[f. as prec. + -ER1.]
1. One who or that which transforms.
1601. Deacon & Walker, Spirits & Divels, 208. He is no creatour of substances, no transformer of natures.
1765. J. Brown, Chr. Jrnl. (1814), 150. Sin, horrid transformer, how hast thou changed our God!
1883. J. D. Fulton, Sam Hobart, 18. The steam locomotive, the material transformer of the world.
2. Electr. An apparatus that transforms continuous currents from one voltage to another, or continuous into alternating currents or vice versa. (After F. transformateur (Hospitalier, 1882).)
1883. trans. Hospitalier, Mod. Applications of Electr. (ed. 2), I. 141. We designate by the term electric transformers apparatus in which electricity is no longer produced directly, but is transformed and changes its properties.
1884. Electrical Rev., 26 July, 64. The present transformers, those of MM. Goulard and Gibbs, are … very similar to bobbins.
1886. G. Forbes, in Electrician, 26 Feb., 315. Induction coils used in this way have been called secondary generators or transformers.
1888. S. P. Thompson, Dynamo-electric Mach., 484. For transforming from high pressures to low, several kinds of apparatus are known, namely:—… Induction-coils, also called for this purpose Secondary Generators, or Transformers, or Converters.
1891. Times, 28 Sept., 13/6. From the transformer the currents are led to the four collecting rings of the motor, and a continuous current is taken off its commutator.
b. attrib., as transformer chamber, house, station.
1888. Scribner’s Mag., Aug., 196/2. The development of a radically new and very interesting system, known as the secondary or transformer system.
1891. Pall Mall G., 12 Sept., 6/2. It furnishes the current for feeding 1,200 glow-lamps, partly fixed to a large frame in the transformer room, partly to a sort of signboard outside the hall.
1894. Westm. Gaz., May, 7/2. The current is conveyed to Rome on four copper cables…. Outside the Porta Pía … it enters a transformer-house, where its pressure is reduced from 5,000 to 2,000 volts.
