Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown, around 1900

Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown (born June 17, 1863 in Winterthur , † May 2, 1924 in Montagnola , Ticino ) was a Swiss machine designer and co-founder of the electrical engineering group BBC (now Asea Brown Boveri ).

biography

Charles EL Brown was the eldest son of Charles Brown and had five siblings. He attended high school in Winterthur and then studied mechanical engineering at the Winterthur technical center like his younger brother Sidney Brown . After an internship at Bürgin & Alioth in Basel and a brief activity at the Swiss Locomotive and Machine Factory (SLM), he moved to Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon (MFO) in 1884 with his father and brother Sidney .

When his father left the MFO in 1885, he made him head of the electrical department. In the following years Brown achieved numerous technical pioneering achievements, including in 1890 the oil insulation of transformer windings and in 1891 the constructive implementation of the full pole rotor of turbo generators . He also equipped the electric locomotives of the Sissach-Gelterkinden Railway and the Grütschalp-Mürren Railway . In 1891, in collaboration with AEG, he designed the transformer system, generator and oil insulators for three-phase transmission from Lauffen to Frankfurt , the world's first transmission of electrical energy with high-voltage three - phase current .

Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown (1863-1924)
Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown

Brown married Amelie Nathan in 1887, with whom he had four children. In the same year he began preparing to set up his own company. For this purpose he teamed up with Walter Boveri , the head of the assembly department of the MFO. After three years he managed to raise the necessary funds. In December 1890, Brown and Boveri signed an association agreement, three months later they chose Baden as their future company location. The founding of Brown, Boveri & Cie. took place on October 2, 1891.

He checked for himself whether aviation would become a future branch of manufacture for his company by testing a normal sailing device that he had acquired from Otto Lilienthal in 1895 .

Brown acquired over 30 patents for the BBC in the following years, for example for the oil switch (1898) and the cylindrical rotor for turbo generators . In 1900 he bought the patent for the steam turbine from Charles Parsons and developed this technology further. In 1900 the previous general partnership was converted into a stock corporation and Brown took over the office of Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Due to the company's great success and rapid international expansion, the work at the top of the company became increasingly commercial and Brown found less and less time to research new technologies. In 1911 he left the company and withdrew completely into private life. In 1914 his wife Amelie died. Two years later he married again and had two more children with Hilda Goldschmid. At the age of 60, Brown died of complications from a heart attack .

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schwipps, Man flies , p. 130
personal data
SURNAME Brown, Charles Eugene Lancelot
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss machine designer
DATE OF BIRTH June 17, 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH Winterthur
DATE OF DEATH May 2, 1924
Place of death Montagnola