Maintenance of Electrical Equipment: A Complete Guide for Prospective Ground Engineers Studying for an “X” Licence

THE electric current is often compared, especially in “ popular ” works, to the flow of water in a pipe. This conception holds good in certain respects, but is definitely misleading in many ways. The ground engineer who wishes to obtain the “ X ” licence for electrical equipment need not, it is true, make such a close study of the fundamentals of electricity and magnetism as the electrical engineer or science degree student would have to do. Nevertheless, in order to understand the operation and maintenance of electrical apparatus, however simple, some theoretical knowledge is necessary. In electrical work, the beginner is confronted with one special difficulty—the absence of moving parts—and this difficulty seems to be most formidable to men who have been accustomed in their daily work to think in terms of crank‐shafts, gear‐wheels, cams, valves, push‐rods and all the other apparatus of mechanical engineering. To put the situation into a phrase, the beginner wants to “ see the wheels go round,” and is naturally somewhat baffled when he discovers that there are no wheels to go round. Some imagination is, therefore, necessary in studying electrical phenomena, and the student, particularly the engine fitter, must school himself to avoid the futile applica‐tion of well‐absorbed mechanical principles to apparatus in which they have no application.