William Morris Mordey

William Morris Mordey (1856 to 1938) was a British electrical engineer and inventor from County Durham who became a central figure in early alternating current power generation. He is known for developing the Mordey Victoria Alternator, a spider pole design with a disc shaped armature that helped the transition from gas to electric lighting and allowed multiple alternators to run in parallel, a breakthrough that made reliable public electricity networks possible. Mordey's alternators were installed at landmark power stations including Bankside in London, and he discovered the V curves used in alternator testing that are still taught in electrical engineering. He proposed the wavy line symbol for alternating current in 1889, later standardized internationally. Mordey rose from a telegraph clerk at age 14 to chief electrician at Brush Electrical Engineering from 1881 to 1897, then worked as an independent consultant, and served as president of the Institution of Electrical Engineers from 1908 to 1909. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/