Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865-1923)
Erfinder und Erfindungen
German Inventors and Inventions
Biographie
German-American electrical engineer Charles Proteus Steinmetz was born in Breslau, Prussia on April 9, 1865. (Breslau is in the region known as Niederschlesien, Lower Silesia, which has been part of Bohemia, Austria and Prussia. Breslau is now Wroclaw, Poland.) Steinmetz, whose original name was Karl August Rudolf Steinmetz, studied in Breslau, Zurich and Berlin.
In 1889, because of political problems, Steinmetz emigrated to the United States, settling in New York state. In 1893 he went to work for General Electric in Schenectady, where he would spend the rest of his life. He became a professor of electrical engineering at that city's Union College in 1902.
By the end of his life, the mathematical genius had some 200 patents in his name, most related to improvements in electrical generators and equipment. Steinmetz also authored textbooks and many scientific papers. He himself considered his three most important accomplishments to be: (1) his work in the field of electromagnetism (Theorie der magnetischen Hysterse), (2) the development of a practical, simplified method of managing and calculating values for alternating current (der Wechselstrom) using complex numbers, and (3) his research on lightning phenomena. Steinmetz also invented the three-phase electrical circuit (das Dreileitersystem/der Drehstrom).
Steinmetz Links
- Charles P. Steinmetz from the Inventors Guide site at About
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