John Earnshaw Calverley
John Earnshaw Calverley (1886-1961), Chief Engineer and Manager, Traction Dept., The English Electric Co., Ltd.
Formerly Assistant Designer of Electric Machinery, Dick, Kerr and Co., Preston; Chief Designer of Direct Current Machinery, The English Electric Co., Ltd.
Joint Inventor of the Transverter.
1961 Obituary [1]
MR. JOHN E. CALVERLEY, who died recently at the age of seventy-five, will be remembered by electrical engineers, primarily as an orginator. In his advocacy of high-voltage d.c. transmission of electricity he was ahead of contemporary thought and practice, at a time when the British 132kV Grid was setting the pattern of progress. To-day the cross-Channel cable link is approaching completion and other d.c. transmission projects are being developed, and Mr. Calverley's faith in the system, over the last forty years, is proving to be well founded.
John Calverley was born in Bentham, Yorkshire, in 1886, and educated at Bentham Grammar School and Bradford Technical College. He began his career in electrical engineering as an apprentice earning five shillings a week.
In 1908 he joined the Phoenix Dynamo Company, Bradford, (which later became one of the founder firms of the English Electric Company) as an assistant draughtsman.
Two years later he went to Dick Kerr and Co., Preston (another constituent member of English Electric) as an assistant design engineer. There he did a great deal of pioneering work in the design of d.c. machines and gained an international reputation on the design of high-voltage d.c. machines. His interest in high-voltage d.c. transmission originated in the early 1920s when he was a co-inventor with the late W. E. Highfield of the transverter which was demonstrated at the Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924.
For a time he was associated with the late Monsieur Thury in developing machines for the Thury high-voltage d.c., constant-current system, the principles of which were well exemplified in the Moutiers-Lyons network.
From 1920 to 1930 Mr. Calverley was chief designer, d.c. machinery, at the English Electric Company's Preston works. In 1930 he became chief d.c. engineer and in 1935 chief engineer and manager of the company's traction department. Amongst other things he developed high-voltage d.c. machines for the regional transmitting stations of the B.B.C.
During the war he was sent to Washington in 1941 to represent the Ministry of Supply as adviser on d.c. electrical equipment for tanks and army vehicles.
On returning to Great Britain in 1943 he was appointed deputy chief engineer (technical) to the English Electric Company, Ltd. From 1952 until his retirement in 1955 he was a special consultant to the company.
He served on several technical committees with the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the Electrical Research Association, the International Electrotechnical Commission, the British Standards Institution, and the Conference Internationale des Grands Reseaux Electriques on which he was, for many years, chairman of the group that studied high-voltage d.c. transmission.