19th/20th Century Pioneer

George Westinghouse (1846 – 1914)

Inventor and manufacturer, he enabled the growth of the railroads with his invention of the Air Brake. He developed electricity for power and transportation. His electric company became one of the greatest electric manufacturing organizations in the United States.  Westinghouse grew up in an atmosphere of manufacturing; his father manufactured agricultural machinery in Schenectady NY.
 
He served in the Army and the Navy during the Civil War.  He obtained his first patent in 1865 for a rotary steam engine. In 1869, he obtained a patent for the air brake. This enabled trains to be stopped with fail-safe accuracy by the locomotive engineer.

Westinghouse saw the potential for electricity and formed the Westinghouse Electric Company in 1884, later known as the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company.  In 1885 he imported an AC generator and transformer from Europe and developed an AC power system for Pittsburgh PA.  He purchased Nikola Tesla's patents for a polyphase AC system and hired Tesla to perfect his AC power system. At the time, there was public opposition to the development of alternating current electricity due to the Edison Companies promotion of their DC power system.  Thomas Edison, argued that AC was dangerous and a hazard to health. However, Westinghouse obtained the rights to illuminate the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.  He employed Tesla to design the lighting system, and an electrician named Edwin Houston installed it. The Exposition then proved the value of alternating current electricity.
 
The Westinghouse Company was awarded a contract in 1893 to provide two generators for use in the AC power plant being constructed at the Niagara Falls.  Tesla was the technical consultant on the project.   Installation began in 1895, and in 1896, engineers at Buffalo NY closed the circuits that supplied AC power from Niagara Falls.

A financial panic in 1907 caused George Westinghouse to lose control of his company and by 1911; he was completely out of it.  The company grew into a large firm that competed with the General Electric Company for many years.  It provided products for the electrical utility industry, and after WW2, it became a leading builder of nuclear reactors.  Then the Westinghouse Company turned to acquiring radio and television stations and in 1995, purchased CBS.  They dropped the Westinghouse name in 1997 and now call themselves CBS.