Discussion on “the relative proportions of copper and iron in alternators.” Atlantic city, N. J. July 2, 1908

W. L. Waters: Mr. Fechheimer is to be congratulated on the success obtained in his attempts to reduce the design of alternators to a series of mathematical formulas. A good many attempts have been made in the past to reduce electrical machine design to an exact science, but they have met with little success. The first attempt was made in regard to transformer design, when rules for the most economical dimensions were formulated by various engineers, but even in this extremely simple case such rules met with very little success. I think that such attempts only serve to emphasize the well known statement that electrical machine design is an art and not an exact science.