The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Kirchhoff, Charles William Henry

KIRCHHOFF, kėrk'hŏff, Charles William Henry, American editor and steel expert: b. San Francisco, Cal., 28 March 1853; d. Asbury Park, N. J., 22 July 1916. He attended school in the United States and Germany and was graduated from the Royal School of Mines at Clausthal, Germany, in 1874, taking the degree of mining engineer and metallurgist. During the next three years he was chemist, assayer and assistant superintendent of the Delaware Lead Mills at Philadelphia. Beginning his career in technical journalism in 1876, when he was correspondent of English, German and Capetown, Africa, papers, he became connected with the Metallurgical Review in 1877, and a little later joined the staff of the Iron Age, leaving it for a time to be managing editor of the Engineering and Mining Journal, but returning in 1884. Four years later he became its editor-in-chief and vice-president of the David Williams Company, the publishers. Mr. Kirchhoff kept up his editorial work, in which he won distinction, until his resignation in 1909, although he had been asked by Mr. Andrew Carnegie to quit New York for Pittsburgh and the Carnegie Steel Company. From 1898-99 and 1911-12 he was president of the American Institute of Mining Engineering. He was at one time a special agent of the United States Geological Survey for the collection of statistics of the production of copper, lead and zinc. He was a member of the Iron and Steel Institute, was once president of the Germania Club and was a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.