Re: History

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Ed Phillips" <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net> 

"After reading the "long" precis'd biography I'm left wondering how
Steinmetz and Tesla's AC accomplishments dovetail together. It is
clear that Steinmetz had the greater theoretical grasp of the two, at
least in the quantifiable mathematical sense. Interestingly, Tesla
didn't get a mention in the brief but seemingly all-encompassing
biography. It would be interesting to see Steinmetz' patents
published in book form like Tesla's. A real eye-opener. Thanks for
posting those links.

Malcolm"

	Steinmetz's contributions continued for many years while Tesla's were
more or less a flash in the pan.  Brilliant and valuable, but (at least
in the field of electric power) almost a one-time event. Some of
Steinmetz's important early work was on establishing the governing
factors for transformer core loss and how to control them.  I haven't
read the online article yet but I wonder if it mentioned that he was
pretty well responsible for establishing Electrical Engineering as a
formal college/university discipline.  Quite a guy.

	I've read a couple of his very early articles in the AIEE magazine
"Electrical Engineering".  In those days they referred to
"quarter-phase" currents where we'd now say quadrature.

Ed