NEW CALCULATER

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 29, 16 May 1947, Page 9

NEW CALCULATER

NEW ZEALANDER’S INGENUITY WORK OF MONTHS DONE IN HOURS Engineer's’ calculations which would usually take four months to complete' can be done in 16 hours as a result of an ingenious machine which has been designed by a 21-year-old enginering assistant to the Signal and Electrical Branch of the New Zealand Railways Department, Mr P. A. Angus. After spending almost a year doing calculations connected with electric train services Mr Angus decided to design a machine to do them for him, and within a week the traction network analyser, as it is technically known, has been designed. It was built by the laboratory staff of the chief electrical engineer’s office in five months. Senior electrical engineers say that electrification schemes in New Zealand will benefit materially from the invention for the next 50 years. . The machine has already been used to check estimates of the size, location and number of sub-stations required to feed the Hutt Valley line when it is electrified. It will also complete the complicated calculations for the Auckland electrification scheme in a week, work which normally would take three men a year to do.

A Scale Model

The calculator is, in effect, a scale model of an electric train system translated into ' dials, meters, and switches, and by twisting one switch the passage of a train along a section of track is imitated with all the electrical effects of an actual train. .The machine can deal with problems of electrical supply and the power drawn by any number of trains on a section of track is measured on •miniature meters. ■■ Mr Angus gave the credit for the job to Mr H. T. Robinson and his assistant, Mr G. H. Rayner, of the Chief Signal and Electrical Engineers’ Laboratory. Their most difficult task was to find the £6OO worth of equipment which has gone into the machine. The analyser’s accuracy depends on a stable power supply, so it is provided with a . battery of its own. Voltages and currents are scaled down to a fraction of their true value. Measuring six feet high and seven feet six inches across, it in r eludes 194 rotary switches, about 50 other switches, 32 meter’s and 8000 feet of wire.