RENOWNED ENGINEEP

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11662, 29 October 1923, Page 3

RENOWNED ENGINEEP

DR. STEINMETZ DEAD. THE WORLD’S FOREMOST ELECTRICIAN. lustralian and N.Z. Cable Association NEW YORK, October 26. Dr. Charles 1\ Steinmetz, of the General Electric Company, Schenectady, is dead. Ovaries Proteus Steinmetz, chief consulting engineer of the General Electric Company, Schenectady, United States, was . ommon'.y regarded as the foremost electrical engineer in the world, and had gained the title of “electrical wizard,’ 1 by :he remarkable laboratory achievements tha were produced by him or under hie direction. He_ was bomin Breslau, Germany, in 1860. - - Dr. Steinmetz was notable for tho directness with .which he reached solutions of problems. His was not the method of the experimenter; he worked mathematically, envisaging the problem first end arriving at the solution and the practical application by His abeoiption of mathematics was intense, ami an instance is quoted by a Wellington engineer who spent some time at Schenectady. Dr. Steinmetz was lecturing on some alternating current phenomena, and became so engross, cd with some blackboard calculations, that vhe etudents all left the room The caretaker found Steinmetz at the blackboard, still figuring, at 6 o’clock m the morning. „ Under the direction of Steinmetz. the Schenectady works haTe produced a lone series of electrical apparatus, many of which are still far ahead of practical use. Among the most remarkable of the operations with which Steinmetz has been personally identified, hae been th° investigation of very high voltages, which has an important bearing upon power transmission over long distances, as well as upon storm phenomena. Experimentally this work was most spectaoular. The latest stage was the production of currents having a pressure of over a million volts, and the room in which this was demonstrated was literally a lighting factory, mwhich the sight of a discharge of the current was a wonderiul experience. A phenomenon rfisco. --red bv Steinmetz m his experiments with higTi voltage dischargee was that metal filaments destroyed bv the discharge appeared to be t« Mime extent transformed into other forms of matter. Dr Steinmetz was the author or eev> era! books and numerous papers on the theory and mathematics of “f pecta of electricity, especially alternating and oscillating cnrrente.