A paper read by T. M. Lincoln before the J3th. convention of the Canadian Electrical Association.

There are two schools in which the electrical engineer may receive his training, but only one in which he must receive a course before he can be called a high tension engineer. Those things which are learned in the schools equipped with professors and laboratoms and mathematical text books must be supplemented by the things which can be learned only in the school of experience. These two schools are quite different in method. The college instructs in theory and in those methods of doing things which have become standard by universal adoption. The college teaches positive knowledge. In the school of experience, on the other hand, one is more apt to learn how not to do it, and by the elimination of the unsuccessful, arrive at the goal of success. The knowledge gained by experience is more often negative.

Put to the fresh college graduate the problem of the amount of distance to be left between the conductors of a high tension transmission line. His answer will involve, most likely, the jumping distance of the voltage to be used, the length of span, the sag, and perhaps a liberal factor of safety. It is experience only that will show that his premises are wrong and that the equation to determine spacing of high tension wires depends very little on the voltages to be carried and almost entirely on such little things as the average length and ohmic resistance of cats, the spread of wing of owls and cranes and eagles, and the average length of scrap baling wire, together with the strength of the average small boy's throwing arm.

The college graduate enters prectical work invariably feeling that the great danger of his work lits in his liability of receiving a shock from the high tensk n conductors. Not until he has had experience with accidents of an electrical nature does he learn that it is the danger of being burned he has to fear more than the danger of shock. My own experience, and 1 think it will be checked by the large majority of those in a position to know, has beenthat the number of electrical accidents in which the victim has been injured by burning is incomparably greater than the number from shock.

The graduate has learned how to make accurate measurements of power. He finds after he has " been up against it" that it is easier to measure power accurately than it is to persuade the customer that his. power is being accurately measured.

The man fresh from the college laboratory enters his practical duties with the idea that rubber is one of the best insulators that exists. It is not until he has seen rubber insulation break down in the most unaccountable manner that he finds that rubber as a high ten-sion insulator is extremely treacherous. The deterioration of rubber insulation is probably due to chemical reactions on the rubber induced by the brush dis-charges, which are in turn caused by the high voltage of the conductor.

The newly made graduate usually has a high opinion of efficiency and can calculate the economy of a transmission to an excessively small fraction. When he becomes responsible for the operation of a trans-mission line, however, it does not take him long to find out that efficiency is a vanishing quantity when compared to continuity of operation, and that economy is not to be considered as being in the same class. as good service.

The technical graduate, in short, may have knowledge in plenty, hut his wisdom is to come.

It is furthest from my thoughts to cast any slur upon the technical graduate. I look back upon my own course in electrical engineering and feel that it is the most valuable asset I ever possessed. The technical course is the best of foundations, but it is only a foundation. The end of the college course is rightly called "Commencement." The great advantage of the technical education is that it gives the man proper equipment for overcoming the difficulties with which his experience is bound to bring him into contact. It gives him, as nothing else will, the power of initiative - that most valuable quality that a high tension engineer can possess. There is nothing like the college education to equip a man for making every accident a lesson ;n "how not to do it," and every failure a stepping stone to success.

Take, for instance, the recent accident to the Niagara plant, in which a fire destroyed the cables on the bridge connecting the power house with the transformer house. The lesson to be drawn from this accident-so plain that he who runs may read - is that where many cables are run together, extreme precaution should be taken to protect against danger of fire. Before the occurrence of this fire there was little suspicion that the insulation of cables when lead covered or protected by fire proof braid - as was the case at Niagara - is sufficient to maintain so fierce a blaze without the aid of some other combustible besides the insulation. One accident of this kind should suffice, not only for the Niagara Falls people, but also for any others who have occasion to run many cables together.

The art of long distance transmission as it exists today is the result of the accumulated experience of all those who had to do with transmission work. And the process of accumulation is still going on. Those men who today are designing and operating transmission plants are the moulders of the art. Their expedients for improving service or reliability or for cheapening cost are noted, and when successful have their influence on future installations.

The high tension engineer, no less than the man in any other department of human endeavor, may find in failure the way to better things. It was Roosevelt, the strenuous, who gave utterance to the sentiment that absence of failure accompanied only lack of effort. "The uses of adversity are sweet," and the engineer may well heed the words that Shakespeare puts into the mouth of the Duke, who, exiled to the forest of Arden, finds " tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything."