Laboratory and Factory Tests in Electrical Engineering

Abstract

IT is almost unavoidable that a book on laboratory practice, written by men whose duty it is to plan and superintend the work done by students, must savour somewhat of the instruction sheets which at universities are supplied to the laboratory classes. It is equally unavoidable that such instruction cannot be given in perfectly general terms, but must be adapted more or less to the syllabus in use at each particular university, and to the plant provided for the laboratory. Thus a work on laboratory tests may be exceedingly useful to students working at the particular laboratory to which it refers, but whether students at other institutions will be able to derive much benefit from it is doubtful. The advanced student and the scientific engineer, who is already in practice, will probably also be able to derive some advantage from the book under review, but he would reap the same advantage with less mental labour from any elementary text-book on electrical engineering. The words “factory tests” in the title must be taken to mean that the tests used in a particular laboratory may more or less also be used in a factory. This is, of course, true of all work carried out in a modern well-equipped laboratory, and, therefore, not a distinctive feature of the methods described in the present work. Laboratory and Factory Tests in Electrical Engineering. By George F. Sever Fitzhugh Townsend. Second edition, revised and enlarged. Pp. xii+269. (London: A. Constable and Co., Ltd.; New York: D. van Nostrand Co., 1908.) Price 10s. 6d. net.