IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - September/October 2019 - 88

of 38. A memorial tablet in his honor
was unveiled in 1890 in Lanzo Torinese.
A short street in Paris was named in his
honor in 1907 (Figure 7).
As for Gibbs, as a young man he
was a cavalry officer. Around 1900, he
changed his last name to Gibbes, another of several English spellings of an
old Gaelic name. It was revealingly di-

(a)

vulged at a meeting of his creditors in
1907 that he had liabilities of £13,990
(equivalent to approximately £1,700,000
today) and assets of uncertain value and
that, since 1867, he never had a regular
occupation but participated in electrical
and other ventures in England, France,
and Russia. He died in London on
6 March 1912 at the age of 78.

(b)

figure 7. (a) A photograph of Lucien Gaulard, published in a French article
about him in 1935. (b) Rue Lucien Gaulard in Paris. (Source: Google Maps.)

(a)

(b)

figure 8. The ZDB transformers of Ganz & Company. (a) The shell-type transformer.
(b) The core-type transformer. Both designs were first described in patents of Károly
Zipernowsky, Miksa Déri, and Ottó Titusz Bláthy filed in 1885 in Austria-Hungary and
five other countries (United States patent number 352,105, filed 7 May 1885). (Source:
The illustrations are from an 1889 Ganz brochure, colorized by the author.)
88

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Epilogue
Ganz & Co. of Budapest introduced a
fully developed experimental version of
the single-phase ac distribution system
of Károly Zipernowsky, Miksa Déri,
and Ottó Titusz Bláthy (called the ZDB
system) at the Budapest National Exposition of 1885. Unlike the Gaulard-
Gibbs system, the ZDB system was
commercially practical and widely
implemented. Faraday-type (closed ironcore) transformers (Figure 8) were connected in parallel, as were lights, and the
voltage was not significantly affected by
load. By the fall of 1886, ZDB transmission systems were in several European
cities. An 1889 brochure of Ganz & Co.
listed 71 ZDB systems installed worldwide. The company built its 10,000th
transformer (three phase) in 1899 and its
100,000th transformer in 1961.
In the United States, William Stanley,
Jr., worked for three electric-light companies before his association with George
Westinghouse. In 1884 and part of 1885,
Stanley did experiments at Westinghouse's Union Switch and Signal Company; he then moved to Great Barrington,
Massachusetts, where he set up a laboratory in an abandoned rubber factory at
the edge of town. Working there under
contract for Westinghouse in 1886, he designed and installed the first practical ac
transmission system in the United States.
Stanley rejected the unstable Gaulard-
Gibbs design purchased by Westinghouse
and invented his own single-phase dynamo, transformer (Figure 9), and distribution system. His system used shell-type
transformers of a different design than the
ZDB version, connected in parallel and
with lights connected in parallel on the
secondary, as did the ZDB system. The
experiment was successful enough to convince Westinghouse to start the construction and installation of a large number of
commercial central stations and long-distance transmission systems of that same
general design. By 1 September 1887,
the Westinghouse Electric Company, incorporated 8 January 1886, had installed
24 small ac central stations in the United
States and one in Canada. In 1890, more
than 300 central station companies worldwide were using Westinghouse systems.
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