Brown c. 1900 Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown (17 June 1863 – 2 May 1924) was a Swiss businessman and engineer who co-founded

Brown, Boveri & Cie Brown, Boveri & Cie. (Brown, Boveri & Company; BBC) was a Swiss group of electrical engineering companies. It was founded in Zürich, in 1891 by Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown and Walter Boveri who worked at the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon. In 1 ...

(BBC), which later became

ASEA Brown Boveri ABB Ltd. is a Swedish-Swiss multinational corporation headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland. The company was formed in 1988 when Sweden's Allmänna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget (ASEA) and Switzerland's Brown, Boveri & Cie merged to create ...

Biography

Brown was born on 17 June 1863 in

Winterthur , neighboring_municipalities = Brütten, Dinhard, Elsau, Hettlingen, Illnau-Effretikon, Kyburg, Lindau, Neftenbach, Oberembrach, Pfungen, Rickenbach, Schlatt, Seuzach, Wiesendangen, Zell , twintowns = Hall in Tirol (Austria), La ...

canton of Zürich The canton of Zürich (german: Kanton Zürich ; rm, Chantun Turitg; french: Canton de Zurich; it, Canton Zurigo) is a Swiss canton in the northeastern part of the country. With a population of (as of ), it is the most populous canton in the ...

, as one of six children. His mother was Swiss and his father, British engineer Charles Brown (1827–1905), was the founder of

Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina *Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses *Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports *Swiss Internation ...

. He began working at

Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon was a Swiss engineering company based in the Zürich district of Oerlikon known for the early development of electric locomotives. It was founded in 1876 by the industrialist Peter Emil Huber-Werdmüller, and occupie ...

in 1884, where he headed the electrical engineering department from 1887 to 1891. In 1891, in collaboration with

AEG Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft AG (AEG; ) was a German producer of electrical equipment founded in Berlin as the ''Deutsche Edison-Gesellschaft für angewandte Elektricität'' in 1883 by Emil Rathenau. During the Second World War, AEG ...

, he succeeded in transmitting electric current over 175 kilometers for the

International Electrotechnical Exhibition The 1891 International Electrotechnical Exhibition was held between 16 May and 19 October on the disused site of the three former ( Western Railway Stations) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The exhibition featured the first long-distance tra ...

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

, thus achieving a breakthrough in the field of alternating current. In 1891, Brown co-founded with

Walter Boveri Walter Boveri (born 21 February 1865 in Bamberg, Bavaria, died 28 October 1924 in Baden, Switzerland) was a Swiss-German industrialist and co-founder of the global electrical engineering group Brown, Boveri & Cie. (BBC). Biography Boveri's ances ...

the company Brown, Boveri & Cie in

Baden, Switzerland Baden (German for "baths"), sometimes unofficially, to distinguish it from other Badens, called Baden bei Zürich ("Baden near Zürich") or Baden im Aargau ("Baden in the Aargau"), is a town and a municipality in Switzerland. It is the main tow ...

. Over the following decade he acquired more than thirty Swiss patents for the company. After the transformation of Brown, Boveri & Cie into a S. A., Brown chaired the board of directors from 1901 until 1911, when he broke with Boveri, left the company and retired to

Montagnola Montagnola () is a small Swiss village in Collina d'Oro municipality. Located in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, it is close to the border between Switzerland and Italy. It looks over Lake Lugano and the city of Lugano upon it. It falls wi ...

in the

canton of Ticino Ticino (), sometimes Tessin (), officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino,, informally ''Canton Ticino'' ; lmo, Canton Tesin ; german: Kanton Tessin ; french: Canton du Tessin ; rm, Chantun dal Tessin . ...

. He died in Montagnola on 2 May 1924.

References

External links

Scanning the Past: A History of Electrical Engineers from the Past
at ieee.cincinnati.fuse.net {{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, Charles Eugene Lancelot 1863 births 1924 deaths 19th-century Swiss engineers 20th-century Swiss engineers 19th-century Swiss businesspeople 20th-century Swiss businesspeople People from Winterthur Brown, Boveri & Cie Swiss people of British descent