Protean Gnome

LOKI:* The Life of Charles Proteus Steinmetz--Jonathan Norton Leonard-- Doubleday, Doran ($2.75).

When a boy-child makes Solomon's temple out of blocks, then sets it afire, or pours water over the red carpet to turn the wheel of his mill, what can grandmother do but send him out to play?

For the boy born to the Steinmetzes of Breslau in April of 1865, alfresco play was difficult. Deformed son of a deformed father, gnomelike little Karl was smaller than most, also weak-legged, humpbacked, bigheaded, crablike. In kindergarten, learning became his play. From 7 to 17, shielded from religious influence, he developed into his Gymnasium's pride. Studying fundamentals of engineering at the University of Breslau, he kept his professors whole lecture hours arguing with him.

Studying electricity did not prevent Steinmetz from craving companionship. He joined two student societies, the first a mathematical one where he was amid songs and beer dubbed Proteus, ever-changing old man of the sea. The second was the Breslau Student Socialist Society, of which he soon became chairman. Finding one night, that the police were on his trail for editing a radical weekly, he left for Switzerland, radical retreat, then for New York via steerage where he was admitted past the Statue of Liberty after some demur over his appearance. Living with a friend in Brooklyn, he found work two hours away as $12-a-week draughtsman for solemn, pouchy-eyed Rudolf Eichemeyer of Yonkers, himself a political refugee turned manufacturer of hat machinery and the first successful (Otis) elevator motor.

Eichemeyer, learning that Employe Steinmetz devoured mathematical treatises even more readily than Tom Sawyer, allowed him enough liberty to make his great discovery, the Law of Hysteresis./- This brought Steinmetz kudos from the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and a permanent throne behind the scenes of the electrical industry.

In 1892, Edison General Electric and Thompson-Houston Cos. were merged to form General Electric Co. Beginning research for them at Lynn, Steinmetz, proudly, silently, lived four weeks without salary until the payroll error responsible was detected, righted. Always fearful of shock, his work was with Alternating Current, whose danger the Direct Current interests then so ably played up in press and courts. In 1893 Alternating Current, constant neither in value nor direction, was incalculable. For calculating this current Steinmetz, who spurned the smaller problems he was given, produced his own "symbolic method" which gave General Electric decisive advantage over competitors. No inventor he, the Steinmetz theoretical work found fruition in three thick red volumes, Alternating Current. His popular book is America and the New Epoch, showing why he was pro-German in the War, also how the merger of small companies into a trust was a step toward Socialism. After indulging in Socialist politics, a Western lecture tour, a denial as scientist, of immortality and God's existence, Steinmetz died Oct. 26, 1923.

A lover of cacti, canoeing (with double paddle) and long cigars, Steinmetz was a human national figure. Some anecdotes:

Before Schenectady became The Electric City the new General Electric quarters there were a firetrap. No Smoking signs were placed around. Enraged, Steinmetz marched home, sent a note: "No smoking, no Steinmetz." Result: thereafter he alone smoked.

On a camping with Steinmetz, a young Dutchman wanted to blow up a stump. For dynamite he began mixing potassium chlorate and powdered sulphur but pressed too hard on a lump in the chlorate. A blinding flash, and the youth was found all bloody. Others were excited but Steinmetz, frantic, outdid them, jabbered English, German, gibberish, hopped from bed to chairs till quieted.

One day in 1922, newsgatherers and scientists met at Dr. Steinmetz's invitation in a General Electric laboratory at Schenectady. Curious, they looked at a big generator the little doctor had made. Nervous, most of them looked away again. They knew what they were there for. The doctor was to create an indoor thunderstorm, destroy a miniature village with a million horsepower of artificial lightning. Suppose, thought the spectators, the sardonic-looking wizard should go suddenly mad! Suppose he should turn his electrical fury on us?

But Steinmetz, not crazy, destroyed according to program. Afterwards he showed one of his inanimate victims to deaf Thomas Alva Edison. Tapping him on the knee in Morse code, he telegraphed: "My lightning did that, Mr. Edison!''

He liked: poker, his Gila monster and alligators, practical jokes with electricity, flattery, a lamp-and-mirror arrangement by which incoming female visitors would see themselves suddenly, the color green, down-and-outers, steak and potatoes, bicycle riding, a personal letter from Russia's Lenin refusing his aid in Soviet electrification.

The Significance. Author Leonard's approach to Steinmetz, though factual, is tinged with hysterical admiration, the breathlessness of the new esthetic Science. It is sharply "written down" to the reader's level, contains much carping over the Steinmetz Socialism. Subject, not treatment, makes this biography outstanding.

The Author. Says Jonathan Norton Leonard, 26: "I haven't lived long enough to have much biography." What biography he has includes the fact that his father, Jonathan Leonard, also writes (Back to Stay and The Meddlers); that Jonathan Jr. studied at schools public as well as private and underwent some tutoring before and during Harvard, whence he was graduated in 1925. He reviews books for metropolitan newspapers and The Saturday Review of Literature. In 1927 he was responsible for Ask Me Too, a juvenile version of the Ask Me Another book of educative questions-answers. Lately he returned to live at Sandwich, Mass., where he guards well the secret of his next book's subject.

*Mischievous Norse Fire-God of a shape transformable at will. Thor, God of War and Thunder, chained him up when he grew too obstreperous. But Loki will come again to lead forth the hosts of Hel at Twilight of the Gods.

/-When a bar of iron is placed inside a coil through which a current is flowing it becomes magnetized. The bar of iron when magnetized acquires, like the compass needle, poles north and south. When the current reverses, the poles change places--not instantaneously but with a delay. The process of delay is called the Law of Hysteresis.