Like Benjamin Franklin, Charles Proteus Steinmetz was drawn to understanding and
studying lightning. Lightning, he said, was an example of electrical transients
because it reflects changes in electrical circuits of very short duration. The
result of these studies was his theory of traveling waves. It opened the door
to his creation at General Electric of methods to protect high-power transmission
lines from lightning strikes. His last major project at GE was part of this research.
He designed a generator that produced a discharge of 10,000 A and more than 100,000
V.