George Westinghouse: His Life and Achievements (Classic Reprint)

George Westinghouse: His Life and Achievements (Classic Reprint)

Author: Francis E. Leupp

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2015-08-04

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9781331943655

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Excerpt from George Westinghouse: His Life and Achievements Although George Westinghouse was, in the broadest sense, a public servant, my own acquaintance with him was only social. As he left behind him no diaries, no files of personal correspondence, and scarcely any other sources of supply on which the biographer of a political or military celebrity depends for much interesting material, I have been obliged to rely, in the main, on the memories of the friends of Mr. Westinghouse, local tradition and gossip in neighborhoods where he had lived, the records of courts and minutes of public meetings, corporate reports and partnership account books, old volumes of newspapers and magazines, miscellaneous scrapbooks, and the like. One day, let us hope, we may have from the pen of some well-known expert in technology an adequate summary of what the whole world's industrial advancement owes to the work of the eminent inventor. The mission of the present volume is simply human. It will have been accomplished if it conveys to the young man of today a sense that his career will depend for success less on the splendor of its start than on the spirit in which he pursues it; far less on capital than on courage, on worry than on watchfulness, on "pull" than on persistence. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.


Empires of Light

Empires of Light

Author: Jill Jonnes

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2004-10-12

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 0375758844

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The gripping history of electricity and how the fateful collision of Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse left the world utterly transformed. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, three brilliant and visionary titans of America’s Gilded Age—Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse—battled bitterly as each vied to create a vast and powerful electrical empire. In Empires of Light, historian Jill Jonnes portrays this extraordinary trio and their riveting and ruthless world of cutting-edge science, invention, intrigue, money, death, and hard-eyed Wall Street millionaires. At the heart of the story are Thomas Alva Edison, the nation’s most famous and folksy inventor, creator of the incandescent light bulb and mastermind of the world’s first direct current electrical light networks; the Serbian wizard of invention Nikola Tesla, elegant, highly eccentric, a dreamer who revolutionized the generation and delivery of electricity; and the charismatic George Westinghouse, Pittsburgh inventor and tough corporate entrepreneur, an industrial idealist who in the era of gaslight imagined a world powered by cheap and plentiful electricity and worked heart and soul to create it. Edison struggled to introduce his radical new direct current (DC) technology into the hurly-burly of New York City as Tesla and Westinghouse challenged his dominance with their alternating current (AC), thus setting the stage for one of the eeriest feuds in American corporate history, the War of the Electric Currents. The battlegrounds: Wall Street, the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Niagara Falls, and, finally, the death chamber—Jonnes takes us on the tense walk down a prison hallway and into the sunlit room where William Kemmler, convicted ax murderer, became the first man to die in the electric chair.


A Life of George Westinghouse

A Life of George Westinghouse

Author: Henry G. Prout

Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13: 1596050691

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GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE the man may be overshadowed by his inventions, company, or legend. But in this biography by Henry G. Prout, Westinghouse's personal life and history are recounted along with his many inventions and enterprises -- and his inventions and enterprises were enormous. "He dealt in the same week, and often in the same day, with organization, financial and executive affairs, commercial affairs, and the engineering details of half a dozen companies in two hemispheres," Prout noted. "They were as far apart in kind as the air brake and natural gas, and as far apart in geography as San Francisco and St. Petersburg." This biography covers topics as diverse as power signaling and switching, Westinghouse's use of the alternating current, his activities at Niagara Falls, his European enterprises, his financial methods, and his overall impact on rail transportation and the power industry.


Executioner's Current

Executioner's Current

Author: Richard Moran

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2007-12-18

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 0307425800

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A "fascinating and provocative" story (The Washington Post) of high stakes competition between two titans that shows how the electric chair developed through an effort by one nineteenth-century electric company to discredit the other. In 1882, Thomas Edison ushered in the “age of electricity” when he illuminated Manhattan’s Pearl Street with his direct current (DC) system. Six years later, George Westinghouse lit up Buffalo with his less expensive alternating current (AC). The two men quickly became locked in a fierce rivalry, made all the more complicated by a novel new application for their product: the electric chair. When Edison set out to persuade the state of New York to use Westinghouse’s current to execute condemned criminals, Westinghouse fought back in court, attempting to stop the first electrocution and keep AC from becoming the “executioner’s current.” In this meticulously researched account of the ensuing legal battle and the horribly botched first execution, Moran raises disturbing questions not only about electrocution, but about about our society’s tendency to rely on new technologies to answer moral questions.


George Westinghouse

George Westinghouse

Author: William R. Huber

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2022-02-03

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1476644144

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While most know Thomas Edison for his invention of the light bulb, his counterpart, George Westinghouse, is too often overlooked. Westinghouse, however, became known as one of the most prolific inventors and businessmen of the Industrial Revolution. This biography reveals the man whose teachers suspected was mentally disabled and who quit college after one semester, yet founded more than 60 different companies employing 50,000 people, and received 361 U.S. patents. He later fought the "Battle of the Currents" (AC vs. DC) with Thomas Edison and won. Westinghouse, with his engineers, provided power and light for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. They harnessed the massive power of Niagara Falls and sent it over wires to light Buffalo and eventually the Northeast. His electric engines powered trains, and his air brakes stopped them. His scientific contributions forever changed the world.


George Westinghouse

George Westinghouse

Author: Quentin R. Skrabec

Publisher: Algora Publishing

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0875865089

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This is a biography of Westinghouse, genius inventor from railroad and gas distribution equipment to the corporate model of invention and research. He surpassed Edison in electricity pioneering and in managing workers too; but they both lost their companies in the panic of 1907. The bank always wins.


George Westinghouse

George Westinghouse

Author: Quentin R. Skrabec

Publisher: Algora Publishing

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0875865070

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This is a biography of Westinghouse, genius inventor from railroad and gas distribution equipment to the corporate model of invention and research. He surpassed Edison in electricity pioneering and in managing workers too; but they both lost their companies in the panic of 1907. The bank always wins.