Arthur C. Ruge

Arthur Claude Ruge (born July 28, 1905 in Tomah , Wisconsin , † April 3, 2000 in Lexington , Massachusetts ) was an American engineer. He was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is an inventor of the strain gauge .

In 1938, Ruge wanted to research an earthquake-proof water tank and its expansion. The static measurement methods customary at the time were unsuitable for this, however, and Ruge dared to try it: he stuck a thin resistance wire onto tissue paper and attached it to the water tank. He noticed a change in the voltage drop across the resistance wire in the event of vibrations . This voltage curve could be positive as well as negative and it had a relatively stable zero point . Ruge, for example, invented the electrical resistance strain gauge in 1938 at the Seismological Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ruge achieved this breakthrough because he attached the measuring wire to a carrier film and thus created a freely movable measuring instrument. Ruge later brought the strain gauges to series production and thus initiated the triumphal march of the strain gauges that had been in use up to that point.

At about the same time, but independently of him, Edward E. Simmons also invented a strain gauge ( Simmons patent granted: August 1942, Ruge patent granted: June 1944).

Web links

• Obituary in The New York Times (English)