Arthur C. Ruge

Arthur Claude Ruge (28 July 1905 to 3 April 2000) was an American mechanical engineer and inventor who developed and pioneered the modern bonded wire resistance strain gauge. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a mechanical engineering degree in 1925, worked for several years as a structural engineer, and then earned a master degree in civil engineering and a doctorate in engineering seismology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he joined the faculty in 1932 as a professor of engineering seismology. Seeking a way to measure the stress that earthquakes caused on water tanks, he conceived the strain gauge on 3 April 1938. The device became the SR-4, named for Simmons and Ruge, and in 1939 he and Alfred de Forest founded Ruge Consulting to manufacture it.