Philip Cardew

Major Philip Cardew (24 September 1851 – 17 May 1910), was an English army officer in the Royal Engineers. Engaged in the application of electricity to military purposes, he designed innovations in electrical engineering. Early life and career Cardew was born at Oakshade, near Leatherhead, Surrey, on 24 September 1851, eldest son in a family of four sons and four daughters of Captain Christopher Baldock Cardew, 74th Highlanders, of East Hill, Liss, and his wife Eliza Jane, second daughter of Sir Richard Bethell, 1st Baron Westbury. Educated at Guildford Grammar School, he passed first into the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in 1868, and left it at the head of his batch. He was awarded the Pollock Medal and the Sword of Honour, and received a commission as lieutenant in the Royal Engineers on 4 January 1871. After two years at Chatham, Cardew was sent to Aldershot and Portsmouth; from September 1873 to April 1874 he was employed at the War Office on defences; and, after a year at Glasgow, went to Bermuda in May 1875. He was placed in charge of military telegraphs, and joined the Submarine Mining Service, engaging in the application of electricity to military purposes, which was to be the pursuit of his life. At the end of 1876 he was transferred to Chatham, where the headquarters of the submarine mining was on board HMS Hood, which lay in the Medway off Gillingham. In 1878 he was acting adjutant of the submarine miners at Portsmouth, and became in the same year (1 April) assistant instructor in electricity at Chatham. Research In addition to his work of instruction, Cardew assisted in carrying out some important experiments with electric searchlight apparatus for the Royal Engineers committee, at a time when the subject was in its infancy. The need of better instruments for such work led him to design a galvanometer for measuring large currents of electricity (described in a paper read before the Institution of Electrical Engineers, 25 May 1882). He next evolved the idea of the hot-wire galvanometer, or voltmeter, the value of which was universally recognised among electrical engineers. He was awarded the gold medal for this invention at the International Inventions Exhibition in London of 1885. He also originated a method of finding the efficiency of a dynamo.