George Westinghouse Jr.

Hello there. My name is George Westinghouse Jr., and I’ve always loved figuring out how things work. I was born on October 6th, 1846, in a small town in New York. My father had a shop where he built machines for farms, and it was my favorite place to be. I would spend hours tinkering with spare parts, dreaming up new inventions. When I was a teenager, between 1863 and 1865, I served in the American Civil War. Being around all that powerful machinery made me realize how important it was for machines to be smart, strong, and safe. After the war, I knew what I wanted to do with my life: I wanted to invent things that would help people and change the world for the better.

One day, I saw a terrible train crash. The two trains couldn't stop in time because, back then, a person called a brakeman had to run from car to car, turning a wheel to apply the brakes on each one. It was slow and very dangerous. I thought, 'There has to be a better way.' An idea popped into my head: what if we used compressed air to power the brakes? That way, the train's engineer could apply the brakes on every single car at the exact same time, just by pulling a lever. I worked hard on my idea, and in 1869, I created the railway air brake. I started the Westinghouse Air Brake Company to build them, and soon, my invention was being used on trains all across the country. It made traveling by train so much safer for everyone.

My next big adventure was all about electricity. At the time, another famous inventor, Thomas Edison, was using a type of power called Direct Current, or DC. DC was great, but it couldn't travel very far from the power station. I became interested in a different kind of power called Alternating Current, or AC, after learning about it from a brilliant inventor named Nikola Tesla. AC could travel for hundreds of miles, which meant we could send electricity to faraway towns and cities. Mr. Edison thought AC was too dangerous and told everyone to stick with his DC power. This started a big disagreement that people called the 'War of the Currents.' I knew AC was the future, so in 1886, I founded the Westinghouse Electric Company to prove it.

My big chance to show the world the power of AC came in 1893. There was a huge fair in Chicago called the World's Columbian Exposition, and they needed someone to light it all up at night. It was a competition between my AC power and Mr. Edison's DC power. I'm proud to say, we won. My company used AC to power over 100,000 light bulbs all across the fairgrounds. It was like a magical city of light. A couple of years later, in 1895, we took on an even bigger challenge: building a power plant at the mighty Niagara Falls. We used the power of the falling water to create AC electricity and sent it to the city of Buffalo, over 20 miles away. We had proven that AC power was safe, strong, and the best way to light up the world.

Throughout my life, I was granted over 360 patents for my ideas. My companies grew and gave jobs to thousands of people. I lived to be 67 years old, passing away in 1914. I am so proud that my work helped make the world a safer and brighter place. The AC electrical system that Nikola Tesla and I developed is the very same system that powers your homes, schools, and cities today. Every time you flip a switch and a light turns on, you are seeing our ideas at work, connecting and powering the world.