Charles Proteus Steinmetz: The Electrical Wizard of New York

Everybody knows who Tesla is. There's been a great deal of richly deserved, if late coming, recognition of how Tesla was the real genius and Edison was just the opportunistic businessman who took advantage of him. While the truth is not as black and white as that, with a clear good and evil, I'd like to step outside of that popular narrative entirely for a moment to shift the focus to another early electrical innovator you've probably never heard of.

I myself only found out about Charles Steinmetz because my grandfather was his lab assistant. What an experience it must have been to be in the presence of such genius, day in and day out! One of the stories he used to tell be is that a family of raccoons (or some other small animal, I don't recall clearly) made their home in the fireplace of Charles' lab. He could not bear to evict them, so the lab was uncomfortably cold in the winters and that was that.

His main contributions to electrical technology had to do with improvements to AC power transmission and to produce better theories of hysteresis which made possible larger, more efficient electric motors of the sort that would then be used in large vehicles like trolleys, diesel electric trains and delivery trucks.

Steinmetz maintained a small cabin overlooking Mohawk River where he would go to relax, though he could never leave his work alone. There's this wonderful photo of him (below) out on his canoe, having taken his notes with him so he could jot down insights into some engineering problem as they occurred to him.

Steinmetz suffered from dwarfism, a hunched back and hip dysplasia. As a child, other kids made fun of him, calling him "Proteus" after a dwarf in The Odyssey who knew many secrets. Because he felt that was as apt a description of him as any, he embraced it to the point of making it his middle name.

Short in stature, yet an intellectual giant, he joins the likes of Stephen Hawking in representing the principle that we are minds, for which our bodies are only vehicles. Our increasing committment to universal healthcare ensures that visionaries like Steinmetz who might otherwise be lost to humanity are instead salvaged, fixed up to the best of modern medical ability, and can then share with us the benefits of their powerful scientific insights.

Even so, Steinmetz ultimately renounced socialism, concluding it could never work in a country like the United States for a variety of reasons (such as the absence of cultural uniformity). As he died in 1923, he would not live to see the rise of the Nazis, who undoubtedly would have deemed him unfit to live due to his severe medical conditions. A pearl which was mercifully never cast before those particular swine.

Steinmetz's views underwent a gradual metamorphosis between Germany and the US. Towards the end of his life he became a member of the Technical Alliance, a movement consisting of engineers, scientists and mathematicians which was a sort of early precursor to technocracy. Steinmetz was of the opinion that automation would someday create an abundance which everybody would have access too. As he put it, "Some day we make the good things of life for everybody".

So while we admire the radiance of Tesla, let us not overlook the other bright lights of history. For there have been many ingenious men but few who were simultaneously gentle. If greatness is down to raw intelligence, very soon the winner of that contest will be a machine.

Within this century, Humans will be out of the running entirely. But there will still be something we can excel in. Compassion, which Steinmetz had in spades, on top of his intelligence. To me, those are the makings of true greatness, as either one is incomplete without the other.