ECN Forum Forums Code Related Discussion NEC & other Code issues NEUTRAL? Theoretically Speaking, Has Anything Really Changed?

Here's what I mean, found in an old book was this information about a "neutral" ...

Joe, There's a very similar definition in a book I've got, "Elements of Electrical Engineering" It was published in 1924.
Sounds like the same old thing to me....S

Interesting reading. Does this book have anything to say on the subject of grounding the neutral?

In fact, back in 1905, were many 3-w DC systems floating?

Paul,

It is interesting, isn't it? In 1905 Nicola Tesla's breakthrough AC motor technology was under patent protection. Polyphase theory was still spreading as the individual technician/engineer tried to wrap his head around AC created rotary magnetic fields.

The primary use for electric energy was powering lights and motors, and generators had to by very close to their loads.

This book, while delving deeply into AC motors and generators, spends a lot of print on the installed base of machinery that had accrued over the previous forty years, and it is heavily DC. The term "neutral" has its roots back in these mists, obviously emenating from Edison's 1883 patent of the Three Wire System. This book shows many strange (by today's thinking) distribution schemes that offered incremental performance improvements of an inherently geographically limited system. One huge impediment to commercial viability was, simply, the cost of the copper.

In 1905 With respect to grounding, the Electricians' Handy Book illustrates a couple ground indicators used to alarm if any "circuit wires" are grounded. Elsewhere in the text: