Benno Mengele (11 December 1898 in

Zwettl __NOTOC__ Zwettl (; Central Bavarian: ''Zwedl''; Czech: ''Světlá'') is a town and district capital of the Austrian state of Lower Austria. It is chiefly known as the location of Zwettl Abbey, first mentioned in October 1139. History The n ...

, Lower Austria – 15 September 1971 in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

) was an Austrian

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

. Mengele studied from 1918 to 1923 at the

Vienna University of Technology TU Wien (TUW; german: Technische Universität Wien; still known in English as the Vienna University of Technology from 1975–2014) is one of the major universities in Vienna, Austria. The university finds high international and domestic recogn ...

and worked from 1922 at the Austrian

Siemens-Schuckert Siemens-Schuckert (or Siemens-Schuckertwerke) was a German electrical engineering company headquartered in Berlin, Erlangen and Nuremberg that was incorporated into the Siemens AG in 1966. Siemens Schuckert was founded in 1903 when Siemens & Ha ...

. He developed protective earthing and

fault current In an electric power system, a fault or fault current is any abnormal electric current. For example, a short circuit is a fault in which a live wire touches a neutral or ground wire. An open-circuit fault occurs if a circuit is interrupted by a fa ...

, and in 1929, he and Gustav Markt developed the

overhead power line An overhead power line is a structure used in electric power transmission and distribution to transmit electrical energy across large distances. It consists of one or more uninsulated electrical cables (commonly multiples of three for three-p ...

(bundle conductors) for high-voltage and ultrahigh-voltage

power transmission Power transmission is the movement of energy from its place of generation to a location where it is applied to perform useful work. Power is defined formally as units of energy per unit time. In SI units: :\text = \frac = \frac Since the develo ...

. He also built the first

hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, an ...

-cooled three-phase motor in Austria. In 1965, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Vienna University of Technology.''This article incorporates information from the corresponding article in the

German Wikipedia The German Wikipedia (german: Deutschsprachige Wikipedia) is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia. Founded on March 16, 2001, it is the second-oldest Wikipedia (after the English Wikipedia), ...

References

1898 births 1971 deaths Austrian electrical engineers People from Zwettl TU Wien alumni {{Austria-bio-stub