Westinghouse Electric Corporation

1885 – William Stanley, Jr., working for Westinghouse, develops the first practical AC transformer

1886 – Westinghouse Electric Company founded in East Pittsburgh

1886 – William Stanley, Jr. installs the world's first operational transformer based multiple voltage transmission system, a demonstration lighting system in Great Barrington, Massachusetts

1888 – development of an induction ampere-hour meter for alternating current developed by Oliver B. Shallenberger

1888 – licensing of Nikola Tesla's AC and Induction motor patents (Tesla was hired for one year as a consultant, but he quit after a few months)

1889 – renames itself the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company

1890s

1891 – built world's first industrial AC system (Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant)

1893 – supplied electric lights and power for World's Columbian Exposition and generators for Gettysburg Electric Railway

1893 – hired Bertha Lamme Feicht, the company's first female engineer

1894 – transportation Division (rail equipment) founded

1895 – installed hydropower AC generators at Adams Power Plant, Niagara Falls which supplied power to Buffalo, New York, completed 1896

1898 – purchases Walker Mfg. Co of Cleveland, establishing main facility and plant in Cleveland which produces power-transmitting machinery, cable railway networks, castings and lighting

1899 – founded British Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company

1900s to 1920s

1901 – acquires Bryant Electric Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, which continues operation as a subsidiary

1901 – operation of first Westinghouse steam turbine generator installed at Hartford Electric Light Co.

1904 – with Baldwin, markets Baldwin-Westinghouse electric locomotives and AC electrification of railroads, particularly to the New Haven Railroad

1909 – introduces continuous-filament tungsten light bulb; ousts George Westinghouse as chairman during bankruptcy reorganization

1914 – acquires Copeman Electric Stove Company in Flint, Michigan from Lloyd Groff Copeman, moves it to Mansfield, Ohio and enters the home appliance market (sold in 1974 to White Consolidated Industries)

1914 – George Westinghouse dies, with a legacy including 361 patents and the founding of 60 companies

1915 – New England Westinghouse Company opens for business, first product is Mosin–Nagant rifles for the Russian Czar's army; within two years, the Bolsheviks cancel a previous order of over 1 million rifles after overthrowing the Russian Provisional Government, and facing bankruptcy, Westinghouse is rescued by the American Government when it purchases the rifles for use by the military

1917 – share of British Westinghouse purchased by a British holding company, which becomes Metropolitan-Vickers

1917 – builds steam turbine manufacturing plant in Lester, PA (Tinicum Township) near the Philadelphia airport

1919 – 8XE Pittsburgh experimental station goes on the air

1919 – creates RCA with GE, AT&T and United Fruit, buys the American division of Marconi

1920 – acquires International Radio Telegraph Company (formerly known as the National Electric Signaling Company)

1921 – acquires the Pittsburg High Voltage Insulator Company

1920s – enters the broadcasting industry, with stations like KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and WBZ in Springfield, Massachusetts, later moving to Boston.

1926 – in partnership with GE and RCA founds NBC Broadcasting

1930s and 1940s

1932 – announces Ignitron mercury-arc rectifier

1934 – opens its Home of Tomorrow in Mansfield, Ohio, to demonstrate Westinghouse home appliances

1935 – completes longest continuous electric steel annealing furnace in the world at Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, Michigan

1930s – funds invention of the magnetohydrodynamic generator

1937 – builds first "industrial atom smasher", a 5 MeV Van de Graaff electrostatic nuclear accelerator

1940s – enters aviation with airborne radar (defense electronics sold 1996), jet engine propulsion, and ground-based airport lighting, gets defense contract from U.S. military to produce plastic helmet liners for the M1 Helmet

1941 – after years of resistance to the unionization efforts of its employees and to the National Labor Relations Act, signs a national labor agreement with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America after a United States Supreme Court decision that upheld the Act

1943 – purchased the lamp division of Kentucky-Radio Corporation (Ken-Rad) in Owensboro, Kentucky from Roy Burlew in exchange for 35,000 shares of Westinghouse stock valued at $1.6 million ($29.8 million todaywhen?)

1945 – renames itself the Westinghouse Electric Corporation and makes first automatic elevator

1945 – Westinghouse Aviation Gas Turbine Division (AGT) started

1948 – "You Can Be Sure... If It's Westinghouse" in Time magazine ad

1950s to 1970s

1951 – conducts first live network TV in U.S.

1952 – opens Cathode Ray Tube facility in Horseheads, New York; facility housed three divisions: Cathode Ray Tube, Electronic Tube, and Industrial and Government Tube

1954 – enters finance as Westinghouse Credit Corporation

1955 – buys KDKA-TV (then WDTV) in Pittsburgh and KYW-TV (then WNBK, now WKYC) and KYW Radio (originally, and currently WTAM) along with KYW-FM (then WTAM-FM, currently WMJI) in Cleveland; KYW is now licensed to a TV and AM radio station in Philadelphia

1955 – Westinghouse J40 engine failure causes all F3H fighters using the engine to be grounded, and all other jets using it switch to other engines; Westinghouse is forced out of aircraft engine business

1957 – introduces first successful "cobra head" roadway luminaire, the OV-25, integrating both ballast and optics in a more streamlined modern design

1961 – acquires Thermo King (sold in 1997 to Ingersoll Rand)

1964 – begins Skybus project; beginning of automated mass transit

1965 – invention of the first MEMS device, buys Marketeer Electronic Vehicles

1966 – founds Cinema Center Films

1966 – starts housing and real estate development divisions

1966 – buys a toy manufacturer

1967 – lights America's first computer-controlled outdoor electric sign

1967 – makes the lowest bid for the BART project

1969 – buys 7 Up bottling

1973 – develops world's first AMLCD displays

1974 – sells well-known home appliance division to White Consolidated Industries, which becomes White-Westinghouse

1979 – withdraws from all oil related projects in the Middle East after Iranian Revolution

1980s

1981 – acquires both cable television operator TelePrompter (sold 1985), Muzak (sold September 1986), and 50% of Showtime for $576 million

1982 – acquires robot maker Unimation

1982 – sells street light division to Cooper Lighting

1983 – sells electric lamp division to Philips

1984 – buys Unimation robotics for $105 million

1986 – buys Los Angeles TV station

1986 – enters into joint venture with Airship Industries, Ltd. (London) to develop advanced lighter-than-air radar platforms and early warning surveillance airship for U.S. Navy in cooperation with its subsidiary TCOM Corp. located on the former Naval Air Station Weeksville in Elizabeth City, North Carolina

1987 – buys radio stations in Sacramento and Chicago

1987 – buys electrical equipment, engineering and waste disposal divisions

1988 – sells elevator/escalator division to Schindler Group, now known as Schindler Elevator Corporation

1988 – enters into joint venture with Taiwan Electric to build electric motors; Taiwan Electric eventually becomes sole owner of business as TECO Motor Company

1988 – spins Industrial and Government Tube Division off as Imaging and Sensing Technologies Corporation

1988 – closes the East Pittsburgh generator and Lester, PA turbine plants, which had once been the primary Westinghouse manufacturing facilities

1988 – Bryant Electric subsidiary closed, assets sold to Hubbell in 1991

1988 – Transportation Division, including railroad (locomotive and mass transit) equipment business sold to AEG, later merged into Adtranz in 1996, Bombardier Transportation in 2001, and Alstom in 2021

1989 – sells transmission and distribution business (including their watthour meter business) to ASEA Brown Boveri Group (ABB)

1989 – buys Shaw-Walker Furniture and Reff Furniture

1989 – buys Legacy Broadcasting

1990s to 2020s

1990 – buys Knoll International Furniture

1994 – buys United Technologies' Norden electronic systems

1994 – Cleveland operations and facilities purchased by Eaton Corporation for $1.6 billion; Cleveland Westinghouse facilities, as well as manufacturing plants converted into other commercial enterprises

1994–95 – separates IT and phone service sales into Westinghouse Communications division

1995 – under the leadership of Michael H. Jordan buys CBS for $5.4 billion ($11.4 billion today)

1996 – buys Infinity Broadcasting for $4.7 billion

1996 – sells Westinghouse Electronic Systems defense business to Northrop Grumman for $3 billion ($6.2 billion today), becoming Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems

1997 – sells Thermo King division to Ingersoll Rand

1997 – buys American Radio Systems for $2.6 billion, increasing station network to 175

1997 – sells most non-broadcast operations; renames itself CBS Corporation as of December 1

1997 – sells its non-nuclear power generation and energy units to Siemens, which operated under the name Siemens Westinghouse until 2003

1998 – CBS Corporation creates Westinghouse Licensing Corporation subsidiary to manage the Westinghouse brand

1999 – sells remaining manufacturing asset, its nuclear energy business, to BNFL

1999 – buys Outdoor Systems for $8.7 billion and King World Productions for $2.5 billion

2000 – CBS acquired by Viacom

2005 – Viacom is split into two companies in January, with a new Viacom being spun off of the old Viacom company, and the old Viacom being renamed as CBS Corporation, thus reviving Westinghouse's last name prior to sale, and reversing the 2000 Viacom-CBS merger

2019 – Viacom and CBS Corporation remerge to form Paramount Global (known as ViacomCBS until 2022)

2021 – Westinghouse Electric Corporation acquires the Westinghouse trademarks from ViacomCBS

2025 – Paramount Global and majority owner National Amusements merged with Skydance Media to form Paramount Skydance Corporation

Aviation: Westinghouse produced the first operational American turbojet for the US Navy program in 1943. After many successes, the ill-fated J40 project, started soon after World War Two, was abandoned in 1955 and led to Westinghouse exiting the aircraft engine business with the closure of the Westinghouse Aviation Gas Turbine Division (Kansas City) in 1960.

Gas turbines: During the late 1940s, Westinghouse applied its aviation gas turbine technology and experience to develop its first industrial gas turbine. A 2,000–horsepower model W21 was installed in 1948 at the Mississippi River Fuel Corp gas compression station in Wilmar, Arkansas. This was the starting point for the company to enter in industrial and utility gas turbine business, prior to the sale by Westinghouse of the power generation business to Siemens AG in 1997. Evolving from the Small Steam and Gas Turbine Division formed in the early 1950s, the Westinghouse Combustion Turbine Systems Division was located in Concordville, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia and the old Lester, Pennsylvania plant, until it was relocated to Power Generation headquarters in Orlando, Florida in 1987.

Nuclear power: As a result of its participation in the US government's military program for nuclear energy applications (e.g., The Nuclear Navy) Westinghouse used that experience in the development and commercialization of nuclear energy systems for electric power generation. This business currently operates as the Westinghouse Electric Company and is owned by Brookfield Business Partners of Canada. Electricite de France (EDF) a major global player in the nuclear power business, was a long-time licensee of the Westinghouse nuclear technology.

Industrial motors: Additional major industrial products in the widespread Westinghouse portfolio included electric motors of all sizes, elevators and escalators, controls, and lighting. The Large Motor Division, once headquartered in Buffalo, NY, entered a joint venture with Taiwan Electric Co. (TECO) in the 1970s and today operates as TECO-Westinghouse. Much of Westinghouse's higher voltage power equipment was sold to ABB in 1989 and renamed the ABB Power T&D Company.

Rail transit: The Westinghouse Transportation Division (est. 1894) supplied equipment and controls for many North American interurban and streetcar lines, the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit, Washington Metro, New York City Subway equipment from the 1890s elevated era to the R68A in 1988, among many other heavy rail and rail transit systems and built locomotives, often in partnership with Baldwin, Lima-Hamilton as well as supplying electrical and traction equipment for Fairbanks-Morse diesel locomotives. The division designed and built Automated People Movers (APMs) at several major U.S. airports, including Sea-Tac. Tampa, Dallas-Ft. Worth and Orlando. The Transportation Division was sold to AEG of Germany (1988), which merged into a joint venture of ABB and Daimler-Benz named AdTranz in 1996. Ultimately, the unit was acquired by Bombardier of Canada in 2001 and is still headquartered in Pittsburgh.

Consumer electrics: Westinghouse was also among the initial manufacturers to make household electrical products including radios, televisions, and other audio/video equipment. This also included both small and large electric appliances of all kinds, from hair dryers and electric irons to clothes washers and dryers, refrigerators and air conditioning units. After more than 50 years, and after playing a strong No. 2 to rival General Electric for most of that time, Westinghouse decided to exit the appliance business in the mid-1970s. White-Westinghouse was formed when White Consolidated Industries acquired the Westinghouse appliance unit in 1975.

World's Fair time capsules: The company is also known for its time capsule contributions during the 1939 New York World's Fair and 1964 New York World's Fair. They also participated in the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. They sponsored the Westinghouse Auditorium at the fair, where they showed films documenting Westinghouse products and company plants. Westinghouse was one of the original corporate sponsors and exhibitors at Walt Disney World's EPCOT attraction in Orlando, Florida.

Overseas subsidiaries

Westinghouse established subsidiary companies in several countries including British Westinghouse and Società Italiana Westinghouse in Vado Ligure, Italy. British Westinghouse became a subsidiary of Metropolitan-Vickers in 1919 and the Italian Westinghouse factory was taken over by Tecnomasio in 1921.