Re: Tesla Receiver Coil

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>

But the other day I thought: What if the boundaries
between disciplines didn't exist back in 1899?
Electrical engineering probably didn't exist, since
Tesla, Edison and Charles Steinmetz were just in the
process of inventing it. You certainly couldn't go and
study it at university."

    By the mid-1890's the boundaries were just beginning to form 
between various disciplines and 10 years later Electrical Engineering 
was a formal discipline.  I wouldn't call Edison an engineer in the 
same sense as Tesla and more particularly Steinmetz, but he produced 
a lot of useful stuff.  Steinmetz had an important role in getting a 
formal Electrical Engineering curriculum in University studies, but 
there were many others contributing too.  I have a book on 
"Electricity and Magnetism" by Sylvanus Thompson, well-known British 
teacher and author.
It's dated 1901 and is the second edition of one originally issued 
about 1895.  I still use it as a reference to elementary 
electrostatics and electromagnetism because of its very clear 
exposition of the subjects, but in the later chapters it has a lot of 
stuff on electrical machinery which would have done very well as 
introductory material for EE majors.
It had originally belonged to a student at West Point and has lots of 
his annotations in it, making it particuarly interesting.

Ed