TRAFALGAR
1934
TRANSFORMER
Trafalgar (trdf al-garf ), Cape, on the
southern coast of Spain, is celebrated for the great naval battle gained off its shores, Oct. 21, 1805, by the British fleet under Nelson (q. v.) over the combined fleets of France and Spain. The British had 27 sail-of-the-line and 4 frigates, the French and Spaniards 33 sail-of-the-line and five frigates. The British were victorious, capturing 19 of the enemies' ships. As Nelson bore down on the French, he hoisted the famous signal: "England expects every man to do his duty." At the height of the action the famous sea-captain was shot, but was told of the victory before he died. In a storm that night all but four of the prizes were lost or destroyed, a disaster which would not have happened had the dying admiral's order to anchor been obeyed.
Traill, Henry Duff, D. C. L., an English man-of-letters and editor of Literature, was born at Blackheath, London, Aug. 14, 1842, and died at London, Feb. 21, 1900. He was educated at Merchant Tailors' School, London, and at St. John's College, Oxford, and joined the staffs of the Pall Mall Gazette (1873), the Saturday Review (1883) and The Observer (1889), and afterwards became editor of Social England and of Literature. His writings (besides Lives of Sir John Franklin, Lord Cromer and Lord Salisbury) include Central Government; William /// in the Twelve English Statesmen Series; Straff or d in the English Men of Action Series; Sterne and Coleridge in the English Men of Letters Series; Shaftesbury in the English Worthies Series; The New Lucian; Saturday Songs; and The New Fiction and other Essays on Literary Subjects.
Tra'jan, Marcus Ulpius, Roman emperor, was born at Italica, near Seville, Spain, on Sept. 18 in 52 A. D. He was a successful commander in the wars against the Par-thians and Germans under Titus and Domi-tian. In 91 his prestige gained him the consulship, and six years later Nerva adopted him as his fellow-ruler and successor. In 98 he became emperor, and celebrated the event by the gift of large sums to the soldiers and to the citizens and their children. He also had the state pay the expenses of bringing up the children of poor freemen in Rome and other Italian cities. In 101 Rome for the first time saw its emperor leading forth his legions in person, when Trajan set out on his first campaign against the Dacians. The conquest of the brave people, who had been paid tribute by the Romans since Domitian s reign, was not finished till 105. After going back to Rome to celebrate this conquest, the first since the time of Augustus, he started to wage war in the east. Armenia, Parthia, Mesopotamia and northern Syria and Arabia were conquered or reconquered, and Trajan was the first Roman general to sail down the Persian Gulf. Trajan's government was
of the best. Under his rule the laws were carried out with justice, and the governors were held to strict account. Military roads, canals, bridges and towns were built. Trajan's wall, a line of earthworks from the Danube to the Black Sea, was raised, and Rome was beautified; among the improvements were Trajan's forum and the famous Trajan's column, whose bas-reliefs still tell the story of his military achievements. He died in August, 117 A. D.
Transformer, an apparatus for converting the energy of an electric current into the
energy of a secondary electric current. There are two kinds of transformers in commercial use: the static or alternating current transformer and the rotary transformer. The A. C. trans-former converts a primary A. C. into a secondary A. C., but so that the product of the current and pressure or potential (ampdres x volts) of the primary current is practically equal to the corresponding product of the secondary current. Thus, an ordinary electric-lighting transformer transforms one ampere at 1,000 volts into ten amperes at 100 volts etc. This is a "step-down" transformer. In a step-up" transformer the voltage or pressure of the secondary current is higher than that of the primary current. Transformers are used on account of economy of distribution of electric energy. It requires a much smaller wire to transmit a given amount of electrical energy economically at 1,000 volts pressure than to transmit the same amount of energy at 100 volts, But the higher voltage cannot be well and safely used for many purposes, as for incandescent lamps. So the current is transmitted on the mail? wires at the higher pressure and transformed down to the lower pressure by an A. C. transformer just before passing into the house where it is to be used. Previous to 1883 practically all the electric lighting from central stations was done by direct current, but the successful application of the A. C. transformer by Gaulard and Gibbs, Stanley and others so reduced the cost of the transmission lines, that within a few years practically all the central-station incandescent lighting was done by the A. C. systems. The A. C. transformer is simply a form of the induction-coil (q. v.} but nas an alternating current in the primary coil instead of a make-and-break device. It consists of two separate coils of insulated wire, having a laminated-iron core common
COILS AND CORE OF AN A. C. TRANSFORMER
