In past essays I've spoken of Morse from Poughkeepsie, Henry from Albany, and now -- George Westinghouse from Schenectady -- although he moved later to Pittsburgh, near where (at Wilmerding, PA) there is today a Westinghouse Museum.
You'd be lucky to find the name in an encyclopedia. The Americana, the Brittanica, and the World Book -- no luck. I found him in -- of all places -- Webster's dictionary! Then, on another visit to the library, I noticed the 30-something volumes of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia -- entirely in English. There he was: 'George Westinghouse -- born in Central Bridge, NY; inventor and industrialist, known mainly for air-brakes on trains.'
"He's hopeless," said one of his professors at Union College in Schenectady. "He has neither talent nor interest ... half the time he is not even in class. And when he is, I find him amusing himself ... making pencil drawings or sketches of locomotives or some other mechanical contrivance on his wrist-bands..."
He wouldn't be the first over-achiever to have little interest in college. To be a Civil War veteran, who had already been an Acting Third Assistant in the Navy, and now (to please his father) a 19-yr old beginning student at Union College, simply didn't work for him. After just one semester he went back to his father's farm-equipment machine shop -- something he had done before going off as a 17 yr old to the War. Only this time he asked his dad for $2 a day, instead of $1.
But at 20, after watching a train crew struggling to get a derailed car back onto the tracks, he had an idea for a 'car replacer' -- a device using a pair of rails, cast out of steel, that would allow the crew to get it back onto the tracks more easily. Within a few months he had made a working model, and showed it to his father. "Stick to things you know something about," George Westinghouse, Sr, had said. But he had nevertheless lent him money to pay for a lawyer, and George Jr obtained his patent before turning 21 (in Feb 1867).
But a patent is one thing, and production is another. His father refused to lend him more money; for that, he had to go canvassing Schenectady businessmen. Most of them answered (effectively): "why doesn't your dad put up the money and make the car replacers at his plant?"
Not allowing himself to get discouraged, he did find 2 businessmen willing to back him (p.36,ref.2), and so began marketing his car replacers.
One day, our travelling salesman, still 20, was returning to Schenectady by train from NYC, and hadn't found a vacant seat until the last coach. That seat was beside an unusually pretty girl. As it happened, when a view of the Hudson river opened up north of Manhattan, she tried to open the heavy and sooty window -- which was George's chance of course, and he opened it for her, commenting on the scene of the river and the Palisades. After a while, she, Marguerite Walker, offered him a sandwich out of her lunch-box; she was going up to relatives in Kingston; and to make a long story short, they were married on Aug 8th, 1867, two months shy of his 21st birthday.They lived with his parents for a while, but then moved to Pittsburgh.
Still in his early 20's, he hit upon the idea of the brakes of a train being rapidly applied by means of compressed air -- instead of the slow mechanical winding of a chain connected to all the cars. Although the idea of using air was laughed at (p.228,ref.2.), he received his patent, followed by many associated patents, and his braking systems became adopted worldwide.
Westinghouse was very inventive, and in a biography I found 9 pages of closely-spaced inventions, 1 patent/line.
Not all of Westinghouse's companies were successful, but many (both at home and abroad) were; and to him, wealth was 'stored energy', to be re-invested both in further industry and doing good. He could have retired, but, in contrast to his youth, chose to spend his life in prodigious toil. Near the end he developed violent coughing spasms, and heart problems, and died at 70 (p.298,ref.3). Our Schenectady boy is buried in Arlington Cemetery, beside his wife, Marguerite, who, having suffered 2 or 3 strokes in later life, died just after him, in 1914. (p.304,ref.4)
References:
1. "The Great Soviet Encyclopedia"; (~30 vols in SUNY New Paltz library.)
2. "George Westinghouse", by H.G Garbedian, Dodd Mead, NY; 1946.
3. "George Westinghouse, his Life and Achievements" by F.E.Leupp; Little, Brown & Co, Boston; 1919.
4. "A Life of George Westinghouse", by H.G.Prout, Am.Soc.of Mech.Engineers [Scribner, NY]; 1921.
Dr. David Nightingale is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the State University of New York at New Paltz and is the co-author of the text, A Short Course in General Relativity.
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