After finishing college with a electrical engineering degree in 1972. I went to work at Gerber's can plant. After working there only three months, the vice president asked me to build him a phase converter to power his machine shop at his house. At this point, being fresh out of college, I had no idea what a phase converter was, much less, how to build one. So I went back to my American electricians handbook and got up to speed on phase converters. After spending several hours at the public library, I gathered all the knowledge of the parts needed to build a converter. Two weeks later, the machine shop was up and running flawlessly. This shop is still running today. These days, the knowledge that a person would need, to build a converter, you can go straight to your computer and get it.