Find out why! To accept
something the way it’s always
been done is not acceptable.
There is too much of that –
accepting things the way they
are. Walt Elmore
PAC.SUMMER.2007
59
the guru
the guru
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wa l t
m
o
re
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Biography
Walter A. Elmore was born in
Bartlett, Tennessee, served in the
Army Air Corps as a navigator during
World War II, and graduated from
the University of Tennessee with
a B.S.E.E. in 1949. He worked at
Memphis Light Gas & Water Division
until he joined Westinghouse in
1951 as a District Engineer in
Seattle, Washington. He transferred
to the Relay-Instrument Division
in Newark, New Jersey in 1964,
where he became Manager of the
Consulting Engineering Section.
He held that position, following a
1989 merger with ABB, until 1992 in
Coral Springs, Florida. He continues
to work as a consulting engineer
for ABB. In August 1996 the ABB
manufacturing plant in Coral
Springs, Florida was dedicated to
him. He is past chairman of the IEEE
/ PES Technical Council, and past
chairman of the IEEE / PES Power
System Relaying Committee. He is
a Life Fellow of the IEEE, and was
presented the IEEE Gold Medal for
Engineering Excellence in 1989. He
was accepted as a member of The
National Academy of Engineering
in 1998. He has presented over
100 technical papers, is one of the
authors of the Year 2000 “Standard
Handbook for Electrical Engineers,”
and is the editor and co-author of
two books: “Protective Relaying
PAC.SUMMER.2007
Theory and Applications” and “Pilot
Protective Relaying”.
the guru
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61
PAC World: Walt, we know a lot about you professionally. But we
don’t know much about your life.
WE: All right. I was born in Bartlett, Tennessee, which is just
outside of Memphis. In my earliest childhood I had a lot of
kids to play with. There were horses that I had access to. So it
was just a wonderful childhood. I didn’t have the burden to
have to work. We lived in Bartlett until my father died when
I was six years old. And then we moved to Memphis. My
aunt still lived in Bartlett, so nearly every weekend I would
go out to Bartlett and spend time with my Grandmother and
my old friends.
PAC World: Did they have the horses in a farm?
WE: No. It was some friends that had the horses. And there
was a little bit of agriculture I was involved with. I picked and
chopped cotton, played on cotton bales. They used to extract
and pile up the cotton seeds in another building, and the
pile of cotton seeds would be huge. Back in those days they
didn’t worry too much about kids. If they broke an arm, they
went back home and told their mama about it. They didn’t
call their lawyer. We were able to get to the top of that thing
and dive into that mountain of cotton seeds. Wonderful,
wonderful fun for the kids!
PAC World: What is the first thing that you can actually remember
from your childhood? Is there a picture from your childhood that
just pops out?
WE: The only thing that I remember from way back is when
my father died. I remember the anguish my mother went
through. My father contracted tuberculosis and was kept
separated from me. At this time, I didn’t really appreciate the
impact his loss would have on me. He was a wonderful guy
and had been a superb athlete.
PAC World: Where did you get your inclination toward technical
things?
WE: I don’t know. The next phase of my life was school.
I always enjoyed school. In high school I had marvelous
teachers. The curriculum was great. It forced me at the
time to study literature and mathematics. I took a course
in drafting. This was a technical high school, and it had a
machine shop. I loved my mathematics teacher. He also
taught a course in aeronautics, which appealed to me pretty
much, so I took it. I had some physics, trigonometry too.
I was on the basketball team. And on top of that, I also
had Phys Ed that was tailored to making you tough enough
to be able to handle the life in the army.
As a young man during the depression we didn’t have any
money. There was never any money in my family, but we
didn’t seem to notice. That was the environment I grew up
with. Because of that, because I had to deal with just pennies,
I developed into the cheapskate that I am today. Ask my
wife!
PAC World: Did you have to work?
WE: First I worked as a pickup at the Memphis Country Club.
We tended to a lot of professional tennis tournaments. The
pro would come in and pick out one of us and we would
go with him. They usually gave us a pretty good tip at the
end of it. You know – a dollar or something like that. Huge
amount of money, I was loaded.
PAC.SUMMER.2007
I had volunteered
for the Army Air
Corps.
They offered me
a choice.
PAC World: So what happened after high
school?
WE: I had volunteered for the Army Air
become
Corps In February of 1943, but I wasn’t
eighteen yet, so they wouldn’t take me.
a bombardier
They accepted all of the paperwork and
everything, and they knew that when I
or a navigator. reached the age of eighteen I would be off
to the Wild Blue Yonder. That became a
I chose
marvelous experience. I just loved every
minute of that, because I was learning
navigator.
things that I never expected to run into,
eating well and staying in shape.
PAC World: What exactly were you doing?
WE: First you go through classification,
which identifies your capabilities, in terms of being able to
become a pilot, a bombardier or a navigator – those were
the three things. And if you washed out, then you went to
gunnery school.
PAC World: What do you mean by washed out?
WE: Washed out means you did not “qualify” as a
bombardier, a navigator or a pilot. They were destined to
become officers. Whereas if you got washed out – then the
most you could hope for was sergeant. Fortunately, I qualified
for all three, but there was some problem with my eyes. In
the eye test, there was something they found that didn’t
impair the vision, (I was 20/20 and I could see perfectly),
but there was something that prevented me from qualifying
for pilot school. So, they offered me a choice. I could either
become a bombardier or a navigator. So I chose navigator.
PAC World: So that was what, until ’45?
I could either
WE: Yeah, ‘45 the war ended and we were released pretty
quickly because they wanted to get us off the payroll. I was
a flight officer at the time. This is my last picture here, in my
uniform.
PAC World: So what happened after that?
WE: After that, I had access to the GI bill. I never would
have made it without the GI bill. It authorized universities
to accept you using their rules of acceptance, and then the
government would pay the tuition. The government also
paid for the books. And there was a little stipend to buy a
little food during the month. I went to the University of
Tennessee. We signed up, this friend of mine and I, at the
University of Tennessee Junior College, which is in Martin,
at the northwest corner of Tennessee. Being, at the time
a junior college, it only had two years. But it was good
preparatory stuff. I even had a course in public speaking,
although nobody would recognize that.
PAC World: So did you spend the whole two years there?
WE: Yes, almost. We spent five quarters there. And then we
went to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. We had
no trouble this time, getting in, because we were from the
University of Tennessee Junior College and all of our credits
just transferred automatically as if we had taken them there.
About this time, I began to develop a warm and lasting
relationship with the beautiful lady who is still with me. We
waited until we finished college to get married.
PAC World: Why did you choose electrical engineering?
WE: I think because of the mathematical orientation of it.
I always loved math.
PAC World: Did they teach relaying at the time? Or power
systems?
WE: That’s another thing about the University of Tennessee
– they had a great, at that time, power orientation. And can
you imagine? I was able to take a course, a full quarter in
ac machinery, rotating machinery, period. A quarter of dc
machinery, a quarter of transformers, a quarter of symmetrical
components, a quarter of protective relaying, a quarter of out
of step relaying. And can you imagine something like that at
any university nowadays? They wouldn’t even want to talk
to you about that kind of curriculum.
PAC World: Where did you see a relay for the first time? Did you
have a relay lab?
WE: We had a lab, but it was more for rotating machinery
and for transformers. I don’t think there were any relays in
the lab. I saw the first relays probably in a hydro-plant on a
I went to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
I was able to take a course in ac machinery,
a quarter of dc machinery, a quarter of transformers,
a quarter of symmetrical components, quarter
of protective relaying...
And can you imagine something like that nowadays?
Keynote address
May 1997 (excerpt)
To IEEE/PSRC
Williamsburg, VA
It’s a marvelous 50th
ANNIVERSARY! I appreciate
this so much and enjoyed
the 75th so much that I
can hardly wait the next
five years when we most
surely will celebrate the
25th anniversary unless
we can get our historian to
straighten out his books.
Edison was a brilliant
inventor despite the fact
that he had little formal
education and lived in New
Jersey. His first invention in
1877 was the phonograph
which could soon be found
in thousands of American
homes where it basically
just sat until 1923, when
the record was invented.
But Edison’s greatest
achievement came in 1879
when he invented the
electric company. Edison’s
design was a brilliant
adaptation of the simple
electric circuit. The electric
Company sends electricity
through a wire to a customer,
then immediately gets the
electricity back through
another wire. Then (this is
the brilliant part) sends it
right back to the customer
again.
This means that an electric
company can sell the
same batch of electricity
thousands of times a day
and never get caught, since
very few customers take
the time to examine their
electricity very closely. In
fact the last year in which
any new electricity was
generated was 1937. The
electric Companies have
been merely re-selling it ever
since, which is why they
have so much free time for
studying rate increases.
I attended my first PSRC
meeting in September 1957
in Denver which was the
first meeting of the Main
Committee west of the
Mississppi River. Most of the
hostile indians were gone by
then. At that time, as now,
THE COMMITTEE abounded
with miscellaneous geniuses
and n’er do wells. Bill
Sonnemann was our head
character in 1957 and
all 5’ 4” of him ruled the
Committee with an iron
hand.
PSRC has always had
its share of people with
unique qualities. Some of
our early pioneers were
quite proficient with the
spoken word and were able
to sustain their elocution
to the level of the finest
congressional filibuster.
The Committee managed
to survive in spite of these
silver-tongued orators.
I always felt that if you
couldn’t say what you had
to say in two or three
sentences in a meeting like
that, you probably didn’t
really have anything of much
significance to say anyway.
Others that have always
been with us don’t say
anything. They sit and
ponder and blink, but never
object, suggest a change or
PAC.SUMMER.2007
by Malcolm MacLaren
62
Comment
My first paper
was presented
in Port Angeles,
field trip. We didn’t know what they
were. In the class on relaying we had Washington
a pretty good book written by two
Westinghouse guys, Monseth and on overcurrent
Robinson. We had pretty good access
to information about relays, even relays, in 1954
though the boxes didn’t mean a whole
lot to us.
I graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1949.
I had co-opted one quarter with Memphis Light Gas and
Water Division in the substation design department. Their
substation design consisted of six drafting tables and two
engineers, one manager and his assistant. That was the whole
department, so I was forced to get involved in everything.
They threw me into this environment. I was designing
concrete foundations for huge transformers. I was designing
cable runs, from the control house out to the switch yard all
under very careful scrutiny from the people who knew what
they were doing. I did the steel work for the substation. I
told them where to drill the holes in the steel.
After I graduated I went back to the Light, Gas and Water
Division. I’d lay out the whole system, and then the boss
PAC.SUMMER.2007
would go to Pittsburgh and run short-circuit calculations.
Together, we would determine what action was dictated by
the results.
PAC World: When you say run short circuit calculations, how did
you do it?
WE: It was on an analog computer. They called it the
calculating board. Chuck Wagner ran it. He is one of the exWestinghouse guys, and incidentally is a past president of
the Power Engineering Society. I still hear from him about
once a week.
PAC World: Did you start doing something about protection or was
it just substation design?
WE: They would give me a new substation, and they would
ask me to pick out the relays for it (probably to see if I was
paying attention). Of course being a neophyte, they didn’t
trust me very far. Everything I did they checked, which was
the right way to do it. I learned a lot about relays. That was
my first encounter with the HCB relay. We had quite a few
of those in Memphis. The service area wasn’t that big. We put
in Memphis’ first 115KV while I was there. We had some
115KV pipe type cable down through the middle of town.
This is when I met one of the finest technical men
you’ll ever find. This was Bob Cheek, who later ran the
computer center for Westinghouse. He knew everything
there was to know about power-line-carrier and high speed
distance relays, and who unknowingly led me to choose
Westinghouse over that other relay manufacturer at the
time.
The local Westinghouse salesman knew my work, so he
recommended that they use me.
PAC World: Did you have anything to do with relays at the time?
WE: I was in Seattle working with the utilities there. And I
would just go there and say “Well, what do you want to talk
about?” and they would tell me what their interest was at
the time, as related to Westinghouse. If they were having
a circuit breaker problem, or a relay problem, or they had a
new line extension or substation, they wanted to talk about
the relaying for it. I would contribute what little I could and
perhaps get East Pittsburgh or Newark, NJ involved. I was
involved in all that kind of stuff. I would go to Tacoma about
once a week and to Wenatchee, which is Chelan County
PUD about once a week. I would go to Spokane, Washington
Water Power and talk to them about the same kind of stuff.
The Washington Water Power recognized that they might
have someone who could help them out, so they asked me
to do a relay school for them. I did, I’d teach about four hours
a week. I’d take the train over and take the train back. I’d do
a full four hour session for them. And that went on for a
couple of months. I was doing quite a few relay schools back
then.
PAC World: So this is when you started teaching?
WE: I was teaching regularly then. I went up to Alaska many
times. I used to go up there twice a year. I’d go to Ketchikan
and Anchorage mostly, though I went to Fairbanks a few
times.
PAC World: And this was for how long?
WE: It was for I guess twelve years. Then they decided
they were going to break up the Engineering and Service
department. Service was going to go one way and they were
going to take all the people who were then called District
Engineers, take all of those application people and put them
under Sales. And I said no, I’m not going to be in Sales,
period. So I negotiated with Bill Glassburn in Newark, NJ
where the Relay Division was located. Before that, I had
written a prize paper with Lew Blackburn about negative
sequence relaying. And so they recognized that I might have
some potential. Bill Glassburn hired me for Newark, so I
went to work for the application group, headed up by Lew
Blackburn. I learned a lot from him and the assorted geniuses
with which he had surrounded himself.
PAC World: Was this your first paper?
WE: No, my first paper was presented in Port Angeles
Washington on overcurrent relays, and their coordination
with other devices on a distribution circuit. That was right
about 1954 at the Public Power Association Meeting.
PAC World: How did you feel?
WE: Scared.
PAC World: How many people were there? Was the audience huge?
express agreement. I often
wondered if their suppressed
comments might not be a
whole lot more interesting
than those from people
who couldn’t stop talking.
Then, on the other hand,
their comments might have
been as exciting as picking
out socks.
I am frequently asked how
one goes about joining the
PSRC. It’s a lot like making
out an application to play
golf in the Masters or to
apply for the Congressional
Medal of honor. You Don’t!!
You are appointed to the
PSRC by the Chairman,
prior to which you have
demonstrated, for two or
more years, your willingness
to work and to participate
and to contribute.
Membership is a high honor.
It is sort of like the house
of representatives — with
ethics.
At that 1957 meeting
everybody spoke American,
nobody had a beard, there
were two gray heads, there
were, as now, a limited
number of people of
questionable character, there
were no women, there was
no “artificial intelligence” [It
was all real], and no virtual
reality [we had only real
reality]. None of our logic
was fuzzy, though some
of it might have been
suspect. We wore our neural
networks on our shoulders
and our genetic algorithms
were nobodies business but
our own.
There were about the same
number of filibusterers in the
committee as we have now.
There were no double clicks
on the web page. The only
viruses were biological and
the meetings had more to
do with relaying than data
access, local area networks,
waveform analysis, intelligent
systems, digital simulators
and most members had not
even heard of the IEC, AOL,
URL or even Bill Gates.
The Internet, of course, had
not yet been conceived.
Most of us knew what a hairnet was. We are still waiting
for the outer-net. I am told
on good authority that the
Internet is the single most
important development
since the flush-toilet. It
allows you to chat for
hours on end with millions
of perfect strangers on
subjects you care absolutely
nothing about. We don’t
need to worry about what’s
around the next corner for
computers because when
we get there, we will be
obsolete and our computer
will not have nearly enough
memory.
IEEE papers seem much less
exciting today than they
were in previous generations.
There was one AIEE paper
from 1938 which I recently
discovered and have been
dying to order called,
”Adventures in Respiration”
by Yandell Henderson. I
would wager that we have
a lot more adventures
in respiration than Mr.
Henderson ever dreamed of.
There was another called,
“Injuries From Artificial
Respiration” which sort of
piqued my curiosity. I could
imagine several different
ways in which these injuries
might occur.
Our new Chairman has
agreed to start off in a
brilliant burst of energy and
do certain things he feels
have been lagging and get
some results right away.
He will:
Immediately get to the
bottom of this whole Bigfoot
thing.
PAC.SUMMER.2007
the guru
63
64
Walt Elmore
the guru
65
From everything
that you see here
on this wall,
WE: The audience consisted probably of about thirty people.
They didn’t know what a relay was, so it was no problem.
The secret to making talks I think is knowing a little more
than your audience does.
PAC World: So then you went to New Jersey?
WE: Yes I went to Newark, New Jersey and my immediate
boss was Lou Blackburn and his boss was Bill Glassburn. I
worked hard there, gradually inched my way up, and I finally
was given the Section. I had some super guys working for
me.
PAC World: Were you involved in the development of electromechanical relays?
WE: Not the development, but the application thereof.
Westinghouse had hundreds of different relays, and we
needed to know how they were to be used and what their
strengths and frailties were. That sort of thing was the
responsibility of my group. We also wrote the application
part of new instruction leaflets.
New functions for mostly electromechanical, some solidstate (especially systems) and some microprocessor relays
were specified and the application information prepared by
this group. Also we did model power system testing and
evaluating.
The test part of the instruction leaflets were written
by the design people and they, of course, had the overall
responsibility for the relay or system.
PAC World: Were these application notes more or less what made
you write the book?
WE: The book started out as a collection of notes that Lew
Blackburn and George Rockefeller had developed in their
teaching. We expanded it. It became Applied Protective
Relaying and then the final version is a book, Protective
PAC.SUMMER.2007
Relaying Theory and Application.
George Rockefeller contributed very
significant one
heavily to the original material. He was
such a sharp engineer. He is one of the
is this plaque.
few geniuses that I have ever met.
PAC World: How did you feel about microIt is on the ABB
processor relays compared to solid state?
WE: Yes. I never really liked solid state.
building in Coral There are just too many weaknesses in
solid state. They fail too easily and are
Springs that was so subject to transient failure whereas
digital relays seem to be buffered
dedicated to me. appropriately, so that they don’t have
that problem.
PAC World: When did they start developing
microprocessor based relays?
WE: Westinghouse developed the
world’s first commercial microprocessor
relays in 1979. It was the under frequency relay. It was
selected because it was just a counter and that choice did
not present much of a technological challenge, nor did it
represent a commercial risk. It was a trial balloon.
PAC World: When did you join the IEEE?
WE: Well, when I was a student in college, I was a member
of the student section and have been active to a degree with
IEEE for all these years.
PAC World: When was your first relaying committee meeting?
WE: That was in 1957, the first meeting of the Power System
Relaying committee west of the Mississippi. I was able to
come down from Seattle to Denver, but I hadn’t been able to
go from Seattle to Philadelphia where they usually held it.
PAC World: How did you find it at the time? The Relaying Committhe most
tee – how was it different from what it is today?
WE: At that meeting there were about thirty industry giants.
They all sat around a table and that was it. They didn’t break
off into separate meetings.
PAC World: Did they have working groups? Or was it just everybody sitting together?
WE: Yes, it was everybody sitting together discussing a
common problem. It’s striking when you compare the old
days and now in that we used to talk about relays. We don’t
do that so much anymore. We talk about all kinds of fringe
things and related things, that are significant with respect
to relaying, but not so much about the relays themselves,
and in the manner in which they perform. I get a little fussy
about some of the working group chairmen. They insist
on calling us the Relay Committee. We are not the Relay
Committee, we are the Relaying Committee. There is a world
of difference. A relay is mostly a box, relaying is the rest
of the power system. There are so many important things
to think about in terms of the power system. That’s where
all the transients are, that’s where all the fault currents are,
that’s where the dc offset is. Those things are important to
relaying.
PAC World: When you talk about the things you like to do, what is
the music you like to listen to?
WE: Jazz. I’ve got a lot of old stuff too. I’ve got a lot of Glenn
Miller, Benny Goodman , June Christy, that kind of stuff. I
enjoy really good jazz piano players like Errol Garner and
Oscar Peterson.
PAC World: Did you ever play any music?
WE: No. I never had a chance. My mother never had any
money, so we couldn’t afford lessons.
PAC World: You mentioned you’ve been married for fifty six years.
Explore the possibility of
getting the Pulitzer prize for
lyrical poetry for our next
PSRC guide.
Examine the reliability issue
more fully and try to find out
why all relay engineers are
dependable, but very few are
secure.
Arrange for the purchase
of t-shirts which will have in
bold letters, ”Are you using
the proper protection?”
Contact Sandra Bullock
and suggest that she could
benefit tremendously from
participation in the PSRC
meetings.
Our new SECRETARY has
agreed to:
Find a way to steam stamps
off of the transmittals to
the PSRC, so they can be
recycled.
Discover new ways to make
our sizeable bank account
appear to be approaching
bankruptcy, thus
necessitating a near certain
increase in all assessments.
Continue to find new ways to
convey some form of
simplified news to the
Neanderthal,
knuckle-dragging
segment of the PSRC who
have no computer, no
intention of getting one, and
who still look at a keyboard
with a great deal of suspicion
and abhorrence.
Explore the possibility of
buying the PSRC their own
forest to cover the paper
requirements for guides
which go beyond the 23rd
revision.
Work out a way to trade
members like they do in
baseball. We could get a
couple of screwball pitchers
from the Substations
committee in exchange for
a PSRC player who seems
to be out in left field most of
the time.
Bring better order to some
working group meetings
by buying a small handgun.
Working in the PSRC, one
gets some interesting slants
on words and punctuation,
and I would like at this
point, since I may never get
another chance, to point out
the understanding I have
developed for some of these
“snow” words.
“User configurable” – when
you see that expression, it
tells you two things: one
that the device is settable
and two that the author of
whatever is being written
has a great deal of difficulty
with the use of the English
language and wants
everybody else to join him.
“Knowledge based” – that
is as opposed to ignorance
based, neither of which is
related to stupidity based.
“Download” – after something
has been uploaded or
perhaps sidewise loaded, it
may then be downloaded.
This may be to compensate
for the fact that there are
upscale neighborhoods and
no downscale, pickup trucks
and no pickdown trucks.
“Par” – one shot better than
a bogie or one shot worse
than a birdie or a phaseangle regulator or a project
authorization request. At
least once in a write-up
or discussion, one should
identify which of these are
being discussed because I,
for one, am going to leap
to the conclusion that it
is the former, and let you
worry about the phase-angle
regulator and the project
authorization request.
“Inter-operable” – according
to the dictionary means
”operates in a community”.
So I have concluded that
it’s something like a city bus
or an abortion clinic and
PAC.SUMMER.2007
66
67
the guru
We have our disagreements, but that doesn't last
long. She likes flower gardening. I cut the yard,
I take care of that part. If there is a good movie
on, or if some restaurant needs a little attention,
Walt Elmore
we have an enjoyable outing together.
WE: Fifty six years. We were married in 1950.
PAC World: What is the secret for being together for such a long
time?
WE: I live down here, and she lives upstairs. She does her
thing and I do mine. She has a lot of ladies clubs that she
goes to, and she likes flower gardening. She spends a lot of
time working outdoors. I cut the yard, I take care of that part.
If there is a good movie on, or if some restaurant needs a little
attention, we have an enjoyable outing together!
PAC World: And you golf?
WE: I golf. I just disappear. She never suggests that maybe I
ought to do something else. When I say I think I’ll go play
golf tomorrow she says OK. There is never any discussion of
it.
PAC World: Do you think it’s the understanding that you have your
own interests, each of you, and you have your common interests
and then going along with this?
WE: Absolutely. The other part of it is that we have three
children and six grandchildren. Two of the children and
four of the grandchildren are within two miles of here, so
they are constantly flowing through the house. They are a
PAC.SUMMER.2007
considerable distraction, but also a considerably joy. The wife
and I both think of them the same way – we both love and
respect them. We get along fine. We have our disagreements,
but that doesn’t last more than a microsecond or so. We are
continually disappointed by the movies, so it really has to be
a dandy to have us get out to see it.
PAC World: When you did this speech for the relaying committee
anniversary, what motivated you to do that actually? How did you
end up doing it?
WE: I’m not sure which came first. I had two similar
talks, they were quite different in what I said. One was
at Georgia Tech and the other was at the Power System
Relaying Committee. I think, probably, somebody heard the
Georgia Tech talk and asked me to be a part of the Relaying
Committee twenty fifth, fiftieth, seventy fifth anniversary or
whatever it was. I had fun with it.
PAC World: Do you write other things? Non-technical things?
WE: No, those are the only two things like that that I’ve ever
done, because I don’t have a vehicle for it. If there was some
place that required me to do it I would be able to put together
something. Everything, it seems to me, has a little bit of
humor associated with it. The more serious someone tries to
be with me, the funnier I think it is.
PAC World: Which is the food that you like? For example, do you
have a favorite meal or something like that?
WE: Well, I like a big thick steak, I enjoy steak very much.
PAC World: Is there any special way that you prepare it?
WE: I’m no good at cooking things like that. If I go to a
restaurant I’ll order it medium well.
PAC World: I see. But this is your favorite one?
WE: Yes. Filet Mignon, that would be my favorite dinner
food. I like fish, salmon in particular. We spent a lot of time
in Seattle, and there we got the finest salmon in the world.
PAC World: Did you ever do any fishing or hunting?
WE: Yes I did some fishing. We went up to Neah Bay, which
is way up in the Northwest corner of Seattle. It’s all the way
on the other side of the Olympic Peninsula. A whole bunch
of Westinghouse guys went up there and we went out in the
ocean and brought back a lot of salmon. Boy, that was great!
PAC World: But you weren’t doing it on a regular basis?
WE: No, I’ve never fished. I’ve never cared anything about
stream fishing because, I don’t know, fisherman are about
as crazy as golfers. I used to think that the most you could
hope for on a fishing trip was a dead fish. In golf you can’t
hope for anything except to find your ball after you hit it. So
that’s kind of a waste of time, but I just thoroughly enjoy it.
Every now and then I hit a ball and I know that Jack Nicklaus
on his very best day couldn’t have done it any better. That’s
the thrill of it. I’ll hit ten bad shots and then I’ll hit one that
is really outstanding, and it just feels good down to your
toes, and it’s that far from the pin and that sort of thing. It’s a
great feeling to be able to do that occasionally, to be able to do
something really spectacular.
PAC World: So you try to do it once every week?
WE: I play just about every Monday morning. If the weather
is not good then Tuesday, what’s the matter with that? Or
Wednesday. Normally around here the courses are fairly
vacant on Monday morning. So I go out there, and the course
is mine. Nobody in front of me or behind me, I play at my
own pace.
PAC World: Do you play with some friends or just by yourself?
WE: I play alone. I just show up and say here I am, I’d like
to play and they say OK. So I get a cart and I play eighteen
holes, and it’s so nice not to have to hurry. If I hit a shot
that’s absolutely terrible I’ll drop another ball and hit it and
do it right. It’s just a great pleasure to be out there, walking
around, it’s so green and beautiful and smooth. And the
putting greens around here are in good shape. We get enough
rain to support them well.
PAC World: It’s nice to enjoy doing something like that.
WE: Well I’ve been playing golf for a lot of years. I didn’t start
seriously until I finished college. I played a few rounds in
high school, and in junior college. I was about twenty one
at the time. I’ve been playing ever since off and on. I played
a lot in Seattle. We went out every Saturday morning, rain,
shine, snow. We went out and scraped the snow off the green
one time and played golf.
PAC World: How many papers have you done total?
WE: Probably about a hundred and twenty.
PAC World: Do you plan to do more?
WE: No, I told ABB I’m not going to write any more papers.
I’m kind of disappointed in papers now. They seem to be
written by college professors for college professors. The lack
of discussion is also a source of disgust for me. It used to be
great. I went to the discussion first, and then I looked at the
closure, and then I would read or maybe not read the paper.
PAC World: What advice would you give to the young engineers
in our field?
WE: Find out why! To accept something the way it’s always
been done is not acceptable. There is too much of that
–accepting things the way they are. Not delving into it. I
don’t know whether it’s a matter of availability of time or
what. People just don’t seem willing to devote the effort
and time to look into things anymore. That’s a fact!! I think
it would be good if, when you reach a little stumbling block,
that you really got into it to find out why you’re about to do
something, particularly in relaying. Emerson said, “Trust
thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron string”
Note: The full text is available at www.pacw.org
probably a lot closer to an
abortion than a bus.
“Fuzzy logic" – as defined in a
recent IEEE paper :“ handles
uncertaintities due to
intentional vagueness rather
than avoidable imprecision
or statistical aggregation”.
Footnote – “may require
naïve physics”.
“Parameterization" – means
to change settings.
“Deasserted” – removed the
input – better to use one
word rather than three –
one that nobody
understands compared
to three that any knucklehead could understand, but
the three lack the aura of
erudition, in spite of the fact
of conveying information to
the uninformed.
“Equivalency” – to make the
same.
“Computerized” – done with
a computer – [Nouns
converted to adjectives are
the domain of the obfuscator
and scoundrel. Place the
salt-shaker on the table – The
salt has been tableized. the
unruly horse has been placed
in the stable – the horse has
been stableized].
“Privatized” – made private.
“Reconfigurated" – changed.
“Oxymoron” – words coupled
together which are mutually
exclusive. Example –
fuzzy logic [The clearest
way we can broadcast our
ignorance is through the
misuse or distortion of
the language].
If you do make it to
membership in the PSRC, you
can look forward to:
A wonderful lesson in North
American geography,
as our presence in
Williamsburg proclaims .
A knowledge of relaying
that has been seared in
the furnace of practical,
experienced criticism.
Learning the secret
handshake
An intimate understanding
of human foibles along
with a list of the principal
trouble-makers
Having access to a hundred
or more of the most informed
relaying experts on the face
of the globe
Learning that a circuitbreaker is merely a device
used to increase the
interrupting capability of a
relay
As you go on past the PSRC
to retirement you discover:
You should never sweat the
small stuff.
Everything is small stuff.
“How should I know? You
should look it up” comes in
handy.
“Whatever” is useful.
"Who cares” takes care of all
other contingencies.
Everybody knows the same
amount. It’s just about
different things.
High expectations lead to
failure.
Low expectations lead to
failure.
In relaying, you will quite likely
not become rich, but you will
most assuredly have a rich
life filled with the rewards
of knowing you made some
power system better, and
some utility executive less
irritable.
I will close with ”aloha”, a
Hawaiian expression meaning
either hello
or goodbye, which just
goes to show that if you
spend enough time in the
sunshine, you don’t know
whether you are coming or
going.
I go now to write my book. I
have chosen the title, ”From
here to senility.”
Walter A. Elmore
Note: The full text is available
at www.pacw.org
PAC.SUMMER.2007