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George Westinghouse, Jr (6 October 1846–12 March 1914) was an American
entrepreneur and engineer who invented the railroad air brake and was a pioneer of
the electrical industry. Westinghouse was one of Thomas Edison's main rivals in the
early implementation of the American electricity system. Westinghouse' system using
alternating current ultimately prevailed over Edison's insistence on direct
current. In 1911, he received the AIEE's Edison Medal 'For meritorious achievement
in connection with the development of the alternating current system light.
 Early
years
Westinghouse was the son of a machine shop owner and was talented at machinery and
business. He was only 19 years old when he created his first invention, the rotary
steam engine. At age 21 he 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.
At about this time he witnessed a train wreck where two engineers both saw each
other but could not stop their trains in time using the brakes then available.
Brakemen had to run from car to car, often on top of the cars, and apply the brakes
by hand on each car. Westinghouse devoted several years of his life to railroad
safety devices.
In 1869 at age 22 he invented a railroad braking system using compressed air. 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, 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 was patented by Westinghouse on March 5, 1872. The
Westinghouse Air Brake Company (WABCO) was subsequently organized to manufacture
and sell Westinghouse's invention. It was in time nearly universally adopted.
Modern trains use brakes in various forms all based upon this design.
Westinghouse pursued many improvements in railroad signals (then using oil lamps)
and in 1881 he founded the Union Switch and Signal Company to manufacture his
signaling and switching inventions.
Electricity
and the "War of Currents"
In 1875, Thomas Edison was still a relative unknown in the United States. He had
achieved some success with a "multiplex telegraph" system that allowed multiple
telegraph signals to be sent over a single wire, but had not yet obtained the
recognition he wanted. He was working on a telephone system but was upstaged by
Bell. Edison bounced back quickly from the setback to invent the phonograph, which
was a public sensation nobody had dreamed possible and made him famous.
Edison's next step, in 1878, was to invent an improved incandescent light bulb, and
more the point to consider the need for an electrical distribution system to
provide power for light bulbs. On September 4 1882, Edison switched on the world's
first electrical power distribution system, providing 110 volts direct current (DC)
to 59 customers in lower Manhattan, around his Pearl Street laboratory. Lewis
Latimer received a patent for an improved process for manufacturing the carbon
filaments in light bulbs. These improvements allowed for a reduction in time to
produce and an increase in quality. During his life time he had worked with and for
Alexander Bell, Hiram Maxim and Thomas Edison. Latimer was the only black member of
an exclusive social group, the Edison Pioneers.
Westinghouse's interests in gas distribution and telephone switching logically led
him to become interested in electrical power distribution. He investigated Edison's
scheme, but decided that it was too inefficient to be scaled up to a large size.
Edison's power network was based on low-voltage DC, which meant large currents and
serious power losses. Several European inventors were working on "alternating
current (AC)" power distribution. An AC power system allowed voltages to be
"stepped up" by a transformer for distribution, reducing power losses, and then
"stepped down" by a transformer for use.
A power transformer developed by Lucien Gaulard of France and John Dixon Gibbs of
England was demonstrated in London in 1881, and attracted the interest of
Westinghouse. Transformers were nothing new, but the Gaulard-Gibbs design was one
of the first that could handle large amounts of power and promised to be easy to
manufacture. In 1885, Westinghouse imported a number of Gaulard-Gibbs transformers
and a Siemens AC generator to begin experimenting with AC networks in
Pittsburgh.
Assisted by William Stanley, and Franklin Leonard Pope, Westinghouse worked to
refine the transformer design and build a practical AC power network. In 1886,
Westinghouse and Stanley installed the first multiple-voltage AC power system in
Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The network was driven by a hydropower generator
that produced 500 volts AC. The voltage was stepped up to 3,000 volts for
transmission, and then stepped back down to 100 volts to power electric lights. The
problems inherent in the new AC system were highlighted when Mr. Pope was
electrocuted by a malfunctioning AC converter in the basement of his home (see) .
That same year, Westinghouse formed the "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing
Company", which was renamed the "Westinghouse Electric Corporation" in 1889.
Thirty more AC lighting systems were installed within a year, but the scheme was
limited by the lack of an effective metering system and an AC electric motor. In
1888, Westinghouse and his engineer Oliver Shallenger developed a power meter,
which they designed to look as much like a gas meter as possible. The same basic
meter technology is still used today. An AC motor was a more difficult task, but
fortunately a design was already available. The brilliant Serbian-American inventor
Nikola Tesla had already dreamed up the basic principles of a polyphase electric
motor.
Tesla and Edison did not get along well. Earlier Tesla had worked for the Edison
General Electric company in Europe, but was unpaid for his service and had to go
into labour for a few years. Later, Edison promised Tesla $50,000 if he could
redesign his DC electrical dynamos. When Tesla did this, Edison told Tesla that he
had been joking about the money. Edison and Tesla quickly parted company.
Westinghouse got in touch with Tesla, and obtained patent rights to Tesla's AC
motor. Tesla had conceived the rotating magnetic field principle in 1882 and used
it to invent the first brushless AC motor or induction motor in 1883. Westinghouse
hired him as a consultant for a year and from 1888 onwards the wide scale
introduction of the polyphase AC motor began. The work led to the standard modern
US power-distribution scheme: three-phase AC at 60 Hz, chosen as a rate high enough
to minimize light flickering, but low enough to reduce reactive losses, an
arrangement also conceived by Tesla.
Westinghouse's promotion of AC power distribution led him into a bitter
confrontation with Edison and his DC power system. The feud became known as "the
War of Currents." Edison claimed that high voltage systems were inherently
dangerous; Westinghouse replied that the risks could be managed and were outweighed
by the benefits. Edison tried to have legislation enacted in several states to
limit power transmission voltages to 800 volts, but failed.
The battle went to an absurd, and some would say tragic, level, when in 1887 a
board appointed by the state of New York consulted Edison on the best way to
execute condemned prisoners. At first, Edison wanted nothing to do with the matter,
declaring his opposition to capital punishment.
However, Westinghouse AC networks were clearly winning the battle of the currents,
and the ultra-competitive Edison saw a last opportunity to defeat his rival. Edison
hired an outside engineer named Harold P. Brown, who could pretend to be impartial,
to perform public demonstrations in which animals were electrocuted by AC power.
Edison then told the state board that AC was so deadly that it would kill
instantly, making it the ideal method of execution. His prestige was so great that
his recommendation was adopted.
Harold Brown then sold gear for performing electric executions to the state for
$8,000. In August 1890, a convict named William Kemmler became the first person to
be executed by electrocution. Westinghouse hired the best lawyer of the day to
defend Kemmler and condemned electrocution as a form of "cruel and unusual
punishment". The execution was messy and protracted, and Westinghouse protested
that they could have done better with an axe. The electric chair became a common
form of execution for decades, even though it had proven from the first to be an
unsatisfactory way to do the job. However, Edison failed in his attempts to have
the procedure named "Westinghousing".
Edison also failed to discredit AC power, whose advantages did in fact well
outweigh its hazards. Even General Electric, formed with Edison's backing in
Schenectady in 1892, decided to begin production of AC equipment.
Later
years
In 1893, in a significant victory, the Westinghouse company was awarded the
contract to set up an AC network to power the World's Columbian Exposition in
Chicago, giving the company and the technology widespread positive publicity.
Westinghouse also received a contract to set up the first long-range power network,
with AC generators at Niagara Falls producing electricity for distribution in
Buffalo, New York, 40 kilometers (25 miles) away.
With AC networks expanding, Westinghouse turned his attention to electrical power
production. At the outset, the available generating sources were hydroturbines
where falling water was available, and reciprocating steam engines where it was
not. 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.
In fact, one of his first inventions had been a rotary steam engine, but it had
proven impractical. However, an Irish engineer named Charles Algernon Parsons began
to experiment with steam turbines in 1884, beginning with a 10 horsepower (7.5 kW)
unit. Westinghouse bought rights to the Parsons turbine in 1885, and began work
towards improving the Parsons technology and scaling it up.
Skeptics questioned that the steam turbine would ever be a reliable large-scale
power source, but in 1898 Westinghouse demonstrated a 300 kilowatt unit, replacing
reciprocating engines in his air-brake factory. The next year he installed a 1.5
megawatt, 1,200 rpm unit for the Hartford Electric Light Company.
Westinghouse then turned his attention to using such large steam turbines to drive
big ships. The problem was that such large turbines were most efficient at about
3,000 rpm, while an efficient propeller operated at about 100 rpm. That meant
reduction gearing, but building a reduction gear system that could operate at such
high rpm and at high power was difficult. Even a slight misalignment would shake
the power train to pieces. Westinghouse and his engineers were able to devise an
automatic alignment system that made turbine power practical for large vessels.
Westinghouse remained productive and inventive through almost all his life. Like
Edison, he had a practical and experimental streak. At one time, Westinghouse began
to work on heat pumps that could provide heating and cooling, and even believed
that he might be able to extract enough power in the process for the system to run
itself.
Any modern engineer would clearly see that Westinghouse was after a perpetual
motion machine, and the Irish & British physicist Lord Kelvin, one of
Westinghouse's correspondents, told him that he would be violating the laws of
thermodynamics. Westinghouse replied that might be the case, but it made no
difference. If he couldn't build a perpetual-motion machine, he would still have a
heat pump system that he could patent and sell.
With the introduction of the automobile after the turn of the century, Westinghouse
went back to earlier inventions and came up with a compressed-air shock absorber
scheme to allow automobiles to deal with the wretched roads of the time.
Westinghouse remained a captain of American industry until 1907, when a financial
panic led to his resignation from control of the Westinghouse company. By 1911, he
was no longer active in business, and his health was in decline.
George Westinghouse married Marguerite Erskine Walker on August 8, 1867. They had
one child, George Westinghouse 3rd, and were happily married for 47 years. George
Westinghouse died on March 12 1914, in New York City, at age 67. As a Civil War
veteran, he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, along with his wife
Marguerite, who survived him by only three months. He was mourned. Although a
shrewd and determined businessman, Westinghouse was a conscientious employer and
wanted to make fair deals with his business associates.
Source : Some of the information on this page came
from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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George
Westinghouse - Manifesting Generator - Biography
