biography
| name: |
Westinghouse, George
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1846–1914)
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| biography:
| Engineer, inventor, and manufacturer, born in Central Bridge, New York, USA. After serving in the Union forces during the Civil War, he turned his attention to the development of a railroad braking system, patenting an air brake (1869) that soon became widely used. He also combined his own inventions and patents he purchased to introduce electrically controlled signal and switching systems for the railroads. He also invented the gas meter and a system of conducting natural gas through pipes safely into homes, and was a pioneer in the development of means to transmit alternating current over distances to provide electric power for domestic and industrial use. He founded the Westinghouse Electric Co (1886) and, by the turn of the 20th-c, his enterprises employed more than 50 000 workers and were among the most powerful and successful in the USA. By 1907 he had lost some of his power and he retired in 1911, but he continued to experiment with various new devices. |
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