Westinghouse became interested in transmitting electricity over long distances. He saw the potential benefits of providing electric power to individual homes and businesses, and in 1884 formed the Westinghouse Electric Company. Prior to the formation of the Electric Company in 1886, Westinghouse invented many devices associated with air brakes, railway switching, signal systems and natural gas, industrializing them for around 20 years.
In 1885 Westinghouse imported a set of Gaulard-Gibbs transformers and a Siemens AC generator and set up an alternating-current system in Pittsburgh. With the aid of three American electrical engineers, he altered and perfected the transformer and developed a constant voltage AC generator.
Initially, Westinghouse met with resistance from Thomas Edison and others who said that direct current was a safer alternative. Critics argued that alternating current electricity was dangerous and a hazard to health. This idea was emphasized in the public mind by New York state's adoption of alternating current electrocution for capital crimes.
But direct current could not be transmitted over distances longer than three miles. Westinghouse demonstrated the potential of alternating current by lighting the streets of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company got the order for the lighting equipment at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893. Westinghouse’s system generated alternating current and used a ‘stopper lamp’, evading the famous Edison’s bright lamp patents.
In the same year, the Electric Company secured the rights to develop and install the alternating current generating equipment at the Niagara Falls power station. Afterward, alternating current became the standard means of transmitting electricity.
After the great success achieved in 1893, the Electric Company developed their electrical systems, particularly turbo-generators, by acquiring licenses for the US patents of Person’s turbine in 1895, and began the electric train business.
The first major application of alternating current to railway systems was in the Manhattan Elevated railways in New York, and later in the New York subway system.
Electric power by Westinghouse
