Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, Vol. Xvii
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HIGHER EDUCATION: HANDBOOK OF THEORY AND RESEARCH, VOL. XVII 476 HIGHER EDUCATION: HANDBOOK OF THEORY AND RESEARCH, VOL. XVII 476 GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE: Gentle Genius Quentin R. Skrabec, Jr. Algora Publishing New York © 2007 by Algora Publishing. All Rights Reserved www.algora.com No portion of this book (beyond what is permitted by Sections 107 or 108 of the United States Copyright Act of 1976) may be reproduced by any process, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, without the express written permission of the publisher. ISBN-13: 978-0-87586-506-5 (trade paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-87586-507-2 (hard cover) ISBN-13: 978-0-87586-508-9 (ebook) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data — Skrabec, Quentin R. George Westinghouse : gentle genius / Quentin R. Skrabec, Jr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-87586-506-5 (trade paper : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-87586-507-2 (hard cover : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-87586-508-9 (ebook : alk. paper) 1. Westinghouse, George, 1846-1914. 2. Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company—History. 3. Inventors—United States—Biography. 4. Electric engineering—History. I. Title. T40.W4S57 2007 620.0092—dc22 [B] 2006025961 Front Cover: Printed in the United States To my grandfather, Louis Frank Skrabec, and Our Lady of Montserrat Acknowledgements Special thanks to the George Westinghouse Museum and Ed Reis for the use of the archives and conversations. Critical to my research were the excellent digital archives of the Heinz Museum of Western Pennsylvania. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1. THE PANIC OF 1907 7 CHAPTER 2. IN SEARCH OF CHARACTER 23 CHAPTER 3. RAILROAD INVENTOR 33 CHAPTER 4. PITTSBURGH INDUSTRIALIST 47 CHAPTER 5. VICTORIAN ENGINEER 61 CHAPTER 6. AMERICAN AND INTERNATIONAL INDUSTRIALIST 77 CHAPTER 7. A NEW INTEREST 89 CHAPTER 8. THE WAR OF THE CURRENTS 105 CHAPTER 9. WESTINGHOUSE AND THE TESLA SYSTEM 125 CHAPTER 10. WESTINGHOUSE GOES TO THE FAIR 135 CHAPTER 11. WILMERDING, AMERICA’S COMPANY TOWN 147 CHAPTER 12. NIAGARA’S WHITE COAL 161 CHAPTER 13. EAST PITTSBURGH 177 CHAPTER 14. DUOPOLY 189 CHAPTER 15. INDUSTRIAL DIPLOMAT 199 CHAPTER 16. THE OLD GENIUS AND HIS EMPLOYEES 213 CHAPTER 17. HIS LAST CHAPTER 227 EPILOGUE: CAPITALISM WITH A HEART —A FUTURISTIC VISION 237 BIBLIOGRAPHY 247 INDEX 251 INTRODUCTION I first heard the details of George Westinghouse’s amazing engineering career as a freshman in engineering at the University of Michigan. That may not seem too unusual, except I spent most of my early life going to school in the shadow of Westinghouse’s Union Switch and Signal plant in Swiss- vale, Pennsylvania (a borough of Pittsburgh) and a few miles from the site of the Westinghouse mansion in Homewood. I had crossed the Westinghouse Bridge in the family car often on the way to the then new Monroeville Mall, without a thought of who or what it was named after. In fact, while I knew many people who worked at Westinghouse Air Brake and Westinghouse Electric, I didn’t realize that “Switch and Signal” right down the street was a Westinghouse company. Pittsburgh was still a Carnegie town in the 1960s. The great mills, which still turned day to night with smoke and colored the night sky with a fiery aurora borealis, drew the youthful minds toward Carnegie. Stories of Carn- egie and working at his great mills were part of the local urban legends. The Carnegie name was everywhere, on plaques, signs, libraries, museums, awards, stamped on millions of books, and part of the local lore. Carnegie was Pittsburgh. Every child soon had to ask his parents what or who is Carn- egie? That question would trigger many stories. Of course, every child’s rite of passage included a first trip to the Carnegie Museum in Oakland and its great dinosaurs, one of them even named after Carnegie. The Carnegie name George Westinghouse: Gentle Genius was immediately associated with dinosaurs, millionaires, the steel plants that surrounded you, and libraries. Westinghouse was merely a company name or in those days an uninteresting household appliance. In the summer I visited the Carnegie museum and library almost weekly played in Frick Park, and gazed at many great bronze statues around Schenley Park and Oakland. I loved the history of Pittsburgh and knew all the local stops of George Washington and General Braddock. I went often to Philips Conservatory, the Allegheny Observatory, and all the local sites; I loved to ride the street- cars instead of the bus through the many old boroughs of Pittsburgh; went often with my grandfather to downtown Pittsburgh to hang out at old Fort Pitt; spent hours watching the many trains and the fiery mills operate. I had also spent many hours at the Buhl Planetarium, where as a youth I received an award from Werner Von Braun for building a small steam engine science project (my grandfather did most of the work). But I never visited the West- inghouse Memorial in Schenley Park, the site of the old Westinghouse man- sion in Homewood, or the town of Wilmerding, until three years ago. The Westinghouse Memorial is not easy to get to. Since 1930, by-passes have been added and traffic in the Schenley Park area has increased. I visited on a Friday when employees of Carnegie Mellon University took up the only parking available, but it was worth the effort. I had wanted to write about Westinghouse since college, but there were an unusual amount of warnings. Francis Leupp, Westinghouse’s first biographer, in 1918 warned that West- inghouse “left behind him no dairies, no files of personal correspondence, and scarcely any other sources of supply on which the biographer . depends.” His other biographer, Henry Prout, had the help of a committee in 1921, but still complained He left no written record except in the files of his numer- ous companies. He wrote almost no private letters. He kept no journals or even notebooks. He made but a few addresses and wrote few papers.” Even more recently, in 2003, Jill Jonnes, author of Empires of Light, warned again of the lack of biographical material. Recently, however, historical material from the period has been digitalized, particularly at Pittsburgh’s Heinz His- torical Center, Cornell University, and Rutgers, and that offered a means to penetrate deeper. There had also been a renaissance in the writings and life of Nikola Tesla, which opened new material on Westinghouse. I had crossed Westinghouse many times in these massive digital files as I was writing my earlier book, The Boys of Braddock. The Westinghouse Museum had been formed in Wilmerding, and had some of the old Westinghouse Electric ar- chives. Of course, the “war of the currents” had been well researched by a number of authors, which at least served as a base to build on. My own inter- est was to study the nature of the man, the social pioneer, the engineer, and the manager. There is no better place to start that quest than the Westing- house Memorial. The Westinghouse Memorial was dedicated on October 6, 1930. The me- morial was the result of voluntary donations of over sixty thousand employ- ees of the many companies he founded. It was meant to be a reflection of the 2 Introduction man they knew. Today it is a quiet spot surrounded by major roads for that section of Pittsburgh, but any visitor can feel the spirit of a great man. It is hard to believe it was once the site of the Pittsburgh Zoo. As you approach the Memorial, you first encounter a pond that forces you to look first from a distance of 20 yards or so. What appears is a youthful bronze statue look- ing a three wall panels. At first look, I must admit I didn’t get it. I assumed the boy was a youthful George Westinghouse, which it is not. It is a youth looking at Westinghouse’s accomplishments for inspiration, and that is the real point of the memorial. The youth looks on to three panels of granite and bronze. The dedication reads: George Westinghouse accomplished much of first importance to man- kind through his ingenuity, persistence, courage, integrity, and leadership. By the invention of the air brake and automatic signaling devices he led the world in the development of applications for the promotion of speed, safety, and economy of transportation. By his early vision of the value of the alternating current electric system he brought about a revolution in the transmission of electric power. His achievements were great, his energy and enthusiasm boundless, and his character beyond reproach; a shining mark for the encouragement of American youth. Certainly, no one could put such statements of character on any of Westinghouse’s contemporary industrialists. It would have been unlikely that Carnegie’s employees would have ever erected a memorial or make such a statement of greatness, yet Carnegie remains the Jupiter of the industrial gods. While Westinghouse may have a lesser place in the Pantheon of Pitts- burgh’s Industrialists, his place in the hearts of his employees was unequaled. This is the first message you take away from this Schenley Park memorial. It may explain why the real enduring memorial to Westinghouse in the Pitts- burgh area was the happiness of those who worked for his companies. This imprint that he left on his organizations had to be part of the story. The main wall had the famous picture of Westinghouse at his beloved drafting board, with an engineer and a worker on each side.