The Story of Pittsburgh 
ELECTRICAL 
APPLIANCES 
B 
HE name of George Westinghouse is known all 
over the world as one of the greatest inventors 
and captains of industry who ever lived. His 
fame was international long before he died, on March 12, 
1914. He was one of the citizens who did most to build 
up the industries of this great industrial, commercial and 
financial center. He became one of the most famous and 
honored men not only of Pittsburgh or of the United 
States, but of the whole world, because the things he accom- 
plished were of the greatest importance to mankind. He 
was justly called “the greatest living engineer” during 
the last few years of his life. 
George Westinghouse, even as a boy, displayed much 
inventive genius. His father was an inventor and the son 
spent much of his time in the elder Westinghouse’s machine 
shop. There is a report, and it very well can be believed, 
that he invented a rotary engine before he was 15 years 
of age. Certain it is that at the age of 24, he had not 
only invented, but secured the adoption by railroad 
companies of the airbrake which bears his name. This 
is the most important safety device ever invented for 
obviating danger of railway travel, and it is the chief 
agency which has transformed railways from their early 
condition to the present state of efficiency and safety. 
George Westinghouse built the first ten great dynamos 
at Niagara, the dynamos for electric railways of New York 
and London, and he also developed steam turbines and the 
alternating current system of electricity. He was always his 
own master, never working for wages, but he did not 
begin with money, for he inherited none, nor was any 
given him in any form. His brains were his capital and