 Eighty-three
Parsons turbines were made by the Company between 1902 and 1908; one
of the last, a 368-kW unit, was the pioneer of mixed pressure turbines
in this country. However, experience with the disc-and-drum type of
turbine had shown the advantages of impulse blading in freedom from
fine running clearances and therefore from stripping, and before the
Lot's Road case arose the Company had taken out a manufacturing licence
for the impulse type of turbine patented by Professor Rateau. In 1908
after a number of units had been made at Trafford Park it was decided
to concentrate on impulse turbines in future, and in the following
year K. Baumann was engaged to take charge of their development. Both
decisions proved entirely sound. By 1914 nearly 80 per cent of all
the turbines made in Great Britain were of the impulse type, and it
has been the foundation of the Company's turbine business, covering
by now seventeen hundred machines aggregating 12,500,000 kW and ranging
up to 105,000 kW in size.
Electrical
developments owed much to the influence of Miles Walker, who was
in charge of machine design; an outstanding innovation of 1908 was
his multiple radial commutator, which removed a limiting factor
in the design of highspeed d.c. generators. Rotary converters were
increasingly used, and a large number were supplied for the London
Underground railways.
In
1904 Gilbert North came home from Pittsburgh to become the Company's
instrument and meter engineer. With practically no laboratory equipment
he began by designing the famous 'type N' watt-hour meter, which
was far in advance of any other and is the basis of almost every
modern meter. He then turned to indicating instruments and designed
first a moving iron type and then a moving coil type, both on revolutionary
lines. All these innovations rapidly increased in popularity. The
watt-hour meter, when established, was developed in polyphase form
and set a new standard of measurement in polyphase circuits. North
also designed a Merz maximum-demand mechanism in a form that did
much to establish a principle now commonly used for metering bulk
power and industrial consumers' supplies.
Another
valuable accession to the staff was A. H. Olmsted, who in 1908 had
just invented an automatic voltage regulator for generators; with
subsequent development Olmsted regulators came into general use,
and his principles have led to many designs that are still current.
FAREWELL TO GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE
That the Company was able to achieve solid progress under great
difficulties was chiefly due to a spirit of cooperation and determination
among its people, and it is therefore fitting to close this chapter
on a personal note. In September 1909 J. Annan Bryce became chairman
of the Board in place of George Westinghouse.
This
was the official severance of a tenuous connection. For some years
Westinghouse had taken no part in our affairs, being preoccupied
with those of the American Company which
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