Sydney Charles Bartholomew, M.B.E., died on the 30th June, 1939, and thereby The Institution lost a widely known and very popular engineer whose interests brought him into touch with a very wide circle. He was born in 1873 and was educated at the Navel School at Greenwich, but eye trouble, which was to continue at intervals through out his life, led to his giving up his intended career in favour of the Central Telegraph Office. In 1900 he was transferred to the engineering Department of the post office and very early in his career he specialized in the subject of interference between power and telecommunication systems.
This included a study of the risks of physical contact, electromagnetic, electrostatic, and resistive coupling between parallel lines, and of the corrosion of underground pipe systems by stray currents in the earth. His work often involved research and he was an indefatigable reader of American and other foreign literature on these subjects.
On the formation of the Comite Consultatif International des Lignes Telephoniques a grand Distance (C.C.I.F). In 1924, he took a leading part on the appropriate committees. The Commission Mixte International (C.M.I.) was formed a few years later with the object of carrying out experimental work on problems involving the close co-operation of power and telephone engineers. He took a leading part in the formation of this commission and in formulating its early programmes of research, and was elected President Rapporter of some of the sub-committees to which the various studies were apportioned.
Notwithstanding his devoted championship of the interests of communication circuits where affected by power systems, his unfailing good humour and happy disposition made him many good friends everywhere among representatives of other interests. In 1920 he became the Post Office representative on an I.E.E. Committee set up to advise the Electricity Commissioners on Regulations governing Overhead Power Lines and later upon Regulations for securing the Safety of the public.
He joined the Institution in 1919 as an Associate Member and was elected a member in 1921. In 1924 he was awarded the Webber Premium for his paper on "Power Circuit Interference with Telegraphs and Telephones." He also received three medals from the Institution of Post Office Electrical Engineers for Papers on the same subject. He was awarded the M.B.E. in 1932. P.J.R.