Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/214

202 advised, states positively that he did not strenuously oppose the use of the alternating current; that he did not oppose it at all; and that, moreover, his opinion was given in 1889, not 1890; that what he did advise at that early date, in view of the untried state of either direct or alternating current transmission, was merely caution in adopting plans, which advice, we may add, was most carefully followed, as will be seen from the fact that the main plans, not to speak of the details, were not decided upon until three years later, during which interval some most remarkable developments had taken place both in the design of machinery for use with alternating current and in the practical transmission of the latter over an immense distance in Europe.

Our writer says: "Until I went to America the manufacturers of electrical machinery never had a consulting engineer to reckon with, but dealt directly with the financiers, who knew nothing about cost or efficiency of machinery," and reference is later made to his being the first to get guarantees of performance from manufacturers of such machinery. The present writer speaks from personal experience in declaring this to be incorrect. The way in which a company, larger and even more representative than the chief one with which Prof. Forbes did business, filled an eleven-hundred-horse-power contract under guarantee, and later supplied an auxiliary generator to make the guarantee good, would perhaps have impressed that gentleman. The particular occurrence referred to is immediately within the writer's knowledge, and the extremely exacting specifications for the said machinery were written and insisted upon by consulting engineers and not by the financiers. It should, however, be unnecessary to say that, of course, the method of requiring guarantees and of employing engineers to write specifications was common in the electrical business, as well as in all others, long before the advent of Forbes.

There are other points in the professor's paper besides those already referred to which require contradiction, and still others, covered by the matter in controversy between himself and Prof. Rowland, which there is every reason to believe might be improved in the matter of accuracy, but which, since directly opposite statements are put forth by the two men, we must be content to let stand in default of other sources of information regarding them.

An opinion of Prof. Forbes that surprises us is set forth in the sentence, "I had always wished to put the dynamos at the bottom of the pit close to the turbines, and I still believe that this arrangement would have served us better." It is the opinion of the writer that it is an unusually good thing for the Niagara Falls Power Company that the above was not done. In his