Benjamin G. Lamme
Benjamin G. Lamme ( ?-1924)
1924 Obituary[1]
The news of the death of Mr.. Benjamin G.. Lamme,. for more than twenty years the chief engineer of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co of East Pittsburg, which reached: this country during the World Power Conference, caused deep regret nor only among the large number of his fellow-citizens who are at present in this country, but equally among engineers from all parts of the world. His work in the field of electric traction, was well known, for he had been associated with its development from very early days, and many important inventions are due to him. Mr. Lamme graduated at the Ohio State University in 1882. He entered the test room of the Westinghouse Company on May 1,. 1889, and although methods for calculating the performance of electric motors and generators were then unknown, Mr. Lamme devised a means whereby the1 saturation curves of existing machines could be computed from test data. In January, 1890, he prepared specifications for a double-reduction electric motor for railway work, which was built and placed on the market as a commercial machine. In the same year he made the calculations for a four-pole single-reduction railway motor, with slotted I armature, machine-wound coils and a two-circuit wave winding—a design which is still largely used in railway work.
Mr. Lamme was a prolific inventor. Many of the early rotary converter patents were his, and he did more than any other man to make the 60-cycle converter a practical success. The single-phase railway motor is another piece of apparatus the success of which is largely due to him, and he also contributed much to the design of turbo-generators and to other alternating-current apparatus. Soon after the entrance of the United States into the war, Mr. Lamme’s abilities were publicly recognised by the Federal Government who appointed him Chairman of the Inventions Committee of the Naval Consulting Board. His modest and retiring disposition prevented him from seeking prominence or honours, but he was chosen by the Ohio State University as the first recipient of the Joseph Sullivant medal “for his admittedly notable achievements,” and in June, 1919, he was awarded the Edison Medal of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers for his work in the development of electrical machinery."