Charles Proteus Steinmetz (born Karl August Rudolph Steinmetz; April 9, 1865 – October 26, 1923) was a Prussian-American mathematician and electrical engineer and professor at Union College. He fostered the development of alternating current that made possible the expansion of the electric power industry in the United States, formulating mathematical theories for engineers. He made ground-breaking discoveries in the understanding of hysteresis that enabled engineers to design better electromagnetic apparatus equipment, especially electric motors for use in industry.
At the time of his death, Steinmetz held over 200 patents. A genius in both mathematics and electronics, he did work that earned him the nicknames "Forger of Thunderbolts" and "The Wizard of Schenectady." Steinmetz's equation, Steinmetz solids, Steinmetz curves, and Steinmetz equivalent circuit are all named after him, as are numerous honors and scholarships, including the IEEE Charles Proteus Steinmetz Award, one of the highest technical recognitions given by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers professional society.
Steinmetz was born Karl August Rudolph Steinmetz on April 9, 1865, in Breslau, Province of Silesia, Prussia (now Wrocław, Poland), the son of Caroline (Neubert) and Karl Heinrich Steinmetz. He was baptized as a Lutheran into the Evangelical Church of Prussia. Steinmetz, who stood only 4 ft 0 in (1.22 m) tall as an adult, had dwarfism, hunchback, and hip dysplasia, as did his father and grandfather. Steinmetz graduated with honors from St. John's Gymnasium in 1882.
Following Gymnasium, Steinmetz studied at the University of Breslau to begin work on his undergraduate degree in 1883. Nearing completion of his doctorate in 1888, he was forced to flee to Zurich, Switzerland, as the German government was preparing to prosecute him for his socialist activities.
Political persecution and emigration
As socialist meetings and press had been banned in Germany, Steinmetz fled to Zurich in 1889 to escape possible arrest. Cornell University Professor Ronald R. Kline, author of Steinmetz: Engineer and Socialist, points to other factors which reinforced Steinmetz's decision to leave his homeland such as financial problems and the prospect of a more harmonious life with his socialist friends and supporters than the stressful domestic circumstances of his father's household.
Faced with an expiring visa, he emigrated to the United States in 1889 at the age of 24. He changed his first name to "Charles" to sound more American, and chose the middle name "Proteus," a wise hunchbacked character from the Odyssey who knew many secrets, after an epithet bestowed upon him by his college fraternity brothers.
Political activism and beliefs
Steinmetz was politically active in the US as a technocratic socialist for over thirty years. Following the Bolshevik introduction of a technocratic plan to electrify Russia, Steinmetz spoke of Lenin alongside Albert Einstein as the "two greatest minds of our time."
He believed in a corporatist industrial government also covering its human welfare function.
A member of the original Technical Alliance, which also included Thorstein Veblen and Leland Olds, Steinmetz had great faith in the ability of machines to eliminate human toil and create abundance for all. He put it this way: "Some day we [will] make the good things of life for everybody."
Steinmetz's techno-utopian optimism was deeply intertwined with his political beliefs, and he was convinced that the spread of electrification would inevitably steer human society toward socialism.
Steinmetz is known for his contribution in three major fields of alternating current (AC) systems theory: hysteresis, steady-state analysis, and transients.
Shortly after arriving in the United States, Steinmetz went to work for Rudolf Eickemeyer in Yonkers, New York, and published in the field of magnetic hysteresis, earning worldwide professional recognition. 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 its patents and designs, was bought by the newly formed General Electric Company, where Steinmetz quickly became known as the engineering wizard in GE's engineering community.
AC steady state circuit theory
Steinmetz's work revolutionized AC circuit theory and analysis, which had been carried out using complicated, time-consuming calculus-based methods. In the groundbreaking paper, "Complex Quantities and Their Use in Electrical Engineering," presented at a July 1893 meeting published in the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE), Steinmetz simplified these complicated methods to "a simple problem of algebra." He systematized the use of complex number phasor representation in electrical engineering education texts, whereby the lower-case letter "j" is used to designate the 90-degree rotation operator in AC system analysis. His seminal books and many other AIEE papers "taught a whole generation of engineers how to deal with AC phenomena."
Steinmetz also greatly advanced the understanding of lightning. His systematic experiments resulted in the first laboratory-created "man-made lightning", earning him the nickname "Forger of Thunderbolts." These were conducted in a football-field-sized laboratory at General Electric, using 120 000-volt generators. Like alternating-current pioneer Nikola Tesla, he also erected a lightning tower to attract natural lightning to study its patterns and effects, which resulted in several theories.
Steinmetz acted in the following professional capacities: