George Westinghouse

His father built farm engines in Central Bridge, New York, and put him to work in the shop. At 14, when the war began, he tried to run away and enlist and was stopped. In June 1863 his parents relented — the 12th New York National Guard, then the 16th New York Cavalry, promotion to corporal, discharge that November. A month later he joined the Navy as an acting third assistant engineer and finished the war aboard the gunboat Muscoota and then the Stars and Stripes, blockading Southern ports. He enrolled at Union College in Schenectady in 1865, lost interest and dropped out during his first term. Back in his father's shop he took his first patent at 19, for a rotary steam engine.

During his travels he had seen the aftermath of a collision in which two engineers watched each other come on and could not stop. Brakemen still worked the car roofs by hand, trains were held to 10 cars, and thousands of brakemen were killed or maimed every year. In 1869, at 23, Westinghouse demonstrated a compressed-air brake in Pittsburgh and chartered a company that July. The first version failed dangerously if the air line parted, so he spent two years inverting the logic — constant pressure holds the brakes off, and any break in the line stops the train by itself. Union Switch and Signal followed in 1881, natural gas after a well on his own estate blew the derrick apart in 1884, and Westinghouse Electric in 1886. He finished with 360 patents and 61 companies.

He was the first industrial employer in the country to give his workers a five-and-a-half-day week, from June 1881, and the houses he built at Wilmerding had running water, gas and electric light, with a pension and insurance system and medical staff in the factories, all at his expense and a few miles from the steel mills. He also opposed unionization. In 1890 Edison's company, in collusion with Thomson-Houston, arranged for the first electric chair to be powered by a Westinghouse alternator, and Westinghouse hired the best lawyer of the day to defend William Kemmler and lost. Money took the rest. The near collapse of Barings in London forced him to refinance, and the new lenders told him to cut his spending on research, acquisitions and patents. The panic of 1907 cost him control of Westinghouse Electric outright.

By 1911 he was no longer active in business and his health was failing, and he died in New York City on March 12, 1914, at 67. Of what, the record does not say. He went first into Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, then out again on December 14, 1915, and into Arlington National Cemetery as a Civil War veteran. Marguerite, who outlived him by three months, was moved with him. His last patent, a compressed-air shock absorber for automobiles, was granted two years after his death. In 1911 the American Institute of Electrical Engineers had given him its Edison Medal, for the alternating current system. Pittsburgh put up a memorial to him in Schenley Park in 1930.

George Westinghouse's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Rotary steam engine patent
  His first patent, taken at 19 1865
• Railway air brake invention
  Redesigned within two years so that a broken line stops the train 1869
• Westinghouse Air Brake Company company
  Chartered in July, weeks after the Pittsburgh demonstration 1869
• Union Switch and Signal Company company
  Automatic railway signaling and track switching, adopted worldwide 1881
• Westinghouse Electric Company company
  Renamed Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1889 1886
• Niagara Falls alternating current station building
  The first large-scale AC generating plant in the world, opened August 1895 1895

• April 1861 aged 14 Tries at 14 to run away and enlist, and his father stops him
• June 1863 aged 16 Enlists in the New York National Guard, then the 16th New York Cavalry He joined the Navy that December and served until August 1865.
• 1865 aged ~19 Takes his first patent at 19, for a rotary steam engine He had already dropped out of Union College during his first term.
• 1869 aged ~23 Demonstrates the compressed-air railway brake at Pittsburgh, at 23
• May 21, 1884 aged 37 A gas well on his own Pittsburgh estate blows the top off the derrick It took him a week to work out how to cap it.
• 1890 aged ~44 Pays for William Kemmler's defense against the first electric chair Edison's company had arranged for a Westinghouse alternator to power it.
• May 1892 aged 45 Underbids General Electric to light the Chicago world's fair with AC
• 1907 aged ~61 The financial panic costs him control of Westinghouse Electric By 1911 he was out of business altogether.
• March 12, 1914 aged 67 Dies in New York City at 67

• Thomas Edison 1847–1931
  Inventor and scientist whose research laboratory model and electrical innovations transformed modern life. rival
• Nikola Tesla 1856–1943
  Serbian-American inventor who developed alternating current electrical systems and numerous electrical innovations. licensed his AC patents
• J. P. Morgan 1837–1913
  Banking titan who stabilized the economy during the Panic of 1907 and shaped modern finance. ended the war of the currents
• Andrew Carnegie 1835–1919
  Steel magnate who built one of the largest steel empires in history and later became a major philanthropist. Pittsburgh industrialist of the same years
• Henry Ford 1863–1947
  Industrialist who revolutionized manufacturing with the assembly line and made automobiles affordable. later experimenter in company welfare