CHARLES PROTEUS STEINMETZ ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING G BY THOMAS COMMERFORD MARTIN REAT geniuses have now and then been found in the human flotsam and jetsam brought to American shores by the tidal waves of emigration from the Old World; but this process of adding to the intellectual resources of the United States never worked more fruitfully than when it shifted from a disdainful Germany the weird, phenomenal little "hunchback, who played with thunderbolts"Charles Proteus Steinmetz. In all the unparalleled romance of actual electrical development in America, no other career is so extraordinary as that of the simple, deformed citizen whose sudden death in 1923 was such a shock to an admiring public. "When Steinmetz spoke," runs a eulogy printed in the Electrical World, "men's faces lighted in anticipation and glowed with appreciation at the breadth, depth and clearness of his thoughts, fluently ex pressed, and illumined by a personality sympathetic, mellowed and ripened by a life of study and experi ence. Those qualities which fix the moral stature of a man-patience, kindness, generosity, courtesy, humility, unselfishness, good temper, sincerity—were possessed in large measure by Charles Proteus Steinmetz." From whatever angle the career and work of Doctor Steinmetz are regarded, the review of it gains the more it is all analysed and studied and is submitted to the critical test of his peers and contemporaries throughout the vast range of physics. To say that Steinmetz was a many-sided genius expresses it but mildly. The man was not only full of spectacular accomplishment, he was a unique spectacle in himself. He was not only the mathematical genius whose treatment of complex problems in electrical engineering brushed away many grave difficulties, but he was an inventor with over 200 patents to his credit; and beyond that he was for years one of the most prolific contributors in the world to the fundamental literature of dynamic electricity, by books, papers, articles and discussions. And then beyond that, again, came his ready application of new science to equally new and changeful social conditions, and his large intense interest in human welfare, in society and in politics at large. It can best be summed up in the tribute of S. E. Doane, |