Abstract
A THOUGHTFUL address was delivered on October 27 by Mr. H. G. Taylor, chairman of the Liverpool Centre of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, on “Co–ordination and Standardization”. He regards co–ordination as the best means of arriving at standardization. He said it would be disastrous if the end of the War found engineers unprepared to face the problems of peace in a changed world. Immediately after the War of 1914—18, a major happening in the history of the electrical supply industry in Great Britain was the appointment by the Board of Trade of the Electricity Commissioners as a technical body under the chairmanship of Sir John Snell. As a result of their investigations and in conjunction with the Weir Committee, the Central Electricity Board was established in 1926, its function being to supply electricity in bulk to various distributors and concurrently to increase the availability of supply. This entailed co–ordinating the existing supply authorities, their personnel and plant, while the question of interconnexion of plant involved standardization of frequency, the necessity of which Sir John Snell foresaw, and powers to enforce a national standard of 50 cycles were consequently included in the Act of 1926. As a theory, standardization in electrical engineering is almost as old as the science itself, but its application in Great Britain has lagged too far behind technical progress to maintain a healthy condition in the industry, the development of the heavier engineering commodities having continued, for the most part, on individual lines.
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Standardization in the Electrical Industry. Nature 148, 747–748 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/148747d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/148747d0