Inventive Wizard: George Westinghouse

George Westinghouse Jr. (1846 – 1914) was an American entrepreneur and engineer based in Pennsylvania who created the railway air brake and was a pioneer of the electrical industry, receiving his first patent at the age of 19. 

I enjoyed reading his inspiring biography Inventive Wizard by Israel E Levine as a teenager and re-read the highlighted parts recently. The engaging story-telling and dramatized conversations like this between the 19-year old George and his alarmed father when he hears his son's aim in life is to be inventor, make it a great read -

"An inventor. I want to invent things. I think I have a knack for it, but more important, it's what I want to do most in the world. The car replacer I've told you about, for instance I think I could sell it to the railroads."

Mr. Westinghouse turned to his son and stared at him for a long moment. "George, I'm going to be perfectly frank. You've always had pretty much your own way. You're a man now and you've just been through a war so I don't presume to tell you now how to live your life. But I do think you're not looking at things realistically. If you like inventing, well and good. I have a few patents myself, as you know. However, you can't support yourself as an inventor because it's a risky business at best. An invention may succeed, but it's more likely that it will fail. If it's gambling you like, why you stand as good a chance of winning in a gaming hall.... It's well, it's downright pigheadedness, that's what it is!"

Besides Train Airbrakes, the intrepid inventor became best known for building Gas Shock Absorbers, Transformers, delivering Hydroelectric Power at Niagara Falls & solving real-world problems like Natural Gas Delivery.

With the desire to turn ideas into enterprises, he founded Westinghouse Electric and 59 other companies, eventually receiving more than 360 patents for his work.

Westinghouse saw the potential of using alternating current for electric power distribution in the early 1880s and put all his resources into developing and marketing it. This put Westinghouse's business in direct competition with Thomas Edison, who marketed direct current for electric power distribution. 

Their rivalry and the cutthroat race between electricity titans is well presented in the 2017 movie The Current War.

The "War of Currents" ended with financiers, such as J. P. Morgan, pushing Edison Electric towards AC and pushing out Thomas Edison. In 1892 the Edison company was merged with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric. 

Aided by inventor Nikola Tesla's AC motor, George Westinghouse won the bid to light the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago with alternating current, slightly underbidding General Electric to get the contract.

The early to mid-1890s saw General Electric, backed by financier J. P. Morgan, involved in costly takeover attempts and patent battles with Westinghouse Electric. The competition was so costly a patent-sharing agreement was signed between the two companies in 1896.

In 1911 Westinghouse received the American Institute of Electrical Engineers' (AIEE) Edison Medal "For meritorious achievement in connection with the development of the alternating current system."

Westinghouse remained productive and inventive almost all his life. Like Edison, he had a practical and experimental streak. 

The tireless inventor and businessman said, "If someday they say of me that in my work I have contributed something to the welfare and happiness of my fellow man, I shall be satisfied."

Nikola Tesla wrote, "He was one of the world's true noblemen, of whom America may well be proud and to whom humanity owes an immense debt of gratitude."