American Scientist

In my recent column on paperweights (July–August 2016), I described how the electrical engineer Charles Steinmetz (1865–1923) often worked in a canoe afloat near his camp on a tributary of the Mohawk River, just outside Schenectady, New York, not far from the General Electric Research Laboratory where he was employed. Often among the papers, pencils, and other objects on the board he set across the gunwales to serve as a desk was a set of tables of logarithms that he used in making calculations. I also described another photograph, showing Steinmetz at work at a table inside the rustic camp, noting the presence of a slide rule that I suggested he used when he did not require the highest precision in his calculations.