
Charles Proteus Steinmetz, the Wizard of Schenectady (2011) - dilawar
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-proteus-steinmetz-the-wizard-of-schenectady-51912022/?no-ist
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mindcrime
I remember reading a book on Steinmetz when I was in high school. I was really
awed by this guy and the stuff he did. Before Nicola Tesla was one of my
idols, Charles Steinmetz was the major figure in engineering who I was
enamored with.

As I recall from the book, he went on a trip once, and forgot to take his log
tables (this was back when lots of math was done using printed tables of
logarithms). He sent a request to have his secretary have his printed log
tables delivered to him, but by the time they arrived, he'd worked them all
out and recreated the tables himself from scratch.

Edit: I _think_ this is the book in question, if anybody is looking for more
on Steinmetz. There's also a much more recent biography of Steinmetz that I
haven't gotten around to reading yet. So there are at least two books on him
available.

[https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Tamed-Lightning-
Steinmetz/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Tamed-Lightning-
Steinmetz/dp/B000ITMMXG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1545858253&sr=1-1&keywords=man+who+tamed+lightning)

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peter_d_sherman
Excerpt: "Ford, whose electrical engineers couldn’t solve some problems they
were having with a gigantic generator, called Steinmetz in to the plant. Upon
arriving, Steinmetz rejected all assistance and asked only for a notebook,
pencil and cot. According to Scott, Steinmetz listened to the generator and
scribbled computations on the notepad for two straight days and nights. On the
second night, he asked for a ladder, climbed up the generator and made a chalk
mark on its side. Then he told Ford’s skeptical engineers to remove a plate at
the mark and replace sixteen windings from the field coil. They did, and the
generator performed to perfection.

Henry Ford was thrilled until he got an invoice from General Electric in the
amount of $10,000.

Ford acknowledged Steinmetz’s success but balked at the figure. He asked for
an itemized bill.

Steinmetz, Scott wrote, responded personally to Ford’s request with the
following:

Making chalk mark on generator $1.

Knowing where to make mark $9,999."

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eganist
Fun fact: General Electric in Schenectady is represented by zip code 12345

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iorrus
Elementary Lectures On Electric Discharges, Waves And Impulses, And Other
Transients

Is a very interesting readable book he wrote

~~~
escherplex
Google Books has a scanned 1914 edition of this available for download:

[https://ia902307.us.archive.org/26/items/elementarylectu00st...](https://ia902307.us.archive.org/26/items/elementarylectu00steigoog/elementarylectu00steigoog.pdf)

Steinmetz was also the originator of the Phasor Transform used in steady state
RLC circuit calculations.

And BTW that's phasor as in Argand plane not phaser as in Star Trek. :)

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starbeast
>"One Friday afternoon in 1921, Steinmetz hopped in his electric car and
headed off for a weekend at Camp Mohawk"

I wonder what he would have made of the fact that people are arguing about
whether electric cars are practical almost 100 years later.

~~~
nine_k
It's a bit like nuclear fusion power.

Working prototypes have been demonstrated decades ago. Something that would be
viable _economically_ is a whole different kettle of fish. With fusion power,
it's not reached yet. With electric cars, it's only starting to emerge on mass
markets.

~~~
starbeast
I don't know where you get that idea. The current problem with fusion is not
that it isn't economic, it is that it is not yet at the stage where it
produces excess power that can be used.

The electric cars 100 years ago were functional as a form of transport.

~~~
nine_k
I tried to express the imperfection of the comparison by saying "a bit like".

Both nuclear fusion producing energy and an electric car capable of driving
some distance were demonstrated long ago. At that moment, neither was
economically viable compared to alternatives (both based on combustion). Both
remained in that non-viable state for decades. Electric cars seem to have
crossed the border of viability in certain niches; fusion power still has not.

~~~
starbeast
Fusion power has not yet reached ignition, without that it is not just
uneconomic, it is not working period. -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor)

------
oxymoron
This is a good article. The anecdote about Henry Ford’s generator probably
isn’t true though: [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/know-where-
man/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/know-where-man/)

~~~
neonate
Yup.
[https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/06/tap/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/06/tap/)
has better sources and traces it back to 1908.

