Electric Transmission of Energy

Abstract

SINCE the invention of the electric telegraph the subject of the electric transmission of energy is that subject which of all others has most attracted the attention of practical scientific men. Under this head are comprehended every form of telegraph and of telephone, electric railways, and the electric transmission of power for the driving of lathes and other machines. Even the novel apparatus which has been described for enabling us to see what is happening at distant places and the very transmission of light itself through the interstellar ether must be regarded as parts of the great subject which Mr. Kapp has undertaken to treat of in this small volume. On examining the book, however, it will be found that the author has wisely confined his attention to the electric transmission of energy for the purpose of its being transformed at a distant place into mechanical energy for driving machinery. Indeed, it may be said that much more than half the book is devoted to the subject of the dynamo-machine, and that much less than half of it is devoted to the subject of the electric transmission of energy. Before electric energy can be transmitted it is necessary to produce it. It is rather difficult to imagine a store of electric energy existing anywhere and ready for transmission; and hence its production, transmission, and transformation into some other form of energy are circumstances which are exactly coincident with one another: as its transmission therefore implicitly involves its production and transformation, Mr. Kapp is perfectly justified in devoting as much of his book as he pleases to a description of the dynamo-machine.

Electric Transmission of Energy.

By Gisbert Kapp (London: Whittaker and Co., 1886.)