2012 marks one hundred years since the sinking of RMS Titanic.
The Titanic sank over the course of two and three quarter hours
on the night of April 14-15 1912, with the loss of over 1,500
lives. Before the accident, Titanic was billed as a practically
unsinkable ship and at the pinnacle of modern ship building and
engineering techniques. Among its many outstanding features were
four electric elevators for passengers, over 10,000 electric
lamps and dimming light switches in first-class state rooms.
This vast array of new and exciting advances in electrical
engineering led an anonymous engineer to submit a four-page
academic paper to the journal, The Electrician, in 1911, just a
few months before the fateful voyage. The full paper is indexed
in the IET’s engineering database, Inspec. Titanic also utilised
the state of the art 5-kW Marconi wireless set, the most
powerful in use at the time, with a guaranteed operating range
of 250 miles. Sadly the radio operators did not fully take heed
of the messages from oth