KAPP, GISBERT (1852-1922), electrical engineer, was born at Mauer, near Vienna, in 1852. His father was German and his mother Scottish. Kapp studied at Zurich, and after travelling in Europe and north Africa he took a post in 1875 with Messrs. Crompton and company, at Chelmsford. In conjunction with Crompton, Kapp invented a system of compound winding for direct current dynamos. From 1894 to 1904 he lived in Berlin, when he was secretary of the German association of electrical engineers, lecturer at the Technische Hochschule, Charlottenburg, and editor of the Electrotechnische Zeitschrift. He also lectured at various universities and acted as a consulting engineer on matters concerning electric lighting, power and traction. In this latter capacity he advised a number of European towns. He was appointed professor of electrical engineering at Birmingham uni versity in 1904 and retired in 1918; he died on Aug. 1o, 1922.
Kapp developed a dynamo which has been used to a great extent but has now been superseded by a more modern type of machine. He designed power stations and transformers and invented many laboratory methods of electrical testing. Kapp applied mathe matics to problems of electrical engineering and worked out a number of simple and original theorems for practical use. He worked out the phase difference between an alternating potential difference and the resulting current and wrote a paper on boosters for return currents in electric railway plant. Kapp was awarded a number of honorary degrees and other honours, including the Telford medal. He was the author of Principles of Electric Engineering, Vector Analysis of Alternating Currents, Dynamos, Alternators and Transformers and Electric Transmission of Energy.