Career
Following graduation, in early 1889 Lamme read an article about Westinghouse forming the Philadelphia Natural Gas Company of Pittsburgh. Westinghouse hired Lamme and within a few months transferred him to the Westinghouse Electric Company, where he became the company's chief designer of electrical machinery.
Over a period of several years, he designed a variety of electrical motors and generators. Among his eight US patents were inventions on induction motors, electrical ship propulsion, and Gyroscopic stabilizer systems. He designed the single-reduction motor for street railways (replacing the double-reduction motors), the Rotary Converter, railroad electrification systems, the Westinghouse Type C Induction Motor, and the first 5000 kW generators for the giant hydroelectric generators in the Adams Power Plant at Niagara Falls, for many years the largest power station in the world. Bertha Lamme worked alongside her brother in the design of the turbogenerator at Niagara Falls. Operation began locally in 1895 and power was transmitted to Buffalo, New York, in 1896.
After Nikola Tesla left Westinghouse, Lamme redesigned the induction motor, making it as we know it today. Lamme spent many years developing advanced analysis and computational methods for designing machines, doing much of the work at night. The importance of Lamme’s methodology was realized in 1893 when Westinghouse began designing the first Niagara Falls 5000 kW generators using his computation methods. Lamme designed much of the apparatus for the Westinghouse exhibit at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, including alternating-current generators, induction motors, and rotary converters. In addition to his design work on the Niagara Falls alternators, Lamme designed the “monster machines” for the power plant of the Manhattan Elevated Railway in New York City.
Lamme became chief engineer at Westinghouse in 1903 and held the position for the rest of his life.
The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railway adopted the Lamme’s single-phase electric rail system in 1905.
In 1915, Lamme was nominated by the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE, in 1963 merged into IEEE) and was appointed by the Secretary of the Navy to represent the AIEE on the Naval Consulting Board.
As the technology advanced, one of Mr. Lamme’s responsibilities was to recruit, evaluate, and train new engineering graduates employed by the Westinghouse Company. He developed criteria for selecting the most talented persons for the design engineering work. He developed and taught the Westinghouse Engineering Course in which those selected spent full time for six months. Lamme’s great interest in the people with whom he worked was returned by their affection, esteem and admiration for him as a great engineer. He was addressed by his friends and colleagues as well as his family by the affectionate “B.G.” Lamme was very fond of classical music and accumulated a large collection of records.
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