George Westinghouse

George Westinghouse (October 6 1846 – March 12 1914) was an American entrepreneur and engineer now best known for the brand of electrical goods that bear his name. Friend to Nikola Tesla and one of Thomas Edison's main rivals in the early implementation of the American electricity system, he was also active in the railroad and telephone industries. In 1911, he received the AIEEs Edison Medal 'For meritorious achievement in connection with the development of the alternating current system for light and power.'

Electricity and the "War of Currents"

In 1875, Thomas Edison had been a virtual unknown. 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.

Related Topics:
1875 - Multiplex - Telegraph - Phonograph

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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.

Related Topics:
1878 - Incandescent light bulb - 1882 - Volt - Direct current - Manhattan - Pearl Street

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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.

Related Topics:
Alternating current - Transformer

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A power transformer developed by Lucien Gaulard of France and John 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.

Related Topics:
Lucien Gaulard - France - John Gibbs - England - London - Siemens - Generator

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Assisted by William Stanley, 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. That same year, he formed the "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company", which was renamed the "Westinghouse Electric Corporation" in 1889.

Related Topics:
William Stanley - 1886 - Great Barrington, Massachusetts - Hydropower - Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company

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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.

Related Topics:
Electric motor - Oliver Shallenger

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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.

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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 electrical dynamos for AC use. When Tesla did this, Edison told Tesla that he had been joking about the money. Edison and Tesla quickly parted company.

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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.

Related Topics:
Patent - Induction motor

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. Unfortunately, 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".

Related Topics:
William Kemmler - Electric chair

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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.

Related Topics:
General Electric - Schenectady - 1892

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