Stamets was born crippled, unable to straighten his left leg and with a bulging back. But doctors reassured his father, "He'll live, it doesn't matter." His father, Karl? When he heard this, Heinrich puffed up his chest and said, "Oh, he'll live just fine." This is how the Steinmetz family has always lived their lives, despite the obstacles in front of them. For generations they had lived in the ever-moving frontier region between Germany and Poland, and had labored and suffered unceasing hardships, and they had come by resourcefulness and willingness to work. Nor would they now worry about the croaking new little visitor: "He will always find a way to deal with it." In less than a year, little Carl had to deal with living without his mother. His father, a stonecutter on a railroad, fostered him in his grandmother's home.
In a large room on Dovinzien Street in the city of Breslau, the mischievous child played with his grandmother, and he learned how to maximize the benefits of her favor. She told him folktales from her native Poland, as well as stories from the Bible about ancient Hebrew gold and majestic cities.
"Grandmother, we have miraculous cities too, don't we?" The child asked.
"Maybe when I grow up, I can help build a city like that." He built an Old Testament palace of King Solomon out of blocks. When his grandmother wasn't around, he lit a candle inside to "light it up." But the flames ignited the wooden blocks and it looked like it was going to be a fire before his grandmother came and doused the fire with water. The wooden palace was in ruins.
Carl is sad and scared. It turns out that too much light can have such results.
As he grew up, his mind planned how to get light to illuminate the palace without burning it to the ground.
When he entered elementary school, he was still like a baby, so to speak. Still only five, he learned the grammar of Latin verbs. At seven, he learned Greek and a little Hebrew. At eight, he had a working knowledge of algebra and geometry. He had completed ten years of school and was preparing to graduate with summa cum laude honors. He waited nervously for the big graduation ceremony.
The custom at the time was for the entire graduating class, dressed in gowns, to sit on a stage and take an oral examination. Carl couldn't afford a gown, so he rented one. But on the morning of the solemn liturgy, a notice was posted on the school bulletin board:
"Carl? August? Rudolph? Steinmetz, is exempt from the oral examination due to exceptionally good grades." He slowly folded his gown and put it away, hot tears streaming down his cheeks. He understood the reason for exempting him from the oral examination, because he was a cripple. The teachers thought it undignified to have this student on stage in front of a large audience. In fact, it was their minds that were crippled! The fact that the teachers singled him out among so many students only added to his agonizing loneliness.
From then on, Karl? Steinmetz never wore a tuxedo again for the rest of his life.
Shortly after he entered the University of Breslau, he showed amazing talent. His professors were amazed at his magic with numbers. His classmates were genuinely frightened of his "inscrutable mind's eye".
In Zurich, Switzerland, he earned a modest income from writing about astronomy. He studied at the Polytechnic University, where he lived with a fellow student "on the highest floor of the last house in the last street on the edge of town". This was the most important turning point in his life. One of his classmates told him: "If you go to the United States, you will lose your emphasis on politics and concentrate on mathematics. In America, they desperately need engineers." Finally, he arrived in America. The unimpressive young cripple limped up to New York City with only a few letters of introduction to several electrical companies and a set of mathematical symbols as his only capital, in addition to the hopefulness he had brought with him. He moved into a cheap housing unit in Brooklyn and immediately began looking for work. He approached the chief engineer of the Edison Electric Company and was met with a curt rebuff: "Too many engineers coming to America these days!" He visited again Rudolph? Ehmeyer's manufacturing plant. The secretary dismissed him as a vagabond, and was about to drive him away, when, coincidentally, Mr. Ehmeyer himself paced into the office. Rudolf Ehlemeyer looked kindly at him. Ehmeyer looked at him kindly and said, "Come and see in a week, there may be a job offer." There really was a job offer - twelve dollars a week for the position of draughtsman.
In less than three years, Karl? Steinmetz stood out on his own.
In January of that year, at a meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, one of its least-known members approached the podium and then, in his broken English, strained to read a mathematical paper to the group. In this paper, he clearly, once and for all, spelled out the precise law of current hysteresis.
There has never been a need to blindly build generators. Karl? Steinmetz had tamed electricity and made it work for mankind.
In 2007, Steinmetz was elected president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.
The following year, Harvard University awarded him an honorary doctorate. Harvard President Elliott's message said, "I present this degree to Your Excellency, who, as one of the most distinguished electrical engineers in the United States, and thus in the world, is well deserving of this honor."