Vilém Klíma

Vilém Klíma (10 April 1906 – 6 October 1985) was a Czech electrical engineer who developed a closed-form expression for the distribution factor of a symmetrical three-phase stator winding.

Vilém Klíma (Wilhelm Kauders) died on 6 October 1985 and in an obituary by Frohne it is mentioned that Klíma's equation for the distribution factor of fractional slot windings is not found in textbooks. Another remark in the obituary is that in some references it is stated that it is not possible to find a closed-form expression for the winding factor of fractional slot windings.

An obituary in German was written by Frohne and one in Czech by Čeřovský.

Vilém Klíma was born on 10 April 1906 as Wilhelm Kauders. The reason why Klíma changed his name is related to tragic events that occurred during the Second World War. If one takes a closer look at the references listed in the last paper by Klíma, there is an entry entitled Systematik der Drehstromwicklungen and the author is given as V. Klíma (Kauders). To supply a name between brackets is not typical, and the only paper with this title is written by Wilhelm Kauders.

In the first of his two remarkable papers Klíma explains the systematics of stator windings and the calculation of the winding factors. The aim in this work was to determine the parameters that characterise the air gap mmf of the winding. Also in this paper the induced voltage in the coil sides is already mentioned and represented as a vector. The resultant vector diagram was called the star of coil groups (German: Spulengruppenstern). The adjacent vectors on such a diagram that belong to the same phase is called a phase belt (German: Zone).

Two years later, in the second paper by Klíma, the algebraic methods developed in the first paper were visualised by means of Tingley's diagram. The latter could be referred to as a linear representation of the now called star of slots (German: Nutenstern). The star of slots is constructed using the electrical angle between two adjacent slots. Computer technology as we know it today was not available at the time and the use of graph paper certainly was common. Furthermore, such graphical methods definitely contributed to the subject of stator windings.

Little is known about Klíma. However, his name appear in a list of lecturers in the ghetto of Terezín. The entry details for Kauders are as follows:

Klíma is also mentioned in the bookUniversity Over The Abyss: The story behind 520 lecturers and 2,430 lectures in KZ Theresienstadt 1942-1944 by Makarova. A very interesting detail from the book is that Dr. Goldschmied and Dr. Kauders were secretly taken to Germany to improve the performance of German radar. A witness, Gerda Haas, remembered the following:

One day, the two were ordered to prepare themselves to leave Terezin. Their suitcases must have been cleaned of any signs and numbers, yellow stars were torn off. They were told that they would be employed for a large industrial concern in Germany. Their dependents stayed in Terezin. Soon, Kauders sent a postcard saying that he was in the [concentration camp] Rosenberg (or -burg), where he was freezing terribly and where he worked on his books all day.

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