By 1911, he was no longer active in business, and his health was in decline. Died:12-Mar-1914. This was a revolutionary improvement over the earlier system of train braking, which required a brakeman's manual pressure and physical presence in each car. Westinghouse felt that reciprocating steam engines were clumsy and inefficient, and wanted to develop some class of "rotating" engine that would be more elegant and efficient. At the same time, Thomas Edison was launching the first DC electric utility designed to light homes and businesses with his patented incandescent bulb. He was confined to a wheelchair with a weakened heart for the last few years of his life, and died in 1914 with some 360 patents in his name. The air brake allowed longer trains to be run at faster speeds, and greatly improved safety with a fail-safe mechanism that brought the train to a tidy stop if the brake-lines were depressurized or broken. He dropped out in 1865, after filing a patent for his first invention, a rotary steam engine that was only modestly successful. He died on June 13, 1979 in Los Angeles County, California, USA. To understand the gruesome history of the death penalty, it is essential to comprehend how badly inventor Thomas Edison wanted to zap his nemesis George Westinghouse. Westinghouse saw AC's potential to achieve greater economies of scale as way to build a truly competitive system instead of simply building another barely competitive DC lighting system using patents just different enough to get around the Edison patents.[10]. In 1886 he formed Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company (now CBS and Viacom) and soon licensed the related patents of Nikola Tesla, the inventor of AC. He then spent several years working in his father's machine shop, making slight improvements in various areas of railroad technology, and inventing a machine that put derailed rail cars back on their tracks. Acclaimed in his time as the "greatest living engineer," George Westinghouse was accorded numerous honors in the U.S. and abroad, even after his death on March 12, 1914. Remains:Buried, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, VA. With AC networks expanding, Westinghouse turned his attention to electrical power production. Westinghouse became aware of the new European alternating current systems in 1885 when he read about them in the UK technical journal Engineering. One of the most spectacular failures of global marketing was Parker Pen's misguided foray into standardizing their global marketing program … He found great success with the air brake, invented in 1868, using compressed air as the operating medium and slowing the wheels all along a train's length. Edison even suggested a Westinghouse AC generator be used in the State of New York's new electric chair. Each methodology had its strong and weak points, but DC had been better publicized before Westinghouse got into the business, and while electricity was new to most Americans it was synonymous with DC. A year later he founded what is now the ghost town of Duquesne to use as his company headquarters. In 1911 Westinghouse received the American Institute of Electrical Engineers's (AIEE) Edison Medal "For meritorious achievement in connection with the development of the alternating current system."[1]. Spending much of his later life in public service, Westinghouse showed signs of a heart ailment by 1913 and was ordered to rest by doctors. As a Civil War veteran, he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, along with his wife Marguerite, who survived him by three months. His body was later found by maid Alice Monaghan after she had entered Tesla's room, ignoring the "do not disturb" sign that Tesla had placed on his door two days earlier. The plant supplied power to the Gold King Mine 3.5 miles away. Westinghouse grew up hanging around his father’s machine shop. At the time of her death on June 23, 1914, she was living at Erskine Park in Lenox, Massachusetts - the Westinghouse summer home - and the place that she loved the most. Westinghouse replied that might be the case, but it made no difference. Modern trains use brakes in various forms based on this design. In 1884, Westinghouse started developing his own DC domestic lighting system and hired physicist William Stanley to work on it. The couple made their first home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Electric lighting was a growing business with many companies building outdoor direct current (DC) and alternating current (AC) arc lighting based street lighting systems. This was the first successful demonstration of long-distance transmission of industrial-grade alternating current power and used two 100 hp Westinghouse alternators, one working as a generator producing 3000-volt, 133-Hertz, single-phase AC, and the other used as an AC motor. George passed away of cause of death on month day 1914, at age 67 at death place, New York. After deteriorating health and illness confined him to a wheelchair, he died on March 12, 1914. This put Westinghouse's business in direct competition with Thomas Edison, who marketed direct current for electric power distribution. He later patented the device. It w… His Pittsburgh mansion and estate, dubbed "Solitude" by Westinghouse and his wife, was bequeathed to their only son, who sold the property to the Engineers Society of Western Pennsylvania four years later. On the other hand, AC had a key technological advantage — its voltage could be transmitted at a low power, then amplified to a higher level by means of a transformer at or near the user's location. He officially retired in 1909 but continued working in the private laboratory on his estate, and remained a familiar presence at his numerous businesses until about 1911, when his health began to fail. The group then demolished the house and created what is now Westinghouse Park, between Thomas Boulevard and the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks. This was an advantage over the low voltage DC systems being marketed by Thomas Edison's electric utility which had a limited range due to the low voltages used. The Edison company, in collusion with Thomson-Houston, managed to arrange in 1890 that the first electric chair was powered with a Westinghouse AC generator, forcing Westinghouse to try to block this move by hiring the best lawyer of the day to (unsuccessfully) defend William Kemmler, the first man scheduled to die in the chair. [9] AC had the ability to be "stepped up" in voltage by a transformer for distribution and then "stepped down" by a transformer for consumer use, allowing large centralized power plants to supply electricity long distance in cities with more dispersed populations. [4] He also devised the Westinghouse Farm Engine. [17][18] The acquisition of a feasible AC motor gave Westinghouse a key patent for his system, but the financial strain of buying up patents and hiring the engineers needed to build it meant development of Tesla's motor had to be put on hold for a while. [25][26] This World's Fair devoted a building to electrical exhibits. 1865. p. 209. WESTINGHOUSE, GEORGE. [20] The sudden cash shortage forced the company to refinance its debts. With that success AC became America's dominant power source, though Edison spent many more years trying to discredit Westinghouse and AC. With the introduction of the automobile after the turn of the century, Westinghouse went back to earlier inventions and devised a compressed air shock absorber for automobile suspensions. Young George agreed, and within just a few hours he invented a machine to do the cutting. He offered employees a pension plan and relatively good wages, with sick leave and paid recuperation time after on-the-job accidents when neither was required by law. He was buried at burial place, Virginia. Nikola Tesla was a scientist whose inventions include the Tesla coil, alternating-current (AC) electricity, and the discovery of the rotating magnetic field. Sean Connery's Cause of Death Revealed Weeks After He Dies at Age 90 ... noting how he recently graduated from George Westinghouse High School in … 1884-05-03 Mechanical engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor (28) weds Louise M. Spooner; Historical Events. [27], Westinghouse's demonstration that they could build a complete AC system at the Columbian Exposition was instrumental in them getting the contract for building a two-phase AC generating system, the Adams Power Plant, at Niagara Falls in 1895. Joining Dr. Large to perform an autopsy was Dr. Whitmell P. Small -- yes, Drs. Large turbines were most efficient at about 3,000 rpm, while an efficient propeller operated at about 100 rpm. [citation needed], In 1869, at age 22, Westinghouse invented a railroad braking system using compressed air. In December 1864 he resigned from the Army to join the Navy, serving as Acting Third Assistant Engineer on the gunboat USS Muscoota through the end of the war. Gender:Male. At age 15 he ran away to join the Union army, but his parents made him come home. That required reduction gearing, but building reduction gearing that could operate at high rpm and at high power was difficult, since a slight misalignment would shake the power train to pieces. American Society of Mechanical Engineers, This page was last edited on 9 December 2020, at 01:05. Inventor, industrialist, and engineer George Westinghouse was the eighth of ten children born to an American toolmaker and his wife. In 1898 Westinghouse demonstrated a 300-kilowatt unit, replacing reciprocating engines in his air-brake factory. Westinghouse remained productive and inventive almost all his life.     Allegheny County Light Company Founder (1882) 20-Mar-1809, d. 1884)Mother: Emeline Vedder (b. While that phrase did not catch on and do for George Westinghouse, who had nothing to do with the development of capital punishment by electrocution, what the guillotine had done for Dr. Guillotin, the idea did. As a boy, George greatly preferred working in his father's shop to going to school. From his youth, he was talented with machinery and business. His descendants still joke that Edison's body is buried somewhere on the grounds. At the same time, a contract to build the three-phase AC distribution system the project needed was awarded to General Electric. In 1881 he founded the Union Switch and Signal Company to manufacture his signaling and switching inventions. When he turned 16, he convinced them to let him serve, and he spent one year in the Union army and one year in the Union navy. That wasn't always the case. However, without George, who had preceded her in death by three months, she was quoted to have said, "I have nothing to live for now." William Francis Kemmler (May 9, 1860 – August 6, 1890) was an American peddler, alcoholic, and murderer, who in 1890 became the first person in the world to be executed by electric chair.He was convicted of murdering Matilda "Tillie" Ziegler, his common-law wife, two years earlier. He lived in a large Victorian frame house, which still stands, but in disrepair. [citation needed], Westinghouse pursued many improvements in railway signals (which then used oil lamps). At one point he was the President of 34 firms concurrently, with some 50,000 employees and offices and factories across America, Europe, and the civilized world. to downtown Pittsburg later that evening. Brakemen had to run from car to car, on catwalks atop the cars, applying the brakes manually on each car. George Cisar, Actor: Attack of the Giant Leeches. He was an actor, known for Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959), The Ford Television Theatre (1952) and Jungle Jim (1955). AKA George Westinghouse, Jr. Air brake and AC power. Married Life. Now a full-time inventor and businessman, Westinghouse made numerous improvements to railroad track, switch, and circuitry and signalling systems, and founded the Union Switch and Signal Company in 1881 (which was absorbed into Wabtec in 1917). Birthplace and Boyhood Home, "William Stanley – Engineering Hall of Fame", "Southwest Arizona Ghost Towns Harshaw, Mowry, Washington Camp, Duquesne, Lochiel", "Timeline | Articles and Essays | Inside an American Factory: Films of the Westinghouse Works, 1904 | Digital Collections | Library of Congress", Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Baldwin-Westinghouse electric locomotives, Electrification of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad, Westinghouse Aviation Gas Turbine Division, Presidents of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Westinghouse&oldid=993143623, Fellows of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Hall of Fame for Great Americans inductees, Businesspeople from Schenectady, New York, Military personnel from Schenectady, New York, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from December 2020, Articles using NRISref without a reference number, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from November 2017, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2012, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2017, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. George Westinghouse (1846 – 1914) was an inventor who applied his talents to the railroad and electrical industries. [4][5], At about this time, he witnessed a train wreck where two engineers saw one another, but were unable to stop their trains in time using the existing brakes. George Westinghouse was the son of a modestly successful manufacturer of agricultural machinery. He founded Westinghouse Air Brake Company (now Wabtec) in 1869, and within a few years he was a millionaire. He served in the Union Army and Navy during the American Civil War, then attended Union College but only for about three months. Duquesne grew to over a 1,000 residents and the mine reached its peak production in the mid-1910s.[30][31]. Page 50 of 50 - About 500 essays. If he couldn't build a perpetual-motion machine, he would still have a heat pump system that he could patent and sell. [13] This competition with Edison led in the late 1880s to what has been called the "war of currents" with Thomas Edison and his company joining in with a spreading public perception that the high voltages used in AC distribution were unsafe. It is a failsafe system, in that any rupture or disconnection in the train pipe will apply the brakes throughout the train. Submit a correction or make a comment about this profile, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, VA, Union College, Schenectady, NY (attended 1865), Submit a correction or make a comment about this profile.     Westinghouse Machine Company Founder (1880) At the age of fifteen, as the Civil War broke out, Westinghouse enlisted in the New York National Guard and served until his parents urged him to return home. Born: 6-Oct-1846Birthplace: Central Bridge, NYDied: 12-Mar-1914Location of death: New York CityCause of death: Heart FailureRemains: Buried, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, VA, Gender: MaleReligion: PresbyterianRace or Ethnicity: WhiteSexual orientation: StraightOccupation: Inventor, BusinessParty Affiliation: Republican, Nationality: United StatesExecutive summary: Air brake and AC power, Military service: US Army (1863-64); US Navy (1864-66). The Westinghouse system used 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 refilled the reservoirs and controlled the brakes, allowing the engineer to apply and release the brakes simultaneously on all cars. It was patented by Westinghouse on October 28, 1873. That same year, Westinghouse formed the "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company";[12] in 1889 he renamed it as "Westinghouse Electric Corporation". [citation needed], Westinghouse remained a captain of American industry until 1907, when the financial panic of 1907 led to his resignation from control of the Westinghouse company. 1906-10-19 Frederick Winslow Taylor is awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Science by the University of Pennsylvania In April 1863 he persuaded his parents to allow him to re-enlist, whereupon he joined Company M of the 16th New York Cavalry and earned promotion to the rank of corporal. Westinghouse also had to deal with an AC rival, the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, which had built 22 power stations by the end of 1887[13] and by 1889 had bought out another competitor, the Brush Electric Company.     English Ancestry Maternal In 1867, Westinghouse met and soon married Marguerite Erskine Walker.     Order of Leopold, Belgium Documents of Emeline (Emilia) Westinghouse (born Vedder) Emeline Westinghouse 1810 New York Emeline Westinghouse in 1870 United States Federal Census The dinning area Natural gas is big news in Western Pennsylvania, as it was in the George Eastman invented the Kodak camera, helping make photography accessible to the public. George Cisar was born on July 28, 1912 in Cicero, Illinois, USA.     IEEE Edison Medal 1911    Grashof Medal 1913 After opening in 1895 these plants soon supplied power to Buffalo, a city some twenty miles away — a distance that would have been nearly impossible for DC transmission. He retreated to his estate in Lenox, Mass., where he would while away the morning hours fishing. [23] At the beginning of 1893 Westinghouse engineer Benjamin Lamme had made great progress developing an efficient version of Tesla's induction motor and Westinghouse Electric started branding their complete polyphase AC system as the "Tesla Polyphase System", announcing Tesla's patents gave them patent priority over other AC systems and their intentions to sue patent infringers. George Westinghouse was born on October 6, 1846, in Central Bridge, New York. Also named in his honor, George Westinghouse Bridge is near the site of his Turtle Creek plant. The scope of his financial empire was easy to overlook, as he named many of his companies not for himself but for his employees, the inventors and engineers who designed the assorted dynamos, meters, voltage regulators, and transformers that kept electricity humming. 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