engineering

Pender Chair

Pender Chair is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Pender Chair rather than just read about it. In short: The Pender Chair is the post that is generally held by the head of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering of University College London. John Pender (pictured in the caricature on the right), the founder of Cable and Wireless, died in 1896.

Key takeaways

Pender Chair belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Pender Chair to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Pender Chair from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Pender Chair is the post that is generally held by the head of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering of University College London. John Pender (pictured in the caricature on the right), the founder of Cable and Wireless, died in 1896. The Pender Memorial Committee was formed, and collected £6,277 in his memorial. Of this, they decided to donate £5,000 to the Department of Electrical Technology of University College, to enable an expansion of its facilities. This included the founding of the Pender Laboratory, and the inauguration of the Pender Chair. The Department of Electrical Technology had already been formed some years earlier, in 1885, with John Ambrose Fleming (pictured below) as its head. He, therefore, became the first incumbent of the Pender Chair of Electrical Engineering.

The following references can be found, in the Council Minutes:

2 November 1895: Letter received from the Technical Education Board offering a grant of £1500 for the improvement of Engineering Teaching. 25 November 1895: Proposal to endow a Chair of Electrical Engineering as part of a memorial to the late Sir John Pender. 5 December 1896: Receipt of a Memorandum from the Pender Memorial Committee offering to put the sum of £5,000 in trust with UCL to fund a new Electrical Engineering Laboratory, to be named the Pender Laboratory, and to rename the existing chair of Electrical Engineering the Pender Chair of Electrical Engineering. 9 January 1897: Mr Swan nominated to represent the Council on the Pender Memorial Committee.

Pender Professors of Electrical Engineering at UCL 1899-1925: John Ambrose Fleming 1926-1934: Wellesley Curram Clinton 1935–1945: Reginald Otto Kapp 1945-1950: G.T.R. Hill 1950-1966: Harold Barlow 1966-1979: Alexander Lamb Cullen 1979-1986: Eric Ash 1986-1987: David (DEN) Davies 1987-1991: vacant 1991-2002: John Edwin Midwinter 2002-2009: vacant 2009- now: Michael Pepper

References

External links Web page for the history of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, at University College London Biography of R.O. Kapp

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Pender Chair

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Pender Chair claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Pender Chair before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Pender Chair ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Pender Chair

In research: Pender Chair appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Pender Chair in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Pender Chair is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Engineering education in the United Kingdom, Professorships at University College London, Professorships in engineering, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Pender Chair outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Pender Chair in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Pender Chair means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Pender Chair out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Pender Chair in simple terms?

Why does Pender Chair matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Pender Chair?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Pender Chair.