George Westinghouse
American entrepreneur and engineer
1846 CE to 1914 CE
George Westinghouse, Jr. (October 6, 1846 – March 12, 1914) is an American entrepreneur and engineer who invents the railway air brake and is a pioneer of the electrical industry.
Westinghouse is one of Thomas Edison's main rivals in the early implementation of the American electricity system.
Westinghouse's system, which uses alternating current based on the extensive research by Nikola Tesla, ultimately prevais over Edison's insistence on direct current.
In 1911, Westinghouse receives the AIEE's Edison Medal "For meritorious achievement in connection with the development of the alternating current system."
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George Westinghouse had created his first invention, the rotary steam engine, when he was nineteen years old; he had also devised the Westinghouse Farm Engine.
In 1868, at age twenty-one, he had invented a "car replacer", a device to guide derailed railroad cars back onto the tracks, and a reversible frog, a device used with a railroad switch to guide trains onto one of two tracks.
In 1867, Westinghouse had met and soon married Marguerite Erskine Walker, to whom he will be married for forty-seven years and produce a son, George Westinghouse 3rd.
After making their first home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, they will later acquire houses in Lenox, Massachusetts and in Washington, D.C.
At about this time, Westinghouse had witnessed a train wreck where two engineers had seen one another, but had been unable to stop their trains in time using the existing brakes.
Brakemen ran from car to car, on catwalks atop the cars, applying the brakes manually on each car.
In 1869, at age twenty-two, he had invented a railroad braking system using compressed air.
The Westinghouse system uses a compressor on the locomotive, a reservoir and a special valve on each car, and a single pipe running the length of the train (with flexible connections) which both refills the reservoirs and controls the brakes, applying and releasing the brakes on all cars simultaneously.
It is a failsafe system, in that any rupture or disconnection in the train pipe will apply the brakes throughout the train.
It is patented by Westinghouse on March 5, 1872.
The Westinghouse Air Brake Company (WABCO) is subsequently organized to manufacture and sell Westinghouse's invention.
It will in time be nearly universally adopted.
Modern trains use brakes in various forms based on this design.
Westinghouse, born in Central Bridge, NY in 1846, was the son of a machine shop owner.
He had shown an aptitude for machinery and business.
At the age of fifteen, as the Civil War broke out, he had enlisted in the New York National Guard until his parents urged him to return home.
Two years later, in 1863, having persuaded his parents to allow him to re-enlist, he had joined the New York Cavalry.
He had resigned from the Army in December 1864 to join the Navy, serving as Acting Third Assistant Engineer on the USS Muscoota through the end of the war.
Returning to his family in Schenectady in 1865, he had enrolled at nearby Union College, but lost interest in the curriculum and dropped out in his first term there.
George Westinghouse founds the Union Switch and Signal Company in 1881 to manufacture his signaling and switching inventions, he having since pursued many improvements in railway signals (at this time using oil lamps).
George Westinghouse imports a number of Gaulard-Gibbs transformers and a Siemens AC generator to begin experimenting with AC networks in Pittsburgh in 1885.
Westinghouse's interests in gas distribution and telephone switching have logically led him to become interested in electrical power distribution.
He had investigated Edison's scheme, but had decided that it is too inefficient to be scaled up to a large size.
Edison's power network is based on low-voltage DC, which means large currents and serious power losses.
Nikola Tesla is working on "alternating current (AC)" power distribution.
An AC power system allows voltages to be "stepped up" by a transformer for distribution, reducing power losses, and then "stepped down" by a transformer for consumer use.
A power transformer developed by Lucien Gaulard of France and John Dixon Gibbs of England had been demonstrated in London in 1881, and had attracted the interest of Westinghouse.
Transformers are not new, but the Gaulard-Gibbs design is one of the first that can handle large amounts of power and is easily manufactured.
William Stanley, Jr., demonstrates the first complete system of high voltage Alternating Current transmission, consisting of generators, transformers and high-voltage transmission lines, on March 20, 1886.
His system allows the distribution of electrical power over wide areas.
Stanley and George Westinghouse install the first multiple-voltage AC power system in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
The network is driven by a hydropower generator that produces five hundred volts AC.
The voltage is stepped up to three thousand volts for transmission, and then stepped back down to one hundred volts volts to power electric lights.
Stanley, as an electrician working with tele keys and fire alarms of an early manufacturer in Philadelphia, had designed one of the first electrical installations (at a Fifth Avenue store in ).
In 1885, Stanley had built and on September 21 1886 patents the first practical alternating current device, based on Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs' idea.
This device is the precursor to the modern transformer.
Stanley's work led him to be hired by Westinghouse as his chief engineer in Pittsburgh.
Westinghouse, assisted by Stanley, and Franklin Leonard Pope, has worked to refine the transformer design and build a practical AC power network.
In 1886 also, Westinghouse forms the "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company" (which will be renamed the "Westinghouse Electric Corporation" in 1889).
Philip H. Diehl, in mounting a fan blade on a sewing machine motor and attaching it to the ceiling, inventing the ceiling fan, which he patents in 1887, a few years after the invention of the electric fan by Schuyler Skaats Wheeler in 1882.
Diehl, born in Dalsheim, Germany, had emigrated in July 1868 to New York City, where he had worked in several machine shops before finding work as an apprentice with the Singer Manufacturing Company.
He had been transferred to Chicago in 1870 or 1871 and had worked at the Remington Machine Company until 1875, losing all of his possessions in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and marrying Emilie Loos in Chicago in 1873.
Diehl had moved in 1875 to Elizabeth, New Jersey and had taken charge of experimental work improving sewing machines at the Singer plant.
His daughter, Clara Elvira, was born April 2, 1876.
While working at Singer in Elizabeth, Diehl had experimented at work and n the basement of his home on Orchard Street.
This had resulted in several inventions.
Together with Lebbeus B. Miller, Diehl has invented and patented the "oscillating shuttle" bobbin driver design and a sewing machine build around it.
Diehl's work at Singer to improve the sewing machine leads to developments in electric motors, first to power sewing machines and later for other uses as well.
In 1884, at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Diehl had demonstrated a dynamo, modeled after his smaller motor, which generates a current for arc lamps, sewing machine motors and incandescent lamps, all covered by his patents.
The judicial committee at the exhibition had judged it to be one of the best dynamos exhibited.
Diehl has invented a lamp that is different from the incandescent electric lamp patented by Thomas Edison in 1879.
Diehl's lamp has no lead-in wires.
In 1882, Diehl had obtained the first patent on this induction incandescent lamp.
The base of the lamp contains a wire coil that couples with a primary coil in the lamp socket, causing current to flow through the lamp without the need for lead-in wires.
Two additional patents had been granted in 1883, followed by patents for electrical lighting systems in 1885 and 1886.
Diehl had erected the city's first arc light in front of the Corey Building, which still stands at 109 Broad Street.
Diehl's invention of the induction lamp is used by George Westinghouse to force royalty concessions from Thomas Edison.
The Westinghouse Company buys Diehl's patent rights for twenty-five thousand dollars.
Although Diehl's lamp cannot be made and sold at a price to compete with the Edison lamp, the Westinghouse Company uses the Diehl bulb to force the holders of the Edison patent to charge a more reasonable rate for the use of the Edison patent rights, thus lowering the price of the electric lamp.
Nikola Tesla obtains patents for his entire system of polyphase alternating-current power in May 1888.
George Westinghouse buys rights to the patents on Tesla’s motor and makes it the basis for the Westinghouse power system, which will soon become the world standard.
In 1887, Tesla had developed an induction motor that ran on alternating current (AC), a power system format that is rapidly expanding in Europe and the United States because of its advantages in long-distance, high-voltage transmission.
The motor uses polyphase current, which generates a rotating magnetic field to turn the motor (a principle that Tesla claims to have conceived in 1882).
This innovative electric motor is a simple self-starting design that does not need a commutator, thus avoiding sparking and the high maintenance of constantly servicing and replacing mechanical brushes.
In late 1886, Tesla had met Alfred S. Brown, a Western Union superintendent, and New York attorney Charles F. Peck.
The two men sre experienced in setting up companies and promoting inventions and patents for financial gain.
Based on Tesla's new ideas for electrical equipment, including a thermo-magnetic motor idea, they agreed to back the inventor financially and handle his patents.
Together they formed the Tesla Electric Company in April 1887, with an agreement that profits from generated patents would go 1/3 to Tesla, 1/3 to Peck and Brown, and 1/3 to fund development.
They set up a laboratory for Tesla at 89 Liberty Street in Manhattan, where he works on improving and developing new types of electric motors, generators, and other devices.
Along with getting Tesla's induction motor patented, Peck and Brown had arranged to get the motor publicized, starting with independent testing to verify it was a functional improvement, followed by press releases sent to technical publications for articles to run concurrent with the issue of the patent.
Physicist William Arnold Anthony (who tested the motor) and Electrical World magazine editor Thomas Commerford Martin arrange for Tesla to demonstrate his AC motor on May 16, 1888 at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.
Westinghouse has looked into getting a patent on a similar commutator-less, rotating magnetic field-based induction motor developed in 1885 and presented in a paper in March 1888 by Italian physicist Galileo Ferraris, but has decided that Tesla's patent will probably control the market.
In July 1888, Brown and Peck negotiate a licensing deal with George Westinghouse for Tesla's polyphase induction motor and transformer designs for $60,000 in cash and stock and a royalty of $2.50 per AC horsepower produced by each motor.
Westinghouse also hires Tesla for one year for the large fee of $2,000 ($55,800 in today's dollars) per month to be a consultant at the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company's Pittsburgh labs.
During this year, Tesla worked in Pittsburgh, helping to create an alternating current system to power the city's streetcars.
He finds it a frustrating period because of conflicts with the other Westinghouse engineers over how best to implement AC power.
Between them, they settle on a 60-cycle AC system that Tesla had proposed (to match the working frequency of Tesla's motor), but they soon find that it would not work for streetcars, since Tesla's induction motor can run only at a constant speed.
They end up using a DC traction motor instead.
Kemmler, of Buffalo, New York, a peddler and known alcoholic, had been convicted of murdering Matilda "Tillie" Ziegler, his common-law wife.
On January 1, 1888, New York had instituted death by electrocution, the first such law ever.
After Kemmler's conviction, it had been determined that his sentence was to be carried out at New York's Auburn Prison via the new electric chair, a device invented in 1881 by Buffalo, New York dentist Alfred Southwick.
After nine years of development and legislation, the chair was considered ready for use.
Kemmler's lawyers had appealed, arguing that electrocution was cruel and unusual punishment.
The plan to carry out Kemmler's execution via electric chair had drawn the situation into the AC/DC "war of currents" between George Westinghouse, the largest supplier of alternating current equipment, and Thomas Edison, whose company runs its equipment on direct current.
The alternating current that powers the electric chair (a current standard adopted by a committee after a demonstration performed at Edison's laboratory by anti-AC activist Harold P. Brown showing AC's lethality) is supplied by a Westinghouse generator surreptitiously acquired by Brown.
This had led to Westinghouse trying to stop what seemed to be Brown and Edison's attempt to try to portray the AC used in Westinghouse electrical system as the deadly "executioners current", actively supporting Kemmler's appeal by hiring lawyer W. Bourke Cockran to represent him.
However, the appeal had failed on October 9, 1889 and the U.S. Supreme Court had turned down the case on the grounds that there is no cruel and unusual punishment in death by electrocution.