appeared his Power Transmission for Electric Railroads, which was almost immediately followed by his Electric Power Transmission. His textbook on The Art of Illumination first appeared in 1902. The two articles contributed to the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, "Motors, Electric" and "Power Transmission, Electric, " illustrate Bell's scientific style at its best; excellent analysis, clarity, and precision of language, together with emphasis, not on defunct apparatus, but upon general principles.
Within the last year of his life Bell published The Telescope (1922), giving the history of the instrument and the principles which underlie its numerous and diverse modern forms. This volume is the work of an amateur in the high and literal sense of that word. Bell's first love and his ruling passion was the subject of light. A large number of patents - more than forty - bear witness to his originality. Bell died in 1923.
(Electric power transmission, a practical treatise for pra...)
Membership
Louis Bell was president of the Illuminating Engineering Society; a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the International Commission on Illumination; vice-president of the British Illuminating Engineering Society.
Personality
In any group Bell was a striking figure; a tall blond, with a rather high-pitched voice, socially inclined, seeing a humorous side to every question, penetrating in his judgments, tenacious in his beliefs, but not to the point of allowing prejudice to produce blindness. His fascinating mastery of English and his sense of fairness made him the best of company.
Connections
In 1893, Louis Bell was married to Sarah G. Hemenway of Somerville, Massachussets.