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Scanning Our Past from London

Using Yesterday’s Engineering Tomorrow: Eric Laithwaite

Old ideas can sometimes gain a new lease on life. Ideasthat have once been tried and then discarded as impracticalcan be reintroduced when changed circumstances, or newmaterials, make it possible to do things that were impossiblein earlier years.Agoodexampleofthisreapplicationofearliertechnologyis the linear motor and the work of Eric Laithwaite (Fig. 1),who applied these devices to modern transportation systemsincluding a possible future application in space. Originally,the idea was clearly described in patents from the 1840s, andat least one piece of a linear motor made by Charles Wheat-stone (Fig. 2) survives from that time. Such machines couldnot have been exploited in the mid-19th century. The nec-essary current was not available in the days when electricalengineers were dependent for their supplies on batteries ormassivepermanentmagnetgenerators.Towardtheendofthecentury,practicalgeneratorswithwoundfieldsbecameavail-able,and these werecapable ofproducing largecurrents. Butat the same time, it was also found that the same machinescould operate in reverse, as motors, and so it was not neces-sary to design electric motors as separate machines.I. E

ARLY

ENTURY

EVELOPMENTS

The generators were all rotary machines and, conse-quently, so were the first electric motors in general service,but the idea of linear machines kept recurring. One exponentwas Emile Bachelet, who attracted many distinguishedvisitors, and the press, to his laboratory in 1914. WinstonChurchill, later British Prime Minister, said of Bachelet’smachine, “It’s great. It is the most wonderful thing I haveever seen.” During the Second World War, engineers atWestinghouse built an aircraft launcher, the “Electropult,”using a linear motor (Fig. 3). The first Electropult had atrack a quarter of a mile long and could accelerate a jet planefrom rest to over 100 mph in 4 s. The electrical require-ments—several megawatts for a few seconds—must havepresented quite a problem, and the people responsible forthe project turned their attention to steam catapults instead.

Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9219(01)01747-9.

Fig. 1.

Eric Laithwaite. (Courtesy of the Inst. Elec. Eng. Archives,London, U.K.)

II. L

ATER

EVELOPMENTS

The modern exponent of linear machines has been EricLaithwaite (1921–1997), who began his interest in the sub- ject when a lecturer at Manchester University and developedit as professor of heavy electrical engineering at the Impe-rial College of Science and Technology in London. He wasborn and brought up in Lancashire in the heart of the Eng-lish cotton industry. From his early days, he was familiarwith weaving machines in which the “shuttle” carrying thecotton is knocked mechanically so that it flies from one sideof the loom to the other. That process should be electrified,he thought. Surely an electrical machine could produce therequired linear movement. He was not aware at that time thatBachelet and others had held similar ideas years earlier.

214 PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 89, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2001

Fig. 2.

Charles Wheatstone. (From

Engineers & Electrons,

Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 1984.)

Fig. 3.

The “Electropult.” (From E. R. Laithwaite and S. A. Nasar,“Linear-motion electrical machines,” P

ROCEEDINGS OF THE

IEEE,vol. 58, no. 4, Apr. 1970.)

After many experiments, he became convinced that linearmotors were not the answer for the cotton industry, but hewas equally sure they had many applications elsewhere. Heshowed that large linear motors (and, indeed, large electro-magnetic machines generally) are more efficient than smallones and get even better when they are made larger. Theyshould be good for driving trains, he thought, and he devotedmuch effort to unsuccessful attempts to persuade railwaycompanies to adopt linear motors. While at Manchester, heconductedexperimentsataLocomotiveWorks,wherehehad100 yards of test track equipped with a vertical aluminumplate between the running rails. The aluminum plate was the

Fig. 4.

A tracked hovercraft. (From E. R. Laithwaite and S. A.Nasar, “Linear-motion electrical machines,” P

ROCEEDINGS OF THE

IEEE, vol. 58, no. 4, Apr. 1970.)

Fig. 5.

Mechanical details of a conveyer system using a linearmotordrive.(FromE.R.LaithwaiteandS.A.Nasar,“Linear-motionelectrical machines,” P

ROCEEDINGS OF THE

IEEE, vol. 58, no. 4,Apr. 1970.)

stator of a linear motor whose moving part was electromag-nets carried on a four-wheeled trolley. The weight of the ve-hicle was carried on the wheels, but the newly invented hov-ercraft, devisedbyChristopherCockerell,offerednewpossi-bilities. The idea of a “tracked hovercraft,” a vehicle (Fig. 4)suspended on an air cushion and driven by a linear motor,was investigated for a few years, but for reasons that are notat all clear the British Government, which had sponsored the

PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 89, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2001 215

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Using Yesterday_s Engineering Tomorrow_ Eric Laithwaite

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