Even geniuses need a nap now and then

charles steinmetz on a rock in thompson's lake

We were browsing through the local collections of historical photos on the New York Heritage site week when we came across this photo of Charles Steinmetz on a rock in Thompson's Lake (out by what is now Thacher State Park). The picture dates to 1894.

Steinmetz -- a genius engineer who worked for GE in Schenectady -- is easily one of the most interesting figures in Capital Region history. He was also, by many accounts, quite a character.

Here are a bunch of other Steinmetz photos from the digital archive.

Update: The locally-produced documentary Divine Discontent: The Life of Charles Proteus Steinmetz, is set to run again on WMHT this Sunday at 3 pm, and next Tuesday at 8 pm.

photo via miSci and the Steinmetz Digital Collection of Schenectady

Earlier: The Wizard of Schenectady

Comments

Thanks for highlighting New York Heritage again! Although I work with this collection almost every day, there are so many images that I haven't seen yet. This is one of them, and it is quite a fun one at that, so double thanks.

In addition to GE, he was influential in creating the modern engineering and physics departments at Union College.

There will be an open to the public showing of the documentary on campus tonight.

http://www.union.edu/news/stories/2014/05/college-to-host-screening-of-new-steinmetz-documentary.php

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