Alfred Everett Powell
Alfred Everett Powell (1874-1943)
1944 Obituary [1]
ALFRED EVERETT POWELL was born on the 28th April, 1874. He was educated at St. John's Wood School and University College, London, and received his practical training at the Chelmsford works of Crompton and Co. From 1897 to 1900 he was Works Manager of the Headlands Patent Storage Battery Co., and in 1901 obtained an appointment as Travelling Engineer with the firm of Taylor, Brown and Dearlove, with whom he remained for eleven years. Besides installing the Brown cable relay and other apparatus on the cables of various submarine cable companies, he carried out general experimental and research work in connection with relays and methods of increasing the speed of working on submarine cables. With this background, he joined Western Union as Engineer of Station Equipment, and was transferred to New York in 1920 as General Plant Manager of Ocean Cables. In 1924 he was appointed Chief Plant Engineer of the Commercial Cable Co., becoming Vice-President in 1929. He retired in 1932 owing to ill health, and died at Rye, Sussex, on the 25th October, 1943. He was elected a Member of The Institution in 1914.