Milestones:Shoshone Transmission Line, 1909 and Milestones:Panama Canal Electrical and Control Installations, 1914: Difference between pages

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Panama Canal Electrical and Control Installations, 1914

Panama - Dedication: 4 April 2003 - IEEE Panama Section

Panama canal electrical and control installations.jpg

The Panama Canal project included one of the largest and most important electrical installations in the world early in the 20th century. The use of 1022 electric motors with an installed capacity of 28,290 horsepower largely replaced the steam and water powered equipment then in common use. Reliability and safety were also engineered into the innovative electrical control system, enabling remote lock operation from a central location.

The electrical installations made possible the construction of the Canal, and, more importantly, provided the electrical power required for the operation of the Canal for the remainder of the 20th Century .

The milestone plaque may be viewed at the Panama Canal Administration Building, Balboa, Panama.

The construction of the Canal was considered the world's greatest engineering work at the time. The project was begun by the French in 1876 with the formation of a society to survey Central America for the purpose of building an inter-oceanic canal. It was determined that Panama would provide the best opportunity for success. The first shovel of soil was turned on 1 January 1880. By 1884 there were as many as 19,000 workers on site. They suffered many obstacles including disease and funding, and in 1889 all activity ceased.

The United State canal construction began in 1904, after it acquired the French company's assets and concessions. Sanitation was one of the first issues to be addressed and solved. Communications were improved with new telegraph and telephone systems. It was estimated (by John F. Stevens, Chief Engineer) that it would take a minimum of 8 years to complete a lock canal (1914) and a sea level canal in 18 years (1924).

Electric power was chosen as the most dependable and economical form of power for the operation of the construction plants for the locks, with their cement mixers, stone crushers, cranes, cable ways, automatic locomotives, pumps, etc. Electrical engineer Edward Schildhauer, AIEE Fellow (1913), designed the powerful gate operating mechanism. Each 20 foot diameter gate, is powered by an electric motor. Lock operations required over 1,000 electric motors, as all controls were electric.

Electric motors had already proven to be the most reliable form of power to drive the pumps and other equipment. Alternative forms of power, such as animal, compressed air, and steam had been previously considered and discarded. All the power required for the operation of the two Construction Plants, one located at Gatun and the other at Miraflores, was generated on site. Each plant was fitted with three Curtis steam turbines, 1.5 MW each. They operated at 2,200 volts, 25 cycles, and were connected through a 44 kV double circuit electric line that crossed the Isthmus.

After its opening in August of 1914, the new Gatun Hydroelectric Plant provided the electric power required for the operation of the Canal. The construction plant and its steam turbines located at Gatun were shut down; the one at Miraflores was kept as a backup source of power in case of transmission problems.

After 88 years of uninterrupted service, the Canal continues to provide highly reliable service due, in large part, to its electrical equipment.

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-== Shoshone Transmission Line, 1909  ==
+== Panama Canal Electrical and Control Installations, 1914  ==
-Georgetown, CO Dedicated June 1991 - [[IEEE Denver Section History|IEEE Denver Section]]
+Panama - Dedication: 4 April 2003 - [[IEEE Panama Section History|IEEE Panama Section]]
-[[Image:Shoshone transmission line.jpg|thumb]]
+[[Image:Panama canal electrical and control installations.jpg|thumb]]
-''July 17, 1909, the Shoshone Transmission Line began service carrying power, generated by the Shoshone Hydroelectric Generating Station, to Denver. The Line operated at 90 kV, was 153.4 miles long, and crossed the Continental Divide three times reaching an altitude of 13,500 feet. Its design and construction represented an outstanding electrical engineering accomplishment due to its length, the mountainous country over which it was constructed, and the unusually severe weather conditions under which it operated.''
+''The Panama Canal project included one of the largest and most important electrical installations in the world early in the 20th century. The use of 1022 electric motors with an installed capacity of 28,290 horsepower largely replaced the steam and water powered equipment then in common use. Reliability and safety were also engineered into the innovative electrical control system, enabling remote lock operation from a central location.
-'''The plaque can be viewed at the Georgetown Energy Museum, 600 Griffith Street, Georgetown, CO, U.S.A.'''
+The electrical installations made possible the construction of the Canal, and, more importantly, provided the electrical power required for the operation of the Canal for the remainder of the 20th Century .''
-On 17 July 1909 the Shoshone Transmission Line began carrying power from the Shoshone Hydroelectric Generating Station, on the Colorado River near Glenwood Springs, across the Continental Divide to Denver. This power line was a pioneering achievement because of its 150-mile length, the mountainous country it traversed, and the extreme weather conditions under which it operated.
+The milestone plaque may be viewed at the Panama Canal Administration Building, Balboa, Panama.
-The year the Shoshone Line went into operation was also the year William Howard Taft was inaugurated as the 27th President. When Teddy Roosevelt, thus relieved of the Presidency, then set off for Africa and big-game hunting, several conservative senators wished "health to the lions" and J. Pierpont Morgan said he expected the first lion Roosevelt met to do its duty. The 16th Amendment, giving Congress the power to levy an income tax, was ratified in 1909. Robert E. Peary reached-or at least claimed to have reached-the North Pole, and the Panama Canal was nearing completion. It was a time of suffragettes, the Anti-Saloon League, and ragtime.
+The construction of the Canal was considered the world's greatest engineering work at the time. The project was begun by the French in 1876 with the formation of a society to survey Central America for the purpose of building an inter-oceanic canal. It was determined that Panama would provide the best opportunity for success. The first shovel of soil was turned on 1 January 1880. By 1884 there were as many as 19,000 workers on site. They suffered many obstacles including disease and funding, and in 1889 all activity ceased.
-In 1909 the [[AIEE History 1884-1963|American Institute of Electrical Engineers]] had about 7000 members-the IEEE has some 380,000 today-and the [[IRE History 1912-1963|Institute of Radio Engineers]]-the other IEEE predecessor society-had not yet been founded. Still, electrical engineering was in some ways a mature profession. The professional society, the AIEE, was 25 years old, and its Transactions had been published for almost as long. A number of colleges and universities offered courses of study in electrical engineering. (In the year 1909 at the most influential of these institutions, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the director of the EE program, [[Dugald C. Jackson|Dugald Jackson]], appointed a new assistant professor, [[William Wickenden|William E. Wickenden]], an appointment which, as things turned out, led to closer ties between industry and EE education.) But perhaps the best evidence of the maturity of electrical engineering was in its products, and perhaps its most impressive products, in the year 1909, were three networks of electrical lines-telegraph lines, telephone lines, and power lines.
+The United State canal construction began in 1904, after it acquired the French company's assets and concessions. Sanitation was one of the first issues to be addressed and solved. Communications were improved with new telegraph and telephone systems. It was estimated (by John F. Stevens, Chief Engineer) that it would take a minimum of 8 years to complete a lock canal (1914) and a sea level canal in 18 years (1924).
-The [[Telegraph|telegraph]] lines began their spread in 1837 at Morristown, NJ when Alfred Vail and [[Samuel Morse]] publicly demonstrated the instruments capable of sending messages over a 10-mile line. In 1844 Morse's line between Baltimore and Washington DC carried the first message, "What hath God wrought." By 1851 there were 11 lines radiating out from New York City, and in 1861 the United States had a transcontinental telegraph line, which was honored last year in a Milestone Dedication Ceremony at Fort Laramie WY. In 1866 regular transatlantic telegraph service began-there had been a short-lived success eight years earlier-and just four years later, in 1870, all the inhabited continents were linked by, telegraph lines. In this country at that time an extensive network was in use-in fact, so much in use that many people worked on ways to send, over one line, more than one message at a time. In 1876 at the Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia, Elisha Gray demonstrated his device to send eight messages simultaneously.
+Electric power was chosen as the most dependable and economical form of power for the operation of the construction plants for the locks, with their cement mixers, stone crushers, cranes, cable ways, automatic locomotives, pumps, etc. Electrical engineer Edward Schildhauer, [[IEEE Fellow Grade History|AIEE Fellow]] (1913), designed the powerful gate operating mechanism. Each 20 foot diameter gate, is powered by an electric motor. Lock operations required over 1,000 electric motors, as all controls were electric.
-Another man who worked on simultaneous telegraph transmission was [[Alexander Graham Bell]]. He achieved fame, however, with a different device, the telephone, which also was demonstrated at the Centennial Celebration. Telephone service between Boston, MA and Providence, RI began in 1880 and between Boston and New York in 1884; in 1892 it reached out to Chicago. In 1909, as the Shoshone Transmission Line was being completed, [[John J. Carty|John J. Carty]], Chief Executive of AT &amp;T was making a tour of telephone exchanges in the West and laying plans for transcontinental service. Two years later Denver was connected to New York, and in 1915 lines connected San Francisco and New York telephones. Demand was so great that in the next 15 years three additional transcontinental lines were completed.
+Electric motors had already proven to be the most reliable form of power to drive the pumps and other equipment. Alternative forms of power, such as animal, compressed air, and steam had been previously considered and discarded. All the power required for the operation of the two Construction Plants, one located at Gatun and the other at Miraflores, was generated on site. Each plant was fitted with three Curtis steam turbines, 1.5 MW each. They operated at 2,200 volts, 25 cycles, and were connected through a 44 kV double circuit electric line that crossed the Isthmus.
-The third network of electric lines, power transmission lines, owe their spread to the successful development of quite a number of devices, notably dynamos, electric lights, electric motors, and [[Transformers|transformers]]. In 1870 Zenobe T. Gramme of Belgium built the first commercially successful dynamos for the [[Electroplating|electroplating]] industry. In 1876 [[Thomas Alva Edison|Thomas Edison]] turned from telegraph improvements-that had been his main concern until then-to the problems of electric lighting and power. In 1882 he opened his Pearl Street generating station, which provided electricity to a small area in Lower Manhattan. The first hydroelectric generating station, at Appleton WI, went into service that same year. In 1890 [[George Westinghouse|George Westinghouse's]] transmission line, from Willamette Falls to Portland OR, a distance of 12 miles, went into service, and the following year a 3-mile line at Telluride, CO and a 100-mile line to Frankfurt, Germany, went into service. The use of electricity by local governments, by individuals, and by industries grew rapidly, as did the size of distribution systems. In 1909 [[Louis Ferguson|Louis A. Ferguson]] in his Presidential Address to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers described the time as an " Age of Centralization " , and an excellent example of this is the distribution system made possible by the Shoshone Line that opened that same year.
+After its opening in August of 1914, the new Gatun Hydroelectric Plant provided the electric power required for the operation of the Canal. The construction plant and its steam turbines located at Gatun were shut down; the one at Miraflores was kept as a backup source of power in case of transmission problems.
-Thus, three networks of electrical lines spread across the country. Each of them grew from a single line to a dense web connecting all urban areas in a period of about 40 years: for the telegraph, from the 1840s to the 1880s; for the telephone and for power transmission, from the 1880s to the 1920s. The telegraph and telephone networks grew, for the most part, from east to west. The power network, on the other hand, grew from many centers. Some of the most important ones were in the Midwest, such as Samuel Insull's system in Illinois, and in the West, such as Colorado's system which included the Shoshone Transmission Line.
+After 88 years of uninterrupted service, the Canal continues to provide highly reliable service due, in large part, to its electrical equipment.
-Frederik Nebeker, Ph.D.
-©IEEE History Center
 == Map ==
-{{#display_map:39.54602, -107.32363~ ~ ~ ~ ~Shoshone Hydroelectric Plant near Glenwood Springs, Colorado, U.S.A.|height=250|zoom=10|static=yes|center=39.54602, -107.32363}}
+{{#display_map:8.934253, -79.565392~ ~ ~ ~ ~Panama Canal, Southern End, Panama|height=250|zoom=10|static=yes|center=8.934253, -79.565392}}
-[[Category:Energy|{{PAGENAME}}]]
+[[Category:Automation|{{PAGENAME}}]]
-[[Category:Power_generation|{{PAGENAME}}]]
+[[Category:Control_systems|{{PAGENAME}}]]
-[[Category:Hydroelectric_power_generation|{{PAGENAME}}]]
+[[Category:News|{{PAGENAME}}]]