INVENTORS HALL OF FAME
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George Westinghouse was born in Central Bridge, New York on October 6, 1846. He worked in his father's shop until he was 15, when he joined the Union Army and served throughout the Civil War, terminating his service as an assistant engineer in the Navy. After a brief attendance at Union College, he returned to his father's shop, where he developed and patented a rotary steam engine, a device for replacing derailed freight cars, and a railroad frog. He centered his attention on the development of a system of railroad brakes that would centralize control in the hands of the engineer. He was awarded the first of many airbrake patents on April 13, 1869.At the age of 22, he organized the Westinghouse Air Brake Company to develop on a standardized basis the apparatus that was to make railroad travel safe and that eventually was to be adopted by a majority of American and Canadian railroads and used abroad.
In 1882, he organized the Union Switch and Signal Company, purchasing patents of others and combining them with his own for railroad signals and interlocking switches. In 1886, he founded the Westinghouse Electric Company, foreseeing the possibilities of alternating current as opposed to direct current which was limited to a radius of two or three miles.
Westinghouse enlisted the services of Nikola Tesla and other inventors in the development of alternating current motors and apparatus for the transmission of high tension current, pioneering in large scale municipal lighting and contributing to the illumination in 1893 of the Columbian Exposition in Chicago by the new system.
He made his company one of the greatest electric manufacturing organizations in the U.S. and the outstanding competitor of General Electric, which in 1896 arranged to use his patents through a cross-licensing agreement.
By the turn of the century, the various Westinghouse enterprises were capitalized at $120 million and had grown to employ more than 50,000 workers. As a result of financial problems, in 1907, he lost control of the Electric Company, but remained in control of his other companies until his death on March 12, 1914.
For more than a century, the companies George Westinghouse founded have contributed to the industrial might of the United States.
The above information was supplied by the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation, Inc., Room 1D01-Crystal Plaza 3, 2021 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, Virginia 22202. Videotapes and printed materials are currently available. For more information, visit the Foundation's web site at http://www.invent.org
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