TESTING
AND OTHER APPARATUS
Testing equipment continued to be produced and manufactured in the
research laboratories for use in the works and outside. Examples of
apparatus developed from 1930 onwards are Schering bridges and discharge
bridges for testing condenser bushings and other electrical equipment,
turns counters and short-circuit testers for coils, condenser discharge
magnetizers for permanent magnets, plating and paint thickness gauges,
transmission dynamometers, and finally turbine supervisory equipment
for the continuous recording of bearing vibration, shaft eccentricity
and differential expansion.
 More
elaborate was a complete sixteen-element electromagnetic oscillograph
made in 1934 for the Switchgear Testing Company. Special apparatus
was designed for the electrical recording of instantaneous fluid
pressures in oil circuit-breakers under short-circuit conditions
when currents of the order of 300,000 A may be encountered, and
this involved unusual problems of interference.
In 1931
a high-speed continuously evacuated cathode ray oscillograph with
potential divider was designed and constructed by F. P. Burch and
R. V. Whelpton, primarily for studies on surge phenomena; it operated
with an accelerating voltage of 50 kV and was notably reliable and
easy to work, becoming the forerunner of many equipments now in
service.
A highly
specialized piece of equipment produced for scientific workers in
an allied field was a differential analyser, having eight integrating
units. Built in 1934 for the laboratory of applied mathematics at
Manchester University, this was the first large precision machine
of its type in the country. Some years later a similar machine was
supplied for the mathematics laboratory at Cambridge.
TECHNICAL
GENERATING plant continued to increase in size and efficiency,
and side by side with the Company's technical developments came
a greater capacity for carrying out comprehensive installations.
An example is a contract completed in 1931 at Montevideo. M-V was
the main contractor for the first portion of a power station designed
for an ultimate capacity of 120,000 kW, the initial installation
comprising two 25,000-kW 3000-r.p.m. turbo-generators and four oil-fired
and four coal-fired water tube boilers. The contract was completed
in record time, only sixteen months elapsing between the placing
of the order and the starting up of the first set; the overall guarantees
for the station as a whole, based on the calorific value of the
oil or coal used against kilowatt-hours at the outgoing feeders,
were completely fulfilled.
STEAM TURBINES
Steam turbine progress was conspicuous both in machines for use
under the prevailing operating conditions and in units for operation
at 'super pressures'. The
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