George Westinghouse

George Westinghouse was born in 1846 in the village of Central Bridge, New York (see George Westinghouse Jr. Birthplace and Boyhood Home), the son of Emeline (Vedder) and George Westinghouse Sr., a farmer and machine shop owner. The Westinghouse ancestors came from Westphalia in Germany, moving first to England and eventually emigrating to the US. The family name had been anglicized from Wistinghausen.

From his youth, Westinghouse displayed a talent for machinery and business. He was encouraged by his father and was assigned tasks in the Westinghouse Company workshop. The company produced farm equipment such as the Westinghouse Farm Engine.

At the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, the then 14-year-old attempted to run away from home to enlist, but was stopped by his father. In June 1863 his parents allowed him to enlist, first in the 12th Regiment of the New York National Guard and then in the 16th Regiment of the New York Cavalry. He earned a promotion to the rank of corporal before being honorably discharged in November 1863. A month later he joined the Union Navy. He served as an Acting Third Assistant Engineer on the gunboat USS Muscoota and then on the ship USS Stars and Stripes through the end of the war. These ships were used to blockade Southern port cities. After his discharge in August 1865, Westinghouse returned to his family and enrolled at Union College in Schenectady, but he quickly lost interest and dropped out during his first term.

He further developed his skills in his father's company shop. Westinghouse was just 19 when he received his first patent for a rotary steam engine. At age 21, he invented a car replacer, a device used to guide derailed railroad cars back onto the tracks, and a reversible "frog", a rail junction piece used to switch trains between different tracks. In 1868, Westinghouse moved with his wife to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to access better and less expensive steel for the manufacture of his railroad frogs, and there he began to develop his recently invented railroad air brake concept.

Companies and geographical distribution

During his lifetime, the companies of George Westinghouse were widely distributed in the Pittsburgh region. Their locations, and the locations of several other major industrial enterprises, are numbered in the image and are itemized here:

Westinghouse Air Brake: 25th Street and Liberty Avenue

Westinghouse Air Brake: Allegheny City

Westinghouse Air Brake: Wilmerding

Union Switch & Signal and Westinghouse Electric: Garrison Alley

Union Switch and Signal: Swissvale

First Westinghouse home and gas wells: "Solitude"

Haymaker gas wells: Murrysville

Other gas wells: Murrysville

Fuel gas line: Murrysville to Pittsburgh

Edgar Thomson Works of Carnegie Steel: Braddock

Carnegie Steel Company: Homestead

Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing: East Pittsburgh

Westinghouse Machine Company

Westinghouse Foundries: Trafford

In 1867, Westinghouse met Marguerite Erskine Walker on a train, and they married in August of that year. They were married for 47 years, and had one son, George Westinghouse III, who in turn had six children.

From 1871, George and Marguerite Westinghouse maintained a large home in Pittsburgh called Solitude, building up from an existing house on land purchased by George in 1871. They were part of a social class of very rich local industrialists and money managers including neighbors and associates Henry Clay Frick, Henry J. Heinz, William Thaw, Andrew Mellon, and Richard Beatty Mellon, and the brothers Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Carnegie. Their guests included Nikola Tesla, Lord Kelvin, and congressman (and future president) William McKinley.

By 1893, they had constructed Erskine Park in Lenox, Massachusetts, which they used as a summer home, in part as a respite from the gritty industrial environment of Pittsburgh. It was named for the family of Marguerite's grandparents.

In 1898, the Westinghouses leased and then in 1901 purchased the Blaine House mansion in Washington D.C. Marguerite Westinghouse was reputed to host frequent and lavish entertainments there. In 1918, their former Pittsburgh home, Solitude, was razed and the land given to the City of Pittsburgh to establish Westinghouse Park. The house in Erskine Park was sold by the family in 1917 and subsequently demolished.

In 1894, the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization of Union Civil War veterans, held a week-long convention in Pittsburgh. George Westinghouse, being a veteran himself, hosted an evening of dinner and entertainment for more than 5,000 attendees at the newly constructed, but not yet active main buildings of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company in East Pittsburgh. He took on the expenses of the necessary building preparations and all the expenses of transporting people to and from the site by rail.

Pride in his achievements with the airbrake is reflected in the comment published in 1904: "If some day they say of me that with the airbrake I contributed something to civilization, something to the safety of human life, it will be sufficient."

George Westinghouse remained a captain of American industry until 1907 when the financial panic of 1907 led to his resignation from control of the Westinghouse Electric company. By 1911, he was no longer active in business, and his health was in decline. Westinghouse died on March 12, 1914, in New York City at age 67. He was initially interred in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, NY then removed on December 14, 1915. As a Civil War veteran, he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, along with his wife Marguerite, who survived him by three months. She had also been initially interred in Woodlawn but removed and reinterred at the same time as George.