Author: Henry G. ProutPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : fa
Pages : 436
Book Description
A Life of George Westinghouse
Author: Henry G. ProutGeorge Westinghouse
Author: William R. HuberPublisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476644144
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
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
Author: Quentin R. SkrabecPublisher: Algora Publishing
ISBN: 0875865070
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
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.
Empires of Light
Author: Jill JonnesPublisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0375758844
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466
Book Description
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.
Executioner's Current
Author: Richard MoranPublisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307425800
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
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.
The Westinghouse Air Brake Co
Author: The Last Days of Night
Author: Graham MoorePublisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812988914
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A world of invention and skulduggery, populated by the likes of Edison, Westinghouse, and Tesla.”—Erik Larson “A model of superior historical fiction . . . an exciting, sometimes astonishing story.”—The Washington Post From Graham Moore, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Imitation Game and New York Times bestselling author of The Sherlockian, comes a thrilling novel—based on actual events—about the nature of genius, the cost of ambition, and the battle to electrify America. New York, 1888. Gas lamps still flicker in the city streets, but the miracle of electric light is in its infancy. The person who controls the means to turn night into day will make history—and a vast fortune. A young untested lawyer named Paul Cravath, fresh out of Columbia Law School, takes a case that seems impossible to win. Paul’s client, George Westinghouse, has been sued by Thomas Edison over a billion-dollar question: Who invented the light bulb and holds the right to power the country? The case affords Paul entry to the heady world of high society—the glittering parties in Gramercy Park mansions, and the more insidious dealings done behind closed doors. The task facing him is beyond daunting. Edison is a wily, dangerous opponent with vast resources at his disposal—private spies, newspapers in his pocket, and the backing of J. P. Morgan himself. Yet this unknown lawyer shares with his famous adversary a compulsion to win at all costs. How will he do it? In obsessive pursuit of victory, Paul crosses paths with Nikola Tesla, an eccentric, brilliant inventor who may hold the key to defeating Edison, and with Agnes Huntington, a beautiful opera singer who proves to be a flawless performer on stage and off. As Paul takes greater and greater risks, he’ll find that everyone in his path is playing their own game, and no one is quite who they seem. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER “A satisfying romp . . . Takes place against a backdrop rich with period detail . . . Works wonderfully as an entertainment . . . As it charges forward, the novel leaves no dot unconnected.”—Noah Hawley, The New York Times Book Review
Wilmerding and the Westinghouse Air Brake Company
Author: Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738510781
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132
Book Description
An illustrated history of the city of Wilmerding in Allegheny County Pennsylvania and of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company located there.
The Electric War
Author: Mike WinchellPublisher: Henry Holt and Company (BYR)
ISBN: 1250120160
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 271
Book Description
The spellbinding true account of the scientific competition to light the world with electricity. In the mid-to-late-nineteenth century, a burgeoning science called electricity promised to shine new light on a rousing nation. Inventive and ambitious minds were hard at work. Soon that spark was fanned, and a fiery war was under way to be the first to light—and run—the world with electricity. Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor of direct current (DC), engaged in a brutal battle with Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, the inventors of alternating current (AC). There would be no ties in this race—only a winner and a loser. The prize: a nationwide monopoly in electric current. Brimming with action, suspense, and rich historical and biographical information about these brilliant inventors, here is the rousing account of one of the world’s defining scientific competitions. Christy Ottaviano Books
AC/DC
Author: Tom McNicholPublisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118047028
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187
Book Description
AC/DC tells the little-known story of how Thomas Edison wrongly bet in the fierce war between supporters of alternating current and direct current. The savagery of this electrical battle can hardly be imagined today. The showdown between AC and DC began as a rather straightforward conflict between technical standards, a battle of competing methods to deliver essentially the same product, electricity. But the skirmish soon metastasized into something bigger and darker. In the AC/DC battle, the worst aspects of human nature somehow got caught up in the wires; a silent, deadly flow of arrogance, vanity, and cruelty. Following the path of least resistance, the war of currents soon settled around that most primal of human emotions: fear. AC/DC serves as an object lesson in bad business strategy and poor decision making. Edison's inability to see his mistake was a key factor in his loss of control over the ?operating system? for his future inventions?not to mention the company he founded, General Electric.