Charles Proteus Steinmetz - Pioneering Contributions in Electrical Engineering

摘要

Charles Proteus Steinmetz was certainly one of the important scientists and engineers who, by their research and inventive contributions, helped to design electrical systems and to analyze electrical phenomena by sound scientific methods. Similar to Nikola Tesla, Steinmetz received his education at a European University. Contrary to Tesla, who had to fight all his life long to get support for his research and inventions, Steinmetz was lucky to get permanent and generous support for his research by the General Electric Company. His work and inventions concerned the problems which had to be solved by the advent of the practical use of alternating currents. In electrical machinery, in the construction of dynamos and motors it became necessary to fight against eddy currents which caused losses of power. Steinmetz with his early work on the hysteresis of the iron cores of such machines contributed to the solution. Another important problem which occurred in the use of alternating currents was the design of proper networks for transmission. Steinmetz showed that, by the use of complex numbers a new characterization of resistors, inductances and capacitors was possible, such that the Ohm's law and the laws of Kirchhoff were also valid to allow an effective computation. In the history of the General Electric Company the time of 1902, where General Electric was founded and Steinmetz joined the company, until the year 1923, the year in which Steinmetz died, has been called the "Steinmetz era". His inventions, his many books, written for his students at the Union College in Schenectady give enough reasons to consider Charles Proteus Steinmetz as one of the most important electrical engineers of the past (compare with the list "Monographies and Text Books by Steinmetz" of the References). Besides of his professional interest he had many private and rather artistic interests. They fit to his middle name "Proteus" given to him as nick-name by his friends at the grammar school in Breslau, the multi-faced gnome of Homer's Odyssee. We find Steinmetz here as a ever-lasting young boy, always ready for jokes, reading adventure stories, going to crime movies, but serious engaged in public social affairs - in one word - living a full life.