Westinghouse's "Battle of the Currents" with Thomas Edison was legendary. Edison had built the world's first electric utility system, using direct current. Westinghouse saw that the low voltage required high current, which resulted in large transmission losses. What was needed was a much higher voltage for efficient transmission over large distances and a low voltage for safe use--a solution analogous to his natural-gas transport system.

But electric transformers operated only on alternating current, and even these were still small-scale and experimental. Westinghouse redesigned the transformer, and in 1886 he installed the first multiple-voltage ac power system. Within a year, 30 such ac lighting systems were installed. An ac electric meter was developed, but no existing electric motor could operate from an ac power supply until, in 1888, Nikola Tesla demonstrated the polyphase ac induction motor. Westinghouse's ac systems eventually triumphed over Edison's dc systems.

Westinghouse was widely regarded as the world's greatest living engineer in 1910 when he was elected to serve as President of ASME. A sidebar describes the Westinghouse memorial in Pittsburgh, the George Westinghouse Museum in Wilmerding, Pa., and a sesquicentennial exhibit at Union College, Schenectady, N.Y.

The above was adapted from an article by Frank Wicks, a professor of mechanical engineering at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. The full text can be found in the October 1996 issue of Mechanical Engineering magazine.©1996 ASME International. To obtain a copy of this issue, click here.

home | features | weekly news | marketplace | departments | about ME | back issues | ASME | site search

© 1996 by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers