Hermann Lemp
Heinrich Joseph Hermann Lemp ( born August 8, 1862 in Bern, † March 31, 1954 in Ridgewood, New York ) was a Swiss- American engineer.
His parents, Henry and Else Lemp, born Wälchli, died when he was twelve years old.
He briefly attended the Gymnasium Bern and the pilot Burgdorf. During the three years he worked in Hipps telegraph factory in Neuchâtel, he attended the College for Electromechanics in Neuchâtel. After visiting the Paris Electrical Exhibition in 1881, he emigrated the following year to the United States, where he designed for Edison manufacturing facilities for the production of carbon-filament lamps.
After marrying of 1883/84 the Neuchâtel teacher Marie Cusin, he briefly worked with Sigmund Bergmann in New York and from 1884 at the Schuyler Electric Light Company in Hartford (Connecticut). Once this was in 1887 transferred to the Thomson - Houston Electric Company, he became a member of Elihu Thomson, for whom he built welding power source. He was head of the Thomson 1889 in Lynn (Massachusetts ) founded Electric Welding Company. After this was sold six years later to General Electric, he has been Thomson's research assistant and sought during the economic crisis, according to new earning opportunities. The compressor refrigerators were due to weak grids no sales. For car batteries, there were no buyers.
His Ausglühschweissverfahren for drilling holes in armor plate for warships found application in the American and British Navy.
In X-ray films you needed long irradiation times for high-contrast images. With his self-developed double-acting mechanical rectifier Selector radiant intensity increased so much that the X-ray tubes melted - were used until 1913 Tungsram electrodes.
At a meeting with Rudolf Diesel in 1910 in the United States, this explained to him about the traction problems in diesel locomotives, that they can not develop from the state traction. Lemp developed an electrical transmission with automatic power control, for which he received a patent on June 24, 1914.
From 1923 he served as a consultant in the construction of diesel-electric locomotives with Lemp control in Erie Steam Shovel and the Ingersoll Rand Company. This he had in the 1940s due to problems with the eyes give up and moved to his daughter in Ridgewood.
Recognitions
- National Transportation Award
- George Henderson Gold Medal from the Franklin Institute