In this book, Peta Trigger traces the history of electricity generation and transmission from the ancient greeks to modern times, focusing on landmark generating and storage devices in the evolution of electricity generation. She describes the building and performance of replicas she made of some of these machines, and compares them with their modern counter- parts. Her other recent book, 'Wind Turbines: Description, Appraisal & Alternatives' however, is principally concerned with the present day and the future generation and transmission system in the UK, and the role of wind turbines in...

In this book Peta Trigger develops three methods of tackling problems in engineering science from first principles. The first two are matrix based, the required matrix and determinant properties being fully explained in the first two appendices. The third method is an iterative, approximation one. They are shown to be advantageous compared with other commonly used methods, and are applicable where the quantities involved are real or complex numbers. The text shows how the required equations for the application of each method are dervived, and a third appendix shows how matrices are set up for...