Mr. Upson, now retired, was for many years a professor of electrical engineering. Besides his books on the subject, he has written numerous scholarly and scientific articles.
In September, 1903, I went to work in the Testing Department of the General Electric Company in Schenectady. Later that fall, I was one of half a dozen ordered to report at the New Power Station to help with some testing of a new steam turbine-electric generator. This was at a time when steam turbines were a new and quite exciting development. Parsons turbines had been developed in England and the Westinghouse Company had secured rights from this company for America. General Electric Company then obtained rights for the Curtis turbine and was pushing these as fast as possible. This turbine-generator unit was of the vertical shaft type in contrast with the horizontal Parsons type. The General Electric Company had already built one 2,000 kilowatt unit which was successfully installed and working in the New Power plant. Now a much larger unit of 4,000 kilowatt capacity was ready for testing. It was for this that I was assigned. The machine was quite impressive, standing, I should say, about fifteen or perhaps twenty feet high. It was running when we arrived and made a considerable roar.
We testers took our places before the various meters, or measuring instruments, and proceeded to take readings as load was applied to the generator. Suddenly there was a flash; something had gone wrong and the great machine was slowed to a halt. We were all amazed. Then, someone found on the floor part of a broken bolt about two inches long that had evidently been involved. The man in charge was E. B. Raymond, very much the boss, big and commanding. Mr. Raymond showed us the broken bolt and demanded that we find the other part of it. We scurried around everywhere looking, but to no avail. Then he announced that the one who found the piece would be given a week’s vacation — just at Christmas time — at full pay.
This was indeed a temptation; certainly it was to me. Then I remembered that Mr. Elmer Sperry had once told me that when I lost anything I was not to waste my time looking wildly around but rather to stop and think where it would naturally be. So I did just that, and decided that the piece sought must be somewhere inside the generator. I got a wire, put a hook on it, climbed to the top of the machine, and began to probe around as best I could down inside. It was a very difficult thing to get into, and my effort was futile. Finally, the order was given to tear down the machine, for nothing could be done until the trouble was found. And then it was found, embedded in the laminations of the armature, right where I had been trying to probe. I did not get my holiday.
Now, I have told this story to impress on you that a 4,000 kilowatt turbogenerator at that time was something to stand in awe of. Not many years earlier it had required ten pounds of coal to generate one kilowatt-hour of electricity; now, with much larger and more efficient generators only three pounds were required, and engineers were working hard to bring about still greater perfection. This meant reducing the price of electricity to you and me, which was done when most everything else was costing more. The only reason why our monthly electric bills did not go down was that we kept using more and more electricity as it became available for more and more uses. That march of progress has kept going to this day, spurred by advancing technology in a free society.
Continuing Progress
In February, 1910, it was my privilege to go with a large group of engineering students on a sightseeing trip to Chicago. Of the many engineering wonders there on display, none was more impressive than the great new Fisk Street electric station nearing completion. It had been designed to consist of eight or ten huge 5,000 kilowatt turbogenerators of the vertical type giving a total capacity of forty or fifty thousand kilowatts, a great help toward meeting Chicago’s growing needs for electricity. But the most surprising thing was that before the last machine was installed orders came to tear it down, and to tear the others down in turn. For while this was going on, new and larger units were being substituted in their places. It had been found that the same station could accommodate 12,500 kilowatt units making the station two and a half times as large, and again reducing the cost of electricity. On our inspection we were warned not to get too close to these giant machines which contained such concentration of power.
Now we jump to the new station at Cahokia, across the river from St. Louis, and to the year 1930. Turbogenerators were getting so huge that it was found best to discard the vertical type and go to the horizontal. Here, the plan was for eight 20,000 kilowatt machines, giving a total capacity of 160,000 kilowatts. In order to reduce the cost of electricity still further, every new device was adopted. Here, the great supplies of coal were at hand and the coal was pulverized and blown into the boilers. The steam was superheated, and the Mississippi River was called on for cooling water to the extent that it was said the station used six times as much water as the entire city of St. Louis. But the planned-for units were never completed, for again it was found that larger ones would be more efficient. The 20,000 kilowatt units were taken out and 60,000 kilowatt machines were put in their places. Again, electricity was cheaper for the public.
How Far?
How far was this process to go? Do not think it is all a case of the size of the machines; far from it. Every item of use in the electric system was being subject to intense scrutiny and research by the engineers and scientists who worked under the free enterprise system which has prevailed in America and still prevails except in a few notable cases where public ownership advocates with political support have succeeded in gaining control. The real progress in this great field can be said to have been the exclusive result of the efforts of the free workers. Public ownership does not make for progress; all the progress it can show is what it has adopted from the free workers. That story has been told many times, and I do not intend to spend more time on it here. I firmly believe that nothing we have of a like nature is so well done, so inexpensive, so reliable, and still so progressive, as the privately-operated electric power plants. We do not half appreciate them.
Now I have taken you from the small turbogenerators, considered huge in their day, from 2,000, 4,000, 5,000, 12,500, 20,000 and even 60,000 kilowatt capacity, which culminated in 1930. But that is not all, for still the great machines grew and grew. Three years ago, we were apprized that they had reached 500,000 kilowatts, and today there are on order several machines which will have a capacity of 800,000 kilowatts each, large enough in fact for one machine to provide electricity for a city of half a million population. These great machines no longer demand ten or three pounds of coal per kilowatt-hour. They have been made so efficient that they require only seven-tenths of a pound for each kilowatt-hour produced, thus saving great quantities of coal and still lowering the cost to the users.
Freedom from TVA
I firmly believe that were the Tennessee Valley Authority turned over to private operation with no more government intervention than is now given our private electric companies, the people of Tennessee could still have their low-cost rates without having to rely on the rest of the United States to make up annual deficits. At the same time, operation would be at a profit and a substantial tax would be turned in each year to the Federal treasury, thereby, theoretically, at least, reducing the burden upon each one of us. And the service would be at least as good, if not better.
One other point I wish to make here: You should not overlook the fact that electric power is an engineer’s field of action. You may not know what this implies, but I tell you its great implication is that the work will be done honestly, straightforwardly, efficiently, and in the best-known, up-to-date engineering manner. For that is the way engineers work.
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Voice of Experience
Do you know what amazes me more than anything else? The impotence of force to organize anything. There are only two powers in the world — the spirit and the sword. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, Paroles de Napoleon
