DEFINITIONS AND DESIGNATIONS IN ELECTROTECHNICS.
We may discourse for some time to come upon the uniformity of electric language, for universal agreement is far from being established. An important step toward the unity of this language was taken in 1881 by the congress of Paris, which rendered the use of the C.G.S. system definitive and universal. This labor was completed in 1884 by the meeting of a new congress at Paris, at which a definition of the C.G.S. and practical units was distinctly decided upon. That the unit of light defined by the congress has not rapidly come into favor is due to the fact that its practical realization is not within everybody's reach.
The work of unification should not come to a standstill on so good a road. How many times in scientific works or in practical applications do we find the same physical magnitude designated by different names, or even the use of the same expression to designate entirely different things!
The result is an increase of difficulties and confusions, not only for persons not thoroughly initiated into these notions, but also for adepts, even, in this new branch of the engineer's art. The effects of such confusion make themselves still further felt in the reading of foreign publications. Thus, for example, in Germany that part of a dynamo electric machine that is called in France the induit (armature) is sometimes styled anker, and more rarely armatur. The north pole of a freely suspended magnetized needle is the one that points toward the geographical north of the earth. In France, and by some English authors, this pole is called the south one. Among electricians of the same country, what by one is called electro-motive force is by another styled difference of potential, by a third tension, and even difference of tension.
Our confrere Ruhlmann, of the Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift, gives a still more remarkable example yet of such confusion. The word polarization, borrowed from optics, where it has an unequivocal sense, serves likewise to designate the development of the counter electro-motive force of galvanic elements, and also that essentially different condition of badly conducting substances that is brought about by the simultaneous influence of quantities of opposite electricity.
In Germany, the word induction, coupled with the word wire, for example, according to the formation of compound words in that language, may also have a double meaning, and it is by the sense alone of the phrase that we learn whether we have to do with an induced wire or an inducting one. The examples might be multiplied.
At its session of November 5, 1884, the International Society of Electricians, upon a motion of Mr. Hospitalier, who had made a communication upon this question, appointed a committee to study it and report upon it. The English Society of Electricians likewise took the subject into consideration, and one of its most active and distinguished members, Mr. Jamieson, presented the result of his labors at the May session of the society in 1885.
A discussion arose in which the committee of the International Society of Electricians was invited to take part. The committee was represented by its secretary, Mr. Hospitalier, who expressed himself in about these words: "The committee on electric notations presided over by Mr. Blauvelt has finished a part of its task, that relative to abbreviations, notations, and symbols. It will soon take up the second part, which relates to definitions and agreements." He broadly outlined the committee's ideas as follows: