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 VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

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Covington, Virginia. He received his pre- liminary education in the public schools of that town. In 1894 he entered the Penn- sylvania State College, from which he re- ceived the degree B. S. in 1898, and subse- quently that of E. E. During his college course he spent one summer in the shops of the Covington Machine Company, where he gained practical experience, and also spent two summers with a civil engineering corps doing local railway and other surveying. From July, 1898, to x\ugust. 1899. ^^ was engaged with the Berwind-White Coal Min- ing Company at Windbar. Pennsylvania, where he obtained practical experience in operating electric locomotives, and the fol- lowing year was spent in the factory of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company at East Pittsburgh, where he gain- ed further knowledge relating to manufac- turing details of direct-current and alternat- ing-current machinery. He took a post-grad- uate course in electric engineering at Cornell University, and received the degree of M. M. E. in 1901. In 1905 the degree of Ph. D. was conferred upon him by Cornell. From 1901 to 1904 he was successively assistant and instructor in physics and applied elec- tricity at Cornell, and in 1904 was acting assistant professor of electrical engineering there. From 1905 to 1912 he was associate editor of the "Electrical World," an engi- neering journal, of which he is now editor-in- chief. Since 1909 Dr. McAllister has been professorial lecturer on electrical engineer- ing at the Pennsylvania State College. He was the first to expound and formulate the application of the law of conservation in illumination calculations (1911). To him is due the credit for the development of simplified circle diagrams of single-phase and polyphase induction motors and syn- chronous motors and the absorption-of-light method of calculating illumination. He has been granted patents for alternating-current machinery under dates of 1903, 1904, 1906 and 1907. Dr. McAllister has lectured on subjects pertaining to his special line of work before the Cornell Electrical Society, the New York Electrical Society, the Columbia University Electrical Society, the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute Electrical Engineering Society, the Franklin Institute, and the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He is the author of "Alternating-Current Motors" (1906), used as a text-book in

many of the leading engineering schools, and of chapters on "Transformers" and "Motors" in the "Standard Handbook for Electrical Engineers." He has been a voluminous contributor on engineering sub- jects to the technical press, embracing about one hundred original articles, the most im- portant being: "Complete Commercial Test of Pohphase Induction Motors Using One Wattmeter and One V^oltmeter" (1902) ; "Excitation of Asynchronous Generators by Means of Static Condensance" (1903) ; "Asynchronous Generators" (1903) ; "A Convenient and Economical Electrical Method for Determining Mechanical Tor- que" (1904) ; "Simple Circular Current Locus of the Induction Motor" (1906) ; "The Exciting Current of Induction Motor" (1906) ; "Simple Circle Diagram of the Single-phase Induction Motor" (1906) ; "Magnetic Field in the Single-phase Induc- tion Motor" (1906) ; "Circular Current Loci of the S3nchronous Motor" (1907) ; "Ab- sorption of Light Method of Calculating Illumination" (1908) ; "Bearing of Reflec- tion on Illumination" (1910) ; "Graphical Solution of Problems Involving Plane Sur- face Lighting Sources" (1910), and "The Law of Conservation as Applied to Illum- ination Calculations" (1911). Dr. McAllis- ter is naturallly associated with numerous scientific organizations including the Amer- ican Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Electro-chemical So- ciety, the National Electric Light Associa- tion, the New York Electrical Society, of which he has been vice-president; the Amer- ican Institute of Electrical Engineers, the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, and the Illuminating Engineer- ing Society, "for which he has served as a director. He is also identified with numer- ous social organizations which include the Pennsylvania State College Association of New York, of which he was president in 191 1 ; the New York Southern Society; the Virginians of New York ; the Virginia His- torical Society; the Cornell University Club, and the Engineers Club, New York ; the University Club, State College ; the Cornell Chapter of the Sigma Xi honor society, the Pennsylvania State College Chapter of the Phi Kappa Phi honor fraternity, and honor member of the Pennsylvania State Chapter of the Eta Kappa Nu electrical fraternity.