Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown
Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown ( born June 17, 1863 in Winterthur, † May 2, 1924 in Montagnola, Ticino ) was a Swiss mechanical engineer and co-founder of the global electrical engineering company Brown, Boveri & Cie. (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 his younger brother Sidney Brown mechanical engineering at Winterthur pilot. After an internship with guarantor & Alioth in Basel and a brief period at the Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works (SLM ), he joined in 1884 along with his father and his brother Sidney Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon ( MFO ).
As of 1885, the MFO father left, he entrusted him with the management of the electrical department. In the following years, Brown has succeeded in numerous pioneering technical achievements, including 1890, the oil insulation of transformer windings and 1891 the structural design of the Vollpolläufers of turbo generators. He also equipped the electric locomotives of Sissach - Gelterkinden Railway and the Grütschalp -Mürren -Bahn. In 1891 he designed in collaboration with AEG the transformer system, the generator and the oil insulators for AC transmission Lauffen -Frankfurt, the world's first transmission of electrical energy with high-tension three-phase.
Brown married in 1887 Amelie Nathan, with whom he had four children. In the same year he began to prepare to start their own company. He teamed up for this purpose with Walter Boveri together, the head of the assembly department of the MFO. This succeeded after three years, to find the necessary funds. In December 1890 Brown and Boveri signed an association agreement, three months later, they chose swimming as future company site. The founding of Brown, Boveri & Cie. effective on October 2, 1891.
For the BBC, Brown acquired in the years to more than 30 patents, as for the oil switch ( 1898) and the cylindrical rotor for turbo generators. In 1900 he bought of Charles Parsons, the patent for the steam turbine and further developed this technology. 1900, the previous collective society was transformed into a corporation and Brown took over the office of the Chairman.
Due to the great success and the company's rapid international expansion work on the top of the company was always commercial and Brown found less and less time to do research on new technologies. In 1911 he left the company and withdrew entirely from public life. 1914 died his wife Amelie. Two years later he married a second time, with Hilda Goldschmid he had two more children. At the age of 60 years Brown died of a heart attack.