Biografia

BIOGRAFIA

Zénobe Théophile Gramme

Zénobe Théophile Gramme was electrical engineer and a scientist. He was born in Jehay-Bodegnée, Belgium in 1826 and he died in Bois-Colombes, France in 1901. He was the son of a worker of a tax office. His family was a modest family.

He was born when people were starting investigate about the electricity. In that epoch there were a lot of scientists making theories about this new type of energy. Only a half of century before the birth of Zénobe Gramme, had started the Industrial Revolution.

He didn’t finish the school, he left the school at an early age and he started to work as a joiner. After a time his family went to Lieja. They stayed there until 1855. In Lieja he was married with Hortensia Nysten. In 1855 his family and Gramme moved to Paris.

He didn’t have any education, but he was a good worker of crafts because he had worked as a joiner and he had experience in this type of things. Because of this, in Paris, he started to work as a model maker in a workshop. There he started to show interest about the electricity. He left the work of model maker and he stayed in his house reading a lot of books about engineering for a lot of time.

In 1867 he made a motor of alternating current and in 1869 he improved the dynamo. Gramme’s dynamo was presented in the Académie des Sciences in 1871. His invention was successful, the other scientists soon noticed about the importance of this type of dynamo. With Marcel Deprez and Arsène d’ Arsonval, he discovered a form to transmit electricity on long distances.

In 1871 Gramme became associated with Hippolyte Fontaine and both continued making electric machines. The same year Fontaine and Gramme with the help of the count Ivernois, that helped them with the money, opened a factory, the Société des Machines Magnéto-Électriques Gramme. This factory made Gramme’s inventions like the dynamo and others. Gramme won a lot of money with the factory,  he bought a better house and he improved his level of life.

In 1890 Hortensia Nysten, Gramme’s wife died, but he soon married with another women, in 1891, with Antonie Schentur a women younger than Gramme.

Zénobe Gramme received the awards “Volta Prize by Louis Napoleon” in 1852 and  “Commander of the Order of Leopold I of Belgium” in 1898. This  award last is an honorific Belgian title that shows that Gramme was important in the country of Belguim.

Gramme finally died in 1901. When he died his wife published some of Gramme’s scripts that had written theories about electricity and magnetism. Unfortunately a lot of those theories were wrong. When he died he didn’t know how to make basic mathematics operations but nevertheless his inventions and his researches have been  important in the modern technology around the world.

Sources and helping webs:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Zenobe-Theophile_Gramme.aspx consulted 7/4

http://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/g/gramme.htm  consulted 7/4

http://translate.google.es/#es|en| (only for some words, not whole sentences)

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_de_la_electricidad  consulted 11/4