Born in Jehay, he was schooled as a carpenter in Liège. In 1856 he established himself in Paris, where he worked for Ruhmkorff, a manufacturer of electro-magnetic devices.

In 1869, he invented the Gramme dynamo, a continuous-current dynamo capable of generating much higher voltages than the dynamos known thus far. Later he discovered that the device was reversible and could function as an electrical engine.

In order to manufacture his device, he founded in partnership with the French engineer Hippolyte Fontaine the Gramme Magneto-electric Machine Society in 1871. This factory specialized in dynamos and electrical generators.