Company
ReorganizedWestinghouse
Pittsburgh · Since 1886
The original corporation left the electrical business and became a broadcaster. A separate Westinghouse Electric Company still builds nuclear reactors.
George Westinghouse founded the Westinghouse Electric Company in 1886, after already inventing the railway air brake. The electrical firm backed alternating current against Edison's direct current, hired Nikola Tesla's patents, and won the contract to light the 1893 Chicago fair and then to harness Niagara Falls.
Alternating current won because it could travel. Westinghouse the company existed to sell that fact, and to employ the engineers and wiremen who made it true on a particular river.
A rival payroll
Pittsburgh built the generators and the motors. Field crews installed them. The war of the currents was also a war of employment: each system needed its own trained men, and the winner's men became the trade. Westinghouse's works were comparable to GE's and deliberately so. A duopoly is two training systems for the same occupation.
The name, divided
The original corporation drifted into broadcasting, bought CBS, and eventually left electrical manufacturing behind. Nuclear engineering continued under the Westinghouse Electric Company name, a separate firm that passed through Toshiba and is now owned by Brookfield and Cameco. The air-brake company is a different story again. George Westinghouse's 1886 firm does not exist as one employer. Two industries still use the name for different reasons.
The work it organized
- Generator builder
- Field engineer
- Wireman
- Patent attorney
On the timeline
Related
- General ElectricReorganized