Charles Proteus Steinmetz receives a patent for a “system of distribution by alternating currents.” His engineering work makes it practical to build a widespread power grid for use in lighting and machinery alike.
Steinmetz fled Germany during an antisocialist crackdown and arrived in the United States in 1889. A brilliant mathematician, he figured out the law governing the power loss, or hysteresis, caused by the reversing magnetic fields of AC circuits. Steinmetz garnered instant fame among his peers, and the constant in his equation remains in use today. He also developed mathematical models for predicting the performance of complex circuits, so electrical engineers no longer had to build every system before they could determine how it would perform.
Thomas Edison was still working only with direct-current electricity (see here), but George Westinghouse (see here) had bought Nikola Tesla’s patents for alternating current. Westinghouse rival General Electric placed its bet on AC and new employee Steinmetz. Building on his own work and Tesla’s (see here), Steinmetz completed a system that let AC be used not just for lighting but for running multiphase motors “without the necessity of installing special multiphase generators for the motors, or running special circuits.” Steinmetz was ready to electrify the nation—and the world.
After retirement, he still consulted for GE on difficult problems. Once, he painstakingly traced the problem in a nonfunctioning apparatus to the element that wasn’t working and then marked it with chalk. When he submitted a bill for $10,000, GE asked him to itemize the charges.
He sent this invoice:
Making chalk mark: $1
Knowing where to place it: $9,999
—RA