George Westinghouse - Electricity and The "War of Currents"

Electricity and The "War of Currents"

In 1879 Edison invented an improved incandescent light bulb, and realized the need for an electrical distribution system to provide power for lighting. On September 4, 1882, Edison switched on the world's first electrical power distribution system, providing 110 volts direct current (DC) to 59 customers in lower Manhattan, around his Pearl Street laboratory.

Westinghouse's interests in gas distribution and telephone switching logically led him to become interested in electrical power distribution. He investigated Edison's scheme, but decided that it was too inefficient to be scaled up to a large size. Edison's power network was based on low-voltage DC, which meant large currents and serious power losses. Nikola Tesla was working on "alternating current (AC)" power distribution. An AC power system allowed voltages to be "stepped up" by a transformer for distribution, reducing power losses, and then "stepped down" by a transformer for consumer use.

A power transformer developed by Lucien Gaulard of France and John Dixon Gibbs of England was demonstrated in London in 1881, and attracted the interest of Westinghouse. Transformers were not new, but the Gaulard-Gibbs design was one of the first that could handle large amounts of power and was easily manufactured. In 1885 Westinghouse imported a number of Gaulard-Gibbs transformers and a Siemens AC generator to begin experimenting with AC networks in Pittsburgh.

Assisted by William Stanley, and Franklin Leonard Pope, Westinghouse worked to refine the transformer design and build a practical AC power network. In 1886 Westinghouse and Stanley installed the first multiple-voltage AC power system in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The network was driven by a hydropower generator that produced 500 volts AC. The voltage was stepped up to 3,000 volts for transmission, and then stepped back down to 100 volts to power electric lights. That same year, Westinghouse formed the "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company", which was renamed the "Westinghouse Electric Corporation" in 1889.

Thirty more AC lighting systems were installed within a year, but the scheme was limited by the lack of an effective metering system and an AC electric motor. In 1888, Westinghouse and his engineer Oliver B. Shallenberger developed a power meter, with a design that mimicked a gas meter. The same basic meter technology remains in use today. An AC motor was a more difficult task, but a design was already available as Nikola Tesla had already devised the principles of a polyphase electric motor. Tesla had conceived the rotating magnetic field principle in 1882 and used it to invent the first brushless AC motor or induction motor in 1883, but had been employed by Thomas Edison since 1884.

However, by 1886, Tesla and Edison had abruptly parted ways in what would become a well-publicized quarrel, at which point Westinghouse was able to contact Tesla and obtain patent rights to his AC motor. Westinghouse hired him as a consultant for a year and from 1888 onwards the wide scale introduction of the polyphase AC motor began. The work led to the modern US power-distribution scheme: three-phase AC at 60 Hz, chosen as a rate high enough to minimize light flickering, but low enough to reduce reactive losses, an arrangement also conceived by Tesla.

Westinghouse's promotion of AC power distribution led him into a bitter confrontation with Edison and his DC power system. The feud became known as the "War of Currents". Edison claimed that high voltage systems were inherently dangerous. Westinghouse replied that the risks could be managed and were outweighed by the benefits. Edison tried to have legislation enacted in several states to limit power transmission voltages to 800 volts, but failed.

The battle went to an absurd level when, in 1887, a board appointed by the state of New York consulted Edison on the best way to execute condemned prisoners. At first, Edison wanted nothing to do with the matter.

Westinghouse AC networks were clearly winning the battle of the currents, and the ultra-competitive Edison saw a last opportunity to defeat his rival. Edison hired an outside engineer named Harold P. Brown, who could pretend to be impartial, to perform public demonstrations in which animals were electrocuted by AC power. Edison then told the state board that AC was so deadly that it would kill instantly, making it the ideal method of execution. His prestige was so great that his recommendation was adopted.

Harold Brown then sold gear for performing electric executions to the state for $8,000. In August 1890, a convict named William Kemmler became the first person to be executed by electrocution. Westinghouse hired the best lawyer of the day to defend Kemmler and condemned electrocution as a form of "cruel and unusual punishment". Of the first 17 seconds that the current flowed, meant to kill the man, he survived. People were horrified and scrambled to turn the current back on, although no one is quite sure how long the second burst lasted. A reporter got a hold of Westinghouse in Pittsburgh and asked about the execution. "I do not care to talk about it. It has been a brutal affair. They could have done better with an axe." The electric chair became a common form of execution for decades, although it had been proven to be unsatisfactory for the task. However, Edison failed to coin the term "Westinghoused" for what happened to those sentenced to death.

Edison also failed to discredit AC power, whose advantages outweighed its hazards. Westinghouse was able to build pivotal projects using AC power such as the Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant in 1891 and the original Niagara Falls Adams Power Plant in 1895 which proved to be a success. Even General Electric, which absorbed Edison General Electric in 1892, decided to begin production of AC equipment.

In 1889, Westinghouse hired Benjamin G. Lamme (1864–1924) electrical engineer and inventor. Interested in mechanics and mathematics from childhood, Lamme graduated from Ohio State University with an engineering degree (1888). Soon after joining Westinghouse Corp, he became the company's chief designer of electrical machinery. His sister and fellow Ohio State graduate, Bertha Lamme (1869–1943), the nation's second woman electrical engineer, joined him in his pioneering work at Westinghouse until her marriage to fellow Westinghouse engineer, Russel Feicht. Among the electrical generating projects attributed to Bertha Lamme is the turbogenerator at Niagara Falls. The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railway adopted the Lamme's single-phase overhead electrification system in 1905. Benjamin Garver Lamme was Westinghouse's chief engineer from 1903 until his death.