George Westinghouse, (born Oct. 6, 1846, Central Bridge, N.Y., U.S.—died March 12, 1914, New York City), American inventor and industrialist who was mainly answerable for the adoption of alternating present for electrical energy transmission within the United States.
After serving in each the U.S. Army and the navy within the Civil War, Westinghouse acquired his first patent in late 1865 for a rotary steam engine. Though the engine proved impractical, he later utilized the identical precept to develop a water meter. In that very same yr he invented a tool for putting derailed freight automobiles again on their tracks.
Westinghouse’s curiosity in railroads on the whole led to his first main invention, an air brake, which he patented in 1869 (finally he acquired greater than 100 patents); in the identical yr he organized the Westinghouse Air Brake Company. With extra computerized options included into its design, the air brake grew to become extensively accepted, and the Railroad Safety Appliance Act of 1893 made air brakes obligatory on all American trains. As using his computerized air brake unfold to Europe, Westinghouse noticed the benefits of standardizing all air-brake gear in order that the equipment on automobiles of various traces would work collectively and improved designs may very well be used on earlier fashions. He thus grew to become one of many first to undertake the fashionable follow of standardization.
Westinghouse then turned his consideration to the issues of railroad signaling. By buying patents to mix together with his personal innovations, he was in a position to develop a whole electrical and compressed-air sign system. In 1883 he started to use his particular information of air brakes to the issue of safely piping pure fuel, and inside two years he obtained 38 patents for piping gear.
Although {the electrical} system being developed within the United States within the Eighteen Eighties used direct present (DC), in Europe a number of alternating-current (AC) methods have been being developed. One of probably the most profitable, first demonstrated in 1881 in London, was devised by Lucien Gaulard of France and John Gibbs of England. Four years later, Westinghouse imported a set of Gaulard-Gibbs transformers and a Siemens AC generator and arrange {an electrical} system in Pittsburgh. With the help of three American electrical engineers, he altered and perfected the transformer and developed a constant-voltage AC generator. In 1886 he included the Westinghouse Electric Company, which three years later was renamed the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company. He bought the patents of Nikola Tesla’s AC motor and employed Tesla to enhance and modify the motor to be used in his energy system. When the system was prepared for the American market, the advocates of DC energy instantly got down to discredit AC energy. Their assaults culminated in expenses that using AC energy was a menace to human life; to help their argument, they launched a typical Westinghouse AC generator because the official technique of executing demise sentences within the state of New York. This tactic was inadequate to suppress AC energy, nevertheless, and in 1893 the Westinghouse firm was retained to mild the World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago. In addition, Westinghouse secured the rights to develop the good falls of the Niagara River with AC turbines. His enterprise flourished till 1907, when a monetary panic resulted in his shedding management of the corporate. By 1911 he had severed all connections together with his firms. His well being failed quickly thereafter.