Parks Stephenson
Member
OK, Landlubber, you can panic again.
I, like you, have often wondered about the use of the term, "commutator" for the device in the wheelhouse. I have several navigation and seamanship books from the early 1900s and have never run into the word. However, "commutator" is described in the inquiry transcripts, plain as day. Not being a THS member, the question didn't hold a high priority, so it faded unresolved and unasked into the general noise in my brian.
Your post brought the question to the fore again. I gave Bill Sauder a quick call, because I know of no other who has studied contemporary documentation as much as he. His response was that he has never seen the word "commutator" used anywhere other than the Titanic Inquiry transcripts to describe what is, in effect, a clinometer. His feeling is that the word was either mistakenly used or transcribed, and that the error has propagated down through the years.
When I hung up the phone, one of my co-workers, who overheard the conversation, came over to ask me why I was interested in commutators. He was an engineer aboard Aegis destroyers and he informed me that in all shipboard CHT (Collection, Holding & Transfer) systems, the "commutator" refers to the device in the CHT holding tanks that smashes the clumps in collected human waste to a more liquid form, so that it won't clog the overboard discharge pipes. I subsequently verified this with the other engineers in my section...that appears to be the only valid nautical use of the term (the electrical definition refers to all alternators, land and marine use).
So, yes...I kid you not...the THS journals are named either after a decades-old transcription error or a defecation liquifier.
Parks
I, like you, have often wondered about the use of the term, "commutator" for the device in the wheelhouse. I have several navigation and seamanship books from the early 1900s and have never run into the word. However, "commutator" is described in the inquiry transcripts, plain as day. Not being a THS member, the question didn't hold a high priority, so it faded unresolved and unasked into the general noise in my brian.
Your post brought the question to the fore again. I gave Bill Sauder a quick call, because I know of no other who has studied contemporary documentation as much as he. His response was that he has never seen the word "commutator" used anywhere other than the Titanic Inquiry transcripts to describe what is, in effect, a clinometer. His feeling is that the word was either mistakenly used or transcribed, and that the error has propagated down through the years.
When I hung up the phone, one of my co-workers, who overheard the conversation, came over to ask me why I was interested in commutators. He was an engineer aboard Aegis destroyers and he informed me that in all shipboard CHT (Collection, Holding & Transfer) systems, the "commutator" refers to the device in the CHT holding tanks that smashes the clumps in collected human waste to a more liquid form, so that it won't clog the overboard discharge pipes. I subsequently verified this with the other engineers in my section...that appears to be the only valid nautical use of the term (the electrical definition refers to all alternators, land and marine use).
So, yes...I kid you not...the THS journals are named either after a decades-old transcription error or a defecation liquifier.
Parks
