Learning

• Published on January 10, 2021

P Ramachandran

Specialist, Power Transformers

64 articles

Brian Herbert wrote about learning: The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a
skill; the willingness to learn is a choice. Today we are seeing a deluge of information and
data for our attention. In this tsunami, we should fix priority for learning- first, what is
necessary; second, what is useful; and third, what is simply ornamental.

Let us remember what Lord Kelvin (earlier name, Sir William Thomson 1824-1907 -
probably one of the earliest electrical engineers from UK, apart from being a great global
mathematician and physicist) wrote at the end of 19th century, after an illustrious career
which brought him peerage, “I have lived long, and have learned enough to realize that I
know nothing”!

Lord Kelvin was Professor of Physics at Glasgow University from 1846 to end of his
life. Elihu Thomson – great electrical and transformer engineer of US of the time, whose
company merged with that of Edison to form the General Electric Company - referred Lord
Kelvin as the father of modern electrical engineering. Lord Kelvin was a consultant to
Niagara AC Electric Power Plant (being the first in the world, no models to copy but
everything to be created!). Apart from his contributions in submarine telegraphy, there were
Ferranti-Thomson AC dynamo, electrometer, electrostatic voltmeters and of course, Kelvin’s
bridge!

Elihu Thomson was delivering the obituary speech for late Kelvin, during the memorial
meeting, held in New York on January 12th,1908. To illustrate Kelvin’s thirst for knowledge
and yearning for learning, Elihu Thomson quoted an incident. In 1897, at the age of 73,
Kelvin visited US with his wife (after a long tortuous journey by sea) to learn the latest
developments in electrical engineering in that country. He visited factory shops of General
Electric Company at Schenectady. During the visit, he was profusely noting down in a note
book what all he saw and heard about the new electrical products being made there. After a
few years later, a US engineer from GE, E W Rice visited him at Glasgow. Lord Kelvin
immediately took out his old note book and questioned Rice regarding the later developments
on each of the items that he had noted during his earlier visit in 1897.Lord Kelvin, at late age,
was in a hurry to make himself up to date in Electrical Engineering!

Let me share my own learning journey. Out of more than half a century that I was involved
with transformers and other power products, I worked in a Japanese subsidiary (TELK,
Kerala, India) for the first three decades and the balance two decades with the global
transformer market leader from Europe (ABB Vadodara, Gujarat. India)

Just three days on my crossing the age of 22, on December 3, 1966, I walked across the gates
of the newly set up Transformer factory (TELK) in Kerala for an innings of 33 years. TELK
was a joint venture between Hitachi, Japan and Government of Kerala, India. On the very
first day, I had a meeting with the Hitachi resident Directors of the company in the company
conference room. They were - T Ogawa, senior director, tall by Japanese Standards and
always serious and the other, E Kaku, short, diplomatic and genial. Mr Ogawa was earlier
General Manager of Hitachi Transformer factory (Kokubu works) in Japan and a veteran
transformer engineer with engineering and design experience. After general introductions, Mr
Kaku drew a mountain on the black board and said “This is Fuji san, (Mount Fuji) the
revered mountain peak of Japan. Ogawa-san is at the top of this mountain and you are at the
bottom. You have to climb the mountain slowly but steadily with mountain top as the
destination” (‘san’ is the honorific salutation for addressing persons and objects in Japan, like
sir) I never forgot this simile and always took it as an aspiration. I have not yet reached the
top of Fujisan and struggling somewhere at the middle of the path. Quite often, I come across
technical problems that I have never experienced earlier and I spend several hours to
understand and resolve them. My wife finds this quite strange, as she is seeing this for the
past 44 years. According to her, any person of average intelligence should have mastered the
craft long back.

Frankly, even after so many years, each month, I see and learn something new in transformer
engineering that I have never come across before. But when I joined the engineering
department of the transformer factory at the young age, I felt, I know everything on
transformers as I had studied “Electrical Machines” by M G say (famous London University
Professor during the first half of last century) during my college course.!!