Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

Charles Proteus Steinmetz 297 penniless youth he soon found the niche where his thorough training in mathematics and electrical theory would serve him best. After entering the employ of the General Electric Company his advancement was sure and rapid. Alternating-current theory was then being developed; many of the simplest phenomena seemed baffling to even the best engineers, so that a man of the vision and ability of Steinmetz simply had to forge ahead to the position which he held for more than twenty years. Only ten years after this crippled, penniless youth passed through the immigrant gates at Ellis Island he was elected President of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the greatest honor his fellow engineers could confer on him. In spite of the great physical disability, which must have proved a continual burden to him, he showed tremendous push and perseverance; his mind was ever keen to grapple with the new problems continually presenting themselves to the scientific worker, and what his mind was applied to, it generally mastered. Only a few days before his death one of our mathematical colleagues was commenting on Steinmetz's treatment of Einstein's relativity theory, as presented in a published series of semi-popular lectures. "You know," he said, "Steinmetz actually understood the stuff and he puts his ideas in such terse language that even a layman almost understands what Einstein was trying to say." We have often heard him get up to discuss a paper on some technical topic, presented by one of his fellow engineers, and many times we learned more from Steinmetz's discussion of the paper than we did from the paper itself. In spite of his wonderful mastery of his chosen field he retained an unusual degree of modesty, and an openness of mind which made him ever willing to listen to the other side of the question. Typical of his dry humor was an incident at an engineering meeting, where in excited discussion was being waged regard THE LATE CHARLES PROTEUS STEINMETZ ing the feasibility of a certain type of machine — could such a machine work, was the question. After listening to the pros and cons by several engineers, Steinmetz got the floor, and after assuming the characteristic pose we all knew so well, expressed his admiration of the logic of those engineers who said the machine couldn't possibly work. "I myself," said he, "proved conclusively some time ago that such a machine was against all reasonable theory and couldn't possibly work. But since then," he added, with a dry expression on his face, " I've unfortunately seen it work." That, of course, ended the discussion. A fellow engineer, one who had worked with Steinmetz and knew the abilities and eccentricities of this electrical genius by intimate association and sympathetic understanding, pays a splendid tribute to him in the Cornell Daily Sun. Says Prof. Vladimir KarapetofT: "It was impossible to make him do anything except what he himself desired to do. He stayed away from the works for days; he smoked in buildings in which the President himself did not dare to smoke; he used clockwise rotation of vectors when everybody was using the opposite rotation; he insisted on saying "ze" for "the"; he wore a soft shirt and shabby gray suit at formal functions; and he belonged to a political party which cussed his company and its principal customers for years. "Modest, thoughtful, a prodigious worker, always ready to discuss an electrical problem on equal terms with any cub engineer, he was the very impersonation of the principle of losing one's self so as to find it again in bigger things. His contribution to our welfare and knowledge is beyond measure or computation and his life is a shining example of a quiet, straight, and unswerving path amidst the turmoil of conflicting passions, avarice, extravagance, cure-alls, pseudo-science, pseudopatriotism, pseudo-life itself. And yet, with all, his life is also a glowing tribute to this