Established July 12, 1926, with his bequest. Income provides equal scholarships to the two most capable students in the mechanical and electrical courses during their senior year.
Undated photo of Benjamin Lamme that appeared in his posthumously published 1926 autobiography.
Benjamin Garver Lamme was born on January 12, 1864, on a farm in Lower Valley Pike in Clark County, Ohio. Lamme came to Ohio State as a freshman in 1883 and graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1888.
Lamme joined the Westinghouse Electric Company in 1880, where he helped develop the Niagara Falls power system. He became Westinghouse’s chief engineer in 1903, a position he held the remainder of his life. An inventor and developer of electrical machinery, Lamme was granted 162 patents during his lifetime. He pioneered the design of rotary converters, developed direct current railway motors, produced the first commercially successful induction motor, and received patents on electrical ship propulsion and gyroscopic stabilizer systems. His development of alternating current was responsible for the ability to transmit electricity over long distances, aiding the industrialization of the Midwestern United States.
Lamme was awarded the IEEE Edison Medal “For Invention and Development of Electrical Machinery” for a “Career of meritorious achievements in electrical science”. On January 11, 1923 The Ohio State University presented Lamme with the Joseph Sullivant Gold Medal in recognition of “notable achievement in the form of an important invention, discovery, contribution to science…” He passed away on July 8, 1924 in Pittsburgh, PA.
The Ohio State College of Engineering’s highest honor for alumni, The Benjamin G. Lamme Meritorious Achievement Medal is named in his honor and was original funded with a bequest from his estate.