Background
Philip was born on November 25, 1896 in Folotwiner, Austria, one of four children of Isak Sporn, a teacher, and Rachel Kolker. His parents later immigrated to the United States, and Sporn became a naturalized citizen in 1907.
(Energy in an Age of Limited Availability and Delimited Ap...)
Energy in an Age of Limited Availability and Delimited Applicability focuses on the energy crisis that threatens national safety, economy, and way of living. This book emphasizes that the energy problem is the result of a long chain of misguided policies leading to wasteful use of oil and gas and reliance on cheap foreign oil rather than developing domestic supplies. The topics discussed include the world-wide pervasiveness of the energy problem; energy self-sufficiency versus energy independence; social-economic foundation of growth in energy use; and ingredients of a balanced and rational energy economy. The sources of energy; launching and implementing project independence; keystone in the arch of project independence; and research and its place in project independence are also deliberated. This text likewise covers the costs and financing for resolving energy crisis, elaborating the proposed figures on the 39,000 mw of fossil fuel capacity. This publication is intended for energy conservationists, but is also beneficial to students and individuals concerned with energy problems.
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(Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating bac...)
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
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(Three Lectures Delivered Under The Auspices Of The Gradua...)
Three Lectures Delivered Under The Auspices Of The Graduate School Of Business, Columbia University, February-March 1962.
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Philip was born on November 25, 1896 in Folotwiner, Austria, one of four children of Isak Sporn, a teacher, and Rachel Kolker. His parents later immigrated to the United States, and Sporn became a naturalized citizen in 1907.
He was first involved with utilities while a student at Stuyvesant High School in New York City, working as a lamplighter for the New York Edison Company. Sporn graduated from Columbia University in 1917, with a degree in electrical engineering.
Sporn worked for the Crocker-Wheeler Manufacturing Company from 1917 to 1919, then became a utility engineer with the Consumers Power Company. In 1920 he joined the American Gas and Electric Company (AGE) as a protection engineer.
AGE promoted Sporn through a variety of posts: communication engineer, transmission and distribution engineer, and chief electrical engineer. He became the chief engineer of AGE and its subsidiaries in 1933, and testified on their behalf at the congressional hearings that resulted in the Public Utilities Holding Companies Act of 1935. The company was then the largest investor-owned electric utility system in the nation and owned twenty subsidiaries providing electricity in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
The 1935 law required the divestiture of all noncontiguous subsidiaries and caused a drastic reorganization or dissolution of most utility holding companies. AGE, however, already had a compact and interrelated system, so it had only to spin off two utilities in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Sporn supervised AGE's reorganization and became its executive vice-president in 1945.
AGE grew rapidly during the following decades, as Sporn introduced important innovations in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity. AGE received the Charles A. Coffin Award for "distinguished pioneering of advanced engineering concepts" in 1954, for its construction of high-voltage transmission lines and high-pressure generators.
In 1958, Sporn changed the company's name to American Electric Power (AEP), to reflect the company's spin-off of gas subsidiaries in the previous decades.
Under Sporn, AEP constantly increased generating plant capacity well beyond predicted future needs, then used its sales force to create larger demands for electric power.
AEP persuaded large industrial firms like Kaiser Aluminum to relocate plants in its service area by offering special discounts for high-volume users of electricity. It also encouraged sales of electric appliances in order to increase the consumption of electricity by residential customers and promoted the concept of the all-electric house, in which electricity would power the heating and air-conditioning, as well as lighting and all appliances.
Sporn also served on a number of committees advising the United States Atomic Energy Commission and on other government-industry committees, and frequently testified before Congress about nuclear power. He predicted that by the year 2000, nuclear power plants would be generating 50 percent of the electricity used by Americans. Sporn never accepted the industry's overly optimistic predictions about nuclear technology's economic benefits (some proponents predicted that nuclear power would eventually make electricity "too cheap to meter"). Instead, he advocated more research into traditional sources of electric power--coal, oil, and gas.
Sporn had only criticism for the period's nascent environmental movement, however, which he saw as the source of unnecessary regulations that would drive up the cost of electricity. Sporn retired from the AEP presidency on December 1, 1961, but remained active on the AEP board of directors and as a member of its executive committee. Simultaneously with Sporn's retirement, the board of directors created the AEP System Development Committee to oversee the firm's engineering and technological activities, and to focus on research into new forms of energy generation. Sporn was appointed the committee's full-time chairman.
He died in 1978.
(Energy in an Age of Limited Availability and Delimited Ap...)
(Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating bac...)
(Three Lectures Delivered Under The Auspices Of The Gradua...)
Sporn supported the development of nuclear power as an alternative means of fueling generating plants. He initiated a multi-utility consortium that constructed one of the nation's first nuclear power plants, operated by the Commonwealth Edison Company at Dresden.
He disapproved of gas and electric companies' being owned by the same holding company, believing that such dual ownership destroyed any initiative for either subsidiary to compete or introduce innovations to improve customers' services.
On September 23, 1923, Sporn married Sadie Posner; they had three children.