Dissemination of the Phasor Method in Electrical Engineering in China

Synchrophasors, widely used in the monitoring and analysis of power systems, evolved from the phasor method presented by Charles Proteus Steinmetz in 1893. The phasor method is a mathematical method for solving linear sinusoidal steady-state circuits and time-varying electromagnetic fields. This paper traces the history and diffusion of the phasor method in the discipline of electrical engineering in China. In 1914, Sidney Roby Sheldon, an American teacher at the Government Institute of Technology of the Communications Ministry, Shanghai, China, introduced the phasor method to his students in his Alternating Currents course. The textbook used was Elements of Electrical Engineering (Volume II) by William Suddards Franklin and William Esty. In 1920, The Electrical Magazine published a paper “Complex number and its application” by Sijiu Shi (editor of the electrical engineering section of this periodical). This is the earliest example found of Chinese literature introducing the phasor method. In the 1930s, Principles of Alternating Currents, an American electrical engineering textbook that includes the phasor method, was translated by Chinese scholars; this Chinese version promoted the use of the phasor method in China's electrical engineering field. Alternating Current Circuits, authored by the Chinese university professor Pen Tung Sah and published in 1948, may be the earliest example of the phasor method being included in a Chinese electrical engineering textbook; it played an important role in popularizing the phasor method in China.