Impact
All engineers who work with electricity owe Steinmetz a debt of thanks. Without his new methods of calculating values of alternating current, electrical power would have spread more slowly, and fewer applications for it would have been developed. Electrical motors, kitchen appliances, power tools, televisions, computers, and
hundreds of other devices would not have evolved as they have. Until Steinmetz developed the law of hysteresis, the amount of hysteresis and power loss could not be calculated for electrical apparatuses, which had to be designed, built, and tested to determine how they would work with alternating current. Devices that lost too much
power and became too hot were discarded and new apparatuses were designed. Thanks to Steinmetz’s mathematical equations, engineers could calculate and predict
power losses and heat gains due to magnetism before the apparatuses were built. This foreknowledge enabled them to design apparatuses that generated less magnetism and thereby experienced less power loss. Steinmetz became aware that many engineers did not have the mathematical background to understand the theories
and calculations that he was publishing. His textbooks on mathematics, which start very simply and build to what the engineers need, are still copied today, as is his text on electrical engineering. He even provided the mathematical background needed by electrical engineers, starting at the high school level.
—C. Alton Hassell