 The standards
laboratory was kept in the original form recommended by Dr. John Hopkinson.
An adaptation of the Kelvin electrometer was used as a reflecting
wattmeter, a Kelvin electrostatic reflecting voltmeter as a standard
voltmeter, and a Siemens dynamometer as a standard ammeter; the monthly
calibration of these standards lasted about two days and was done
with appropriate solemnity. At Cremorne works (named from the gay
Gardens of eighteenth-century Chelsea), trouble from vibration had
been avoided by mounting the instruments on brick pillars about 4
ft square with deep foundations and 3-in marble tops. When transferred
to Trafford Park the standards were placed at the end of E aisle with
the test room containing the alternator and battery-driven d.c. motor
at the north end of K aisle.
Meters
calibrated were chiefly Shallenberger's ampere-hour meter, for long
the only one of its kind, and his watt-hour meter. The latter was
the first step in the production of a satisfactory a.c. watt-hour
meter, but on account of its size and weight it did not long remain
in demand and was followed by the Westinghouse type A. Indicating
instruments were made in a wide range of Westinghouse designs, many
of which were still being produced with the approval of power station
engineers in 1930, a high tribute to their originators. The first
relays manufactured appear somewhat crude today, but they met the
needs of the infant electricity supply industry; among them were
overcurrent relays of the instantaneous solenoid type, and reverse
power relays that were simply indicating wattmeters with contacts.
From
the outset, it was vital to be able to test the properties of raw
materials, and before the main shop was finished A. P. M. Fleming
and R. Johnson, who had been working on insulation problems at Pittsburgh,
established themselves in the main office building with packing
cases as furniture. They soon put up a small shed some 13 ft by
6 ft in the middle of D aisle and carried out elementary tests,
using paraffin heaters until gas was available. A little later a
more elaborate shop with a 60,000-V testing transformer was set
up, but the small insulation testing section in D aisle was the
origin of the present research department.
Another
formidable material problem was the ageing of transformer sheet
steel: before the days of silicon steel, the energy loss increased
so rapidly that transformers were known to burn out as a result.
Fleming therefore set up, with F. E. L. Hurst, a small magnetic
testing section and installed a permeameter (partly due to Miles
Walker), an iron loss tester, and ageing equipment. A sample transformer
core made from each consignment of sheet steel was kept at 80°C
for a month, and the energy loss measured daily.
LIFE AT TRAFFORD PARK
Trafford Park in 1902 did not belie its name. Though to the east
the shops of Glover's and the Lancashire Dynamo had been built in
1898 and 1899 respectively, it was still a mainly rural area—fields,
woods, ponds, and country lanes. Trafford Hall, the old mansion,
stood in its grounds almost unchanged, the lake was still picturesque,
and pheasant, rabbits, and trout abounded for sport. A keeper's
cottage survived for twenty-five years as an office in the transformer
shop.
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