DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALTERNATING CURRENT CONSTANT POTENTIAL SYSTEM
The distance that current can be economically distributed, as has been shown, depends upon the voltage used. If, therefore, current could be sent out at a high voltage and the pressure brought down to that desired at the various points to which it is distributed, such distribution could cover a much greater area. Lucien Gaulard was a French inventor and was backed by an Englishman named John D. Gibbs. About 1882 they patented a series alternating-current system of distribution. They had invented what is now called a transformer which consisted of two separate coils of wire mounted on an iron core. All the primary coils were connected in series, which, when current went through them, induced a current in the secondary coils. Lamps were connected in multiple on each of the secondary coils. An American patent was applied for on the transformer, but was refused on the basis that “more current cannot be taken from it than is put in.” While this is true if the word energy were used, the transformer can supply a greater current at a lower voltage (or vice versa) than is put in, the ratio being in proportion to the relative number of turns in the primary and secondary coils. The transformer was treated with ridicule and Gaulard died under distressing circumstances.
Diagram of Stanley’s Alternating Current Multiple System, 1885.
This system is now universally used for distributing electric current long distances.
Information regarding the transformer came to the attention of William Stanley, an American, in the latter part of 1885. He made an intensive study of the scheme, and developed a transformer in which the primary coil was connected in multiple on a constant potential alternating-current high-voltage system. From the secondary coil a lower constant voltage was obtained. An experimental installation was made at Great Barrington, Mass., in the early part of 1886, the first commercial installation being made in Buffalo, New York, in the latter part of the year. This scheme enabled current to be economically distributed to much greater distances. The voltage of the high-tension circuit has been gradually increased as the art has progressed from about a thousand volts to over two hundred thousand volts pressure in a recent installation in California, where electric power is transmitted over two hundred miles.