Gramme was poorly educated and semi-literate throughout his life. His talent was in handicraft and when he left school he became a joiner. After moving to Paris he took a job as a model maker at a company that manufactured electrical equipment and there became interested in technology.[2]
Having built an improved dynamo, Gramme, in association with Hippolyte Fontaine, opened a factory to develop the device. The business, called Société des Machines Magnéto-Électriques Gramme, manufactured the Gramme dynamo, Gramme ring, Gramme armature and other devices. In 1873 a Gramme dynamo was exhibited at the Vienna exhibition.
He was made an officer of the National Order of the Legion of Honour in 1877. In 1888 he was awarded the last of the valuable Volta Prizes by the French government.
Gramme machine as motor
In 1873 he and Hippolyte Fontaine accidentally discovered that the device was reversible[3] and would spin when connected to any DC power supply. The Gramme machine was the first usefully powerful electrical motor that was successful industrially. Before Gramme's inventions, electric motors attained only low power and were mainly used as toys or laboratory curiosities.
In the town where his second wife grew up and that Gramme visited every year for a few months, he donated the construction of an avenue to cool the underground water pipe built in 1898. It was named Gramme-Allee in 1902.[6]
In the city of Liège there is a graduate school of engineering, l'Institut Gramme, named after him.
