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Charles Proteus Steinmetz

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Inventor

The Resume

    (April 9, 1865-October 26, 1923)
    Born in Wroclaw, Poland
    Birth name was Carl August Rudolph Steinmetz
    Mathematician and electrical engineer
    Worked for General Electric
    Made alternating current practical for distributing electricity
    Held over 200 patents
    Inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame (1977)

Why he might be annoying:

    He claimed to have fled Germany to avoid arrest as a socialist, but he may have left for the more prosaic reason of skipping out on the back tuition that he owed the University of Breslau.
    He was almost turned away at Ellis Island as medically unfit because he was a dwarf and a hunchback.
    He had a menagerie of animals at his home that included owls, raccoons, a monkey, alligators and rattlesnakes.
    He constantly smoked cigars.
    He wrote to Lenin offering his services to the Soviet Union (1922).

Why he might not be annoying:

    In an example of hunchback pride, he took the middle name Proteus from a hunchbacked sea god in 'The Odyssey' who could answer any question and assume any shape.
    He was allowed into America after a friend convinced Ellis Island officials that he was a mathematical genius.
    He served as the head of the electrical engineering school at Union College and refused a salary for it.
    He bought presents for every orphan in the city of Schenectady at Christmas.
    He had a mischevious sense of humor, with one GE colleague noting, 'It seems extraordinary that so much real work was done because we played so much.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 13 Votes: 61.54% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 6 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 177 Votes: 50.28% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 7 Votes: 57.14% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 123 Votes: 57.72% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 18 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 14 Votes: 42.86% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 28 Votes: 50.0% Annoying