Oral-History:Bertil Thoren
About Bertil Thoren
Born in Vänersborg, Sweden in 1921, Bertil Thoren demonstrated a childhood interest in science and technology. He studied electrical engineering at the Technical University in Stockholm, and in 1944, earned his master's degree. As military service in Sweden was compulsory, he spent a year in the military before seeking employment, first at ASEA, and then obtaining steady employment at the Ludvika High Voltage and Short Circuit Laboratory as a lab engineer in 1946. His work consisted primarily of testing the breaking capacity of circuit breakers and fuses. In 1950, Thoren went on to receive his doctorate while still working full time. In his thesis he attempted to calculate how much one could deviate from the correct value of current and voltages, a theoretical study which was later used by IEC as a basis when writing its specifications for synthetic testing. Thoren progressed through career stages rapidly. By 1954 he became the manager of the high-power laboratory, where he stayed until the middle of the sixties, when he moved to the Power Systems Consulting Department at Västerås. With this move, Thoren found himself in a completely new area of work, developing computer programs to calculate network performance during short circuits. By the late sixties and early seventies he was lecturing internationally as part of a program to introduce ASEA to various parts of the world.
About the Interview
BERTIL THOREN: An interview conducted by Frederik Nebeker, Center for the History of Electrical Engineering, 16 July 1996
Interview #302 for the Center for the History of Electrical Engineering, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Copyright Statement
This manuscript is being made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the IEEE History Center. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of IEEE History Center.
Request for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the IEEE History Center Oral History Program, Rutgers - the State University, 39 Union Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8538 USA. It should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Bertil Thoren, an oral history conducted in 1996 by Frederik Nebeker, IEEE History Center, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.
