STEINMETZ, CHARLES PROTEUS

(b. Breslau, Germany [now Wroclaw, Poland], 9 April 1865;d. Schenectady, New York, 26 October 1923),

engineering.

Steinmetz’ given name was Karl August Rudolf. He was the only son of Karl Heinrich Steinmetz, a government railway employee, and his first wife, Caroline Neubert. After early education at the local Gymnasium, he entered the University of Breslau, where he remained for five years. During this time, he became an ardent socialist. During this time, he became an ardent socialist. Placed under police surveillance in 1887, he eventually fled to Zurich, shortly before completing the Ph.D. in mathematics, and there studied mechanical engineering.

In 1889 Steinmetz immigrated into the United States and in 1894 became an American citizen, whereupon he took the name Charles Proteus. He never married but in 1905 legally adopted Joseph Le Roy Hayden as his son. Steinmetz received an honorary M.A. from Harvard (1902), and honorary Ph.D. from Union College, and served as president of both the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (1901) and the Illuminating Engineering Society (1915).

Upon entering the United States, Steinmetz was employed as a draftsman by Rudolf Eickemeyer, a prospering manufacturer of motors and machinery and a versatile inventor and pioneer in electrical research. Four years later the newly founded General Electric Company acquired many of Eickemeyer’s electrical patents, along with the services of Steinmetz, who by 1892 had already earned a considerable reputation because of two long papers on the mathematical law of magnetic hysteresis, which was praised by contemporaries as “doing for the magnetic circuit what Ohm did for the electric circuit.” steinmetz’ first textbook on electricity, Theory and Calculation of Alternating Current Phenomena (1897), written with E. J. Berg, described the complex number technique for analyzing alternating-current circuits that he had first presented to the International Electrical Congress in Chicago in 1893. This work played a decisive role in the turn-of-the-century debate between alternating- and direct-current technologies and the technique is still universally used.

To relieve him of administrative duties, Steinmetz was made a consulting engineer at General Electric after 1895. His principal contributions to the advancement of the company in the ensuing twenty-eight years were covered by 195 patents and included the magnetite arc-lamp electrode; two-phase to three-phase transformation; major improvements in motors, generators, and transformers; developments in mercury-arc lighting; and the analysis and design of high-voltage, alternating-current transmission techniques. Transient phenomena in the latter received his particular attention and were explored in a much-publicized, high-voltage “artificial lightning” testing laboratory. He was one of the earliest advocates of atmospheric pollution control, research on solar energy conversion, nationwide electrical networks, electrification of railways, synthetic production of protein, and electric automobiles. While employed by General Electric, Steinmetz also served on the Union College faculty (1903 – 1913), where he created the electrical engineering department and started his transmission-line research.

Apart from his technical achievements, Steinmetz’ unique contribution to the developing electrical engineering profession was his repeated demonstration of the profitability of applying sophisticated mathematical methods to practical problems. Most of his ten technical books were widely used in colleges and had a tremendous influence on curricular development.

Physically small and crippled from birth, like his father and grandfather, Steinmetz had several unusual hobbies and personal idiosyncrasies, about which many legends accumulated. He retained a lifelong interest in socialism; and after the election of a socialist city government in Schenectady in 1911, he served with distinction in several civic positions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Steinmetz’ works include Theory and Calculation of Alternating Current Phenomena (New York, 1897), written with E. J. Berg; Theoretical Elements of Electrical Engineering (New York, 1901); General Lectures on Electrical Engineering (New York, 1908), J. L. Hayden, ed.; Theory and Calculation of Transient Electrical Phenomena and Oscillations (New York, 1909); Radiation, Light and Illumination (New York, 1909); Engineering Mathematics (New York, 1911); Elementary Lectures on Electrical Discharges, Waves and Impulses and Other Transients (New York, 1911); Theory and Calculation of Electric Circuits (New York, 1917); and Theory and Calculation of Electric Apparatus (New York, 1917). The above were published as a nine-volume Electrical Engineering Library (New York, 1921).

II. Secondary Literature. See Ernest Caldecott and P. L. Alger, Steinmetz- The Philosopher (Schenectady, N.Y., 1965); J. W. Hammond, Charles ProteusSteinmetz ()New York, 1924); and J. N. Leonard, Loki. The Life of Charles Proteus Steinmetz (New York, 1929).

Robert A. Chipman