Charles LeGeyt Fortescue (1876–1936) was an electrical engineer. He was born in York Factory, in what is now
ManitobaManitoba is a prairie province in Canada and has an area of . Manitoba is bordered by the provinces of Ontario to the east and Saskatchewan to the west, the territory of Nunavut to the north, and the U.S. states of North Dakota and Minnesota to the south...
where the
Hayes RiverThe Hayes River is a river in Manitoba, Canada. It is 483 km long, has a mean discharge of 590 m³/s , and its drainage basin is 108000 km² . It originates within several lakes, crosses the Canadian Shield, and drains into the Hudson Bay, just south of the Nelson River...
enters
Hudson BayHudson Bay is a large body of water in northeastern Canada. It drains a very large area that includes parts of Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta, most of Manitoba, southeastern Nunavut, as well as parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Montana. A smaller offshoot of the bay,...
. He was the son of a
Hudson's Bay CompanyThe Hudson's Bay Company , abbreviated HBC, is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and is one of the oldest in the world...
fur trading factor and was among the first graduates of the
Queen's UniversityQueen's University, generally referred to simply as Queen's, is a coeducational, non-sectarian, research intensive, public university located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. In 2008, Queen's maintained its status as one of the top universities in Canada.The Church of Scotland established Queen's...
electrical engineeringElectrical engineering, sometimes referred to as electrical and electronic engineering, is a field of engineering that deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after...
program in 1898.
On graduation Fortescue joined the
Westinghouse CorporationFounded in 1886 as Westinghouse Electric Company and later renamed Westinghouse Electric Corporation by George Westinghouse. The company purchased CBS in 1995 and was renamed CBS Corporation in 1997. George Westinghouse had previously founded the Westinghouse Air Brake Company.The company pioneered...
where he spent his entire professional career. In 1901 he joined the Transformer Engineering Department and worked on many problems arising from the use of high voltage.
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Charles LeGeyt Fortescue (1876–1936) was an electrical engineer. He was born in York Factory, in what is now
ManitobaManitoba is a prairie province in Canada and has an area of . Manitoba is bordered by the provinces of Ontario to the east and Saskatchewan to the west, the territory of Nunavut to the north, and the U.S. states of North Dakota and Minnesota to the south...
where the
Hayes RiverThe Hayes River is a river in Manitoba, Canada. It is 483 km long, has a mean discharge of 590 m³/s , and its drainage basin is 108000 km² . It originates within several lakes, crosses the Canadian Shield, and drains into the Hudson Bay, just south of the Nelson River...
enters
Hudson BayHudson Bay is a large body of water in northeastern Canada. It drains a very large area that includes parts of Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta, most of Manitoba, southeastern Nunavut, as well as parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Montana. A smaller offshoot of the bay,...
. He was the son of a
Hudson's Bay CompanyThe Hudson's Bay Company , abbreviated HBC, is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and is one of the oldest in the world...
fur trading factor and was among the first graduates of the
Queen's UniversityQueen's University, generally referred to simply as Queen's, is a coeducational, non-sectarian, research intensive, public university located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. In 2008, Queen's maintained its status as one of the top universities in Canada.The Church of Scotland established Queen's...
electrical engineeringElectrical engineering, sometimes referred to as electrical and electronic engineering, is a field of engineering that deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after...
program in 1898.
On graduation Fortescue joined the
Westinghouse CorporationFounded in 1886 as Westinghouse Electric Company and later renamed Westinghouse Electric Corporation by George Westinghouse. The company purchased CBS in 1995 and was renamed CBS Corporation in 1997. George Westinghouse had previously founded the Westinghouse Air Brake Company.The company pioneered...
where he spent his entire professional career. In 1901 he joined the Transformer Engineering Department and worked on many problems arising from the use of high voltage. In 1913 Fortescue published the AIEE paper "The Application of a Theorem of Electrostatics to Insulator Problems". Also in that year he was one of the authors of a paper on measurement of high voltage by the breakdown of a gap between two conductive spheres, which is a technique still used in high-voltage laboratories today.
In a paper presented in 1918, Fortescue demonstrated that any set of N unbalanced
phasorPhasor may refer to:*Phasor , a phase vector representing a sine wave*Phasor , a stereo music, sound and speech synthesizer for the Apple II computer*Phasor Zap, a 1978 game for the Apple II computer...
s — that is, any such "
polyphasePolyphase may refer to:* Polyphase matrix, in signal processing* Polyphase system, in electrical engineering* Polyphasic sleep...
" signal — could be expressed as the sum of N symmetrical sets of balanced phasors known as
symmetrical componentsIn electrical engineering, the method of Symmetrical components is used to simplify analysis of unbalanced three phase power systems.-Description:...
.
A fellowship awarded every year by the IEEE in his name commemorates his contributions to electrical engineering.
Patents
- Insulating-body for electrical apparatus,
- Transformer and winding,
- Alternating current transformer,
- System of distribution,