Charles Proteus Steinmetz

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Charles Proteus Steinmetz

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Charles Steinmetz. (credit: Courtesy of Union College, Schenectady, New York)

(born April 9, 1865, Breslau, Prussia — died Oct. 26, 1923, Schenectady, N.Y., U.S.) German-born U.S. electrical engineer. Forced to leave Germany because of his socialist activities, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1889 and began working for General Electric Co. in 1893. He taught at Union College from 1902. His experiments led to the law of hysteresis, which deals with power loss in electrical machinery when magnetic action is converted to unusable heat; the constant he calculated (by age 27) has remained a part of electrical engineering vocabulary. In 1893 he developed a simplified symbolic method of calculating alternating-current phenomena. He also studied electrical transients (changes of very short duration in electrical circuits; e.g., lightning); his theory of traveling waves led to development of devices to protect high-power transmission lines from lightning bolts and to the design of a powerful generator. He patented over 200 inventions.

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Biography: Charles Proteus Steinmetz

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The German-born American mathematician and electrical engineer Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865-1923), by devoting himself to industrial research, made fundamental contributions to the development of both electricity and the industrial laboratory.

Charles Steinmetz was born Karl August Rudolf Steinmetz on April 9, 1865, in Breslau. His father worked for the government railway service, and Karl was encouraged to attend the university and pursue his intellectual curiosities. He had been deformed since birth and had lost his mother at the age of one year but found solace and excitement in the affairs of the mind. He entered the university at Breslau in 1883 and specialized in mathematics and the physical sciences. He also read widely in economics and politics, and in 1884 he associated himself with the Socialist party in Breslau. As he pursued his scientific education, he also continued his political activities, a pattern he was to continue throughout his life.

As ghost editor of the Breslau Socialist newspaper, People's Voice, Steinmetz attracted the attention of the police. In 1888, just as he had finished the work for his doctor's degree, he learned of plans for his arrest and fled to Switzerland. He never received his degree. He emigrated to the United States in 1889.

Steinmetz went to work in Yonkers, N.Y., for the electrical inventor Rudolph Eickemeyer, who put him to the task of improving alternating-current devices. In the course of this work he tackled the problem of hysteresis, or the loss of efficiency in electric motors due to alternating magnetism. There was some disagreement among electrical engineers whether such a loss even existed, and none had ever been able to measure it. Working from known data, Steinmetz applied mathematics of a very high level not only to demonstrate that hysteresis existed but to measure its exact effect in any given case. In 1892 he read two papers on the subject to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

One result of Steinmetz's growing reputation was his employment by General Electric Company in its consulting department. GE was then pioneering in the establishment of industrial research in the United States. The hiring of a mathematician of Steinmetz's caliber was thus a sign of the firm's growing recognition of the fact that it could not depend indefinitely upon buying patents that were independently and randomly arrived at but would have to begin a systematic search for innovation within the firm itself. He worked first at Lynn, Mass., but soon he was moved to the head plant at Schenectady, N.Y., and given the designation of consulting engineer. This position left him comparatively free to pursue his own researches into electrical phenomena.

In his work for GE, Steinmetz applied his unique grasp of mathematics to electrical problems. He preferred not to be tied too closely to the ongoing work of the research laboratory but continued to work on practical as well as theoretical problems: batteries, incandescent and arc lights, and the artificial propagation of lightning in the laboratory all received his attention. This last success, with its giant spark crackling across the laboratory, had a dramatic impact upon a public already convinced that science was a fertile source of "miracles."

Throughout these years Steinmetz maintained his interest in public service and refused to allow his experiments, scientific writing, and teaching responsibilities at Union University to prevent him from discharging his duties as a citizen. He followed the Russian Revolution of 1917 with interest and in 1922 wrote to Lenin offering his services to the Soviet Union. Steinmetz was president of Schenectady's school board (1912-1923) and common council (1916-1923). In 1922 he ran unsuccessfully for the office of state engineer on the Socialist and Farmer-Labor tickets. He died in Schenectady on Oct. 26, 1923.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

Born	Carl August Rudolph Steinmetz April 9, 1865(1865-04-09) Breslau, Province of Silesia
Died	October 26, 1923 (aged 58) Vale Cemetery, Schenectady
Occupation	Mathematician and electrical engineer
Parents	Carl Heinrich Steinmetz

Early life

Steinmetz was born as Carl August Rudolph Steinmetz to Carl Heinrich Steinmetz in Breslau, Province of Silesia. Steinmetz suffered from dwarfism, hunchback, and hip dysplasia, as did his father and grandfather. Steinmetz attended Johannes Gymnasium and astonished his teachers with his proficiency in mathematics and physics.

Socialist activities

Following the Gymnasium Steinmetz went on to the University of Breslau to begin work on his undergraduate degree in 1883. He was on the verge of finishing his Doctorate in 1888 when he came under investigation by the German police for activities on behalf of a socialist university group and articles he had written for a local socialist newspaper.

As socialist meetings and press had been banned in Germany, Steinmetz fled to Zürich in 1888 to escape possible arrest. Faced with an expiring visa, he emigrated to the United States in 1889.

Cornell University Professor Ronald R. Kline, the author of Steinmetz: Engineer and Socialist, contends that other factors were more directly involved in Steinmetz's decision to leave his homeland, such as the fact that he was in arrears with his tuition at the University of Breslau and that life at home with his father, stepmother, and their daughters was full of tension.

Despite his earlier efforts and interest in socialism, by 1922 Steinmetz concluded that socialism would never work in the United States because the country lacked a "powerful, centralized government of competent men, remaining continuously in office" and because "only a small percentage of Americans accept this viewpoint today."^[2]

Career in science

Shortly after arriving in the US, Steinmetz went to work for Rudolf Eickemeyer in Yonkers, New York, and published in the field of magnetic hysteresis. Eickemeyer's firm developed transformers for use in the transmission of electrical power among many other mechanical and electrical devices. In 1893 Eickemeyer's company, along with all of his patents and designs, was bought by the newly formed General Electric Company.

Development of phasor

At the International Electrical Congress in Chicago that year Steinmetz made one of his greatest contributions to the Electrical Engineering community, a lecture and presentation describing the mathematics of alternating current phenomena which had not previously been explained by earlier engineers.^[3] Steinmetz used the term phasor for his simplified mathematical representation of an electricity waveform, a property that has greatly simplified the analysis of AC circuits. Since the 1990's, phasor measurement units have been used to measure the health of wide area electrical networks, and are currently revolutionizing the power industry worldwide^[4].

Use of Steinmetz's innovations in the mathematics of electricity enabled engineers to move from designing electric motors by trial and error to designing them with the aid of applicable mathematics to create on paper the best possible motor before actually constructing it. In 1894, General Electric moved to Schenectady, New York, and Steinmetz was promoted to head of the calculating department, where his colleagues would bring to him the mathematical problems that were stumbling blocks to their projects. When not freely helping his co-workers, he worked on his own experiments in electricity and served first as chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering and later as a part-time professor at Union College between 1902 to 1923.^[5]

Forger of thunderbolts

One of Steinmetz's great research projects was centered with the phenomena of lightning. He undertook a systematic study of it, resulting in experiments of man-made lightning in the laboratory; this work was published. Steinmetz was called the "forger of thunderbolts", being the first to create artificial lightning in his GE football field-sized laboratory and high towers, using 120,000 volt generators. He also erected a lightning tower to attract lightning and studied the patterns and effects of lightning hits on tree bark and in a broken mirror--resulting in several theories and ideas (like the effect of lightning on plant growth and ac electric poles).

Later years

Steinmetz served as president of the Board of Education of Schenectady, and as president of the Schenectady city council. He was also president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) from 1901 to 1902, as well as the first vice-president of the International Association of Municipal Electricians (IAME)—which later became the International Municipal Signal Association (IMSA)—from 1913 until his death. Steinmetz wrote 13 books and 60 articles, not all about science. He was an honorary member and advisor to the fraternity Phi Gamma Delta at Union (whose chapter house there was one of the first electrified houses ever).

Steinmetz died on October 26, 1923 and was buried in Vale Cemetery, Schenectady.

His connection to Union College is celebrated with the annual Steinmetz Symposium,^[6] a day-long event in which Union undergraduates give presentations on research they have done.

Steinmetz was portrayed in 1959 by the actor Rod Steiger in the CBS anthology series, The Joseph Cotten Show. The episode centered on his socialist activities in Germany.

Patents

At the time of his death, Steinmetz held over 200 patents:^[7]

Steinmetz, U.S. Patent 533,244, "System of distribution by alternating current." January 29, 1895.
Steinmetz, U.S. Patent 559,419, "Inductor dynamo."
Steinmetz, U.S. Patent 583,950, "Three phase induction meter."
Steinmetz, U.S. Patent 594,145, "Inductor dynamo."
Steinmetz, U.S. Patent 714,412, "Induction motor."
Steinmetz, U.S. Patent 717,464, "System of electrical distribution."
Steinmetz, U.S. Patent 865,617, "Induction motor."
Steinmetz, U.S. Patent 1,025,932, "Means for producing light." May 7, 1912.
Steinmetz, U.S. Patent 1,042,986, "Induction furnace."
Steinmetz, U.S. Patent 1,230,615, "Protective device."
Steinmetz, U.S. Patent RE11,576, "Inductor dynamo."

Awards

Cedergren Medal (1914).

Works

Theory and calculation of alternating current phenomena", with the assistance of Ernst J. Berg, 1897. Information from this book has been reprinted in many subsequent engineering texts.
"The Natural Period of a Transmission Line and the Frequency of lightning Discharge Therefrom", The Electrical World, August 27, 1898. Pg. 203 - 205.
Theoretical elements of electrical engineering, McGraw, 1902.
Future of Electricity, Transcript of lecture to the New York Electrical Trade School, 1908.
General lectures on electrical engineering, edited by Joseph Le Roy Hayden, Robson & Adee, 1908.
Radiation, light and illumination : a series of engineering lectures delivered at Union college, ed. by Joseph Le Roy Hayden, McGraw-Hill, 1909
Elementary lectures on electric discharges, waves and impulses, and other transients, 1911.
Theory and calculation of transient electric phenomena and oscillations, McGraw publishing company, 1911.
America and the new epoch, Harper, c. 1916.
Engineering mathematics; a series of lectures delivered at Union College, 1917.
Theory and calculation of electric apparatus, 1917.
Essay on Science and Religion at Project Gutenberg. Homer Heath Nugent, 1922.
Four lectures on relativity and space, McGraw-Hill book co. inc., 1923.

References

^ Invent Now | Hall of Fame | Search | Inventor Profile at www.invent.org
^ http://www.union.edu/N/DS/s.php?s=1512 Retrieved May-31-2009
^ Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1893). "Complex Quantities and Their Use in Electrical Engineering" (in english). Proceedings of the International Electrical Congress, Chicago (American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) Proceedings): pp. 33–74.
^ Yilu Liu, Lamine Mili, Jaime De La Ree, Reynaldo Francisco Nuqui, Reynaldo Francisco Nuqui (2001-07-12). "State Estimation and Voltage Security Monitoring Using Synchronized Phasor Measurement" (in english) (pdf). Research paper from work sponsored by American Electric Power, ABB Power T&D Company, and Tennessee Valley Authority (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University). http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=3B975B94733D906CA197813C53C2BD86?doi=10.1.1.2.7959&rep=rep1&type=pdf. Retrieved 2008-12-01. abstract Lay summary. ""Simulations and field experiences suggest that PMUs can revolutionize the way power systems are monitored and controlled. "".
^ http://www.ge.com/en/company/companyinfo/executivebios/printable/printable_ew_rice.htm
^ [1]
^ C. P. Steinmetz at www.becklaser.de

Note on the law of hysteresis. The Electrician. Jan 2. 1891 pp. 261-262.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Charles Proteus Steinmetz

Charles Proteus Steinmetz at Encyclopædia Britannica
Union College Magazine Article November, 1998.
Biographical Article compiled from various sources on the Internet. April, 2003.
U.S. Supreme Court, "Steimetz v. Allen, 192 U.S. 543 (1904)". Steimetz v. Allen, Commissioner of Patents. No. 383. Argued January 12, 13, 1904. Decided February 23, 1904.
Charles Proteus Steinmetz at Find a Grave
Steinmetz Symposium at Union College

Persondata
NAME	Steinmetz, Charles Proteus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Steinmetz, Carl August Rudolph
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Mathematician and electrical engineer
DATE OF BIRTH	1865-4-9
PLACE OF BIRTH	Breslau, Province of Silesia
DATE OF DEATH	1923-10-26
PLACE OF DEATH	Vale Cemetery, Schenectady

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