Westinghouse Electric (1886)

This article is about the defunct Westinghouse Electric Corporation founded in 1886, renamed CBS Corporation in 1997, and purchased by Viacom in 1999. For the present-day industrial company, see Westinghouse Electric Company. For other uses of the term "Westinghouse" including modern incarnations and recent licensing deals, see Westinghouse (disambiguation).

CBS Corporation

Westinghouse logo (designed by Paul Rand)
Former type	Public
Fate	Dissolved
Successor(s)	Westinghouse Electric Company, Viacom
Founded	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. (January 8, 1886 (1886-01-08))
Founder(s)	George Westinghouse
Defunct	1999 (1999)
Headquarters	Monroeville, Pennsylvania, United States
Area served	worldwide
Subsidiaries	CBS Inc.

Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an American manufacturing company. It was founded in 1886 as Westinghouse Electric Company and later renamed Westinghouse Electric Corporation by George Westinghouse. The company purchased CBS in 1995 and became CBS Corporation in 1997. George Westinghouse had previously founded the Westinghouse Air Brake Company.

The company pioneered long-distance power transmission and high-voltage transmission. Westinghouse Electric received the rights for the first patent for alternating-current transmission from Nikola Tesla and unveiled the technology for lighting in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

In addition to George Westinghouse, engineers working for the company included William Stanley, Nikola Tesla, Oliver B. Shallenberger, Benjamin Garver Lamme and his sister Bertha Lamme. The company was historically the rival to General Electric which was founded by George Westinghouse's arch-rival, Thomas Edison (see War of the Currents).

The company is also known for its time capsule contributions during the 1939 New York World's Fair and 1964 New York World's Fair.

Westinghouse produced the first operational American turbojet, but fumbled on the disastrous J40 project. It not only severely hampered a generation of U.S. Navy jets when the project had to be abandoned, but led to leaving the aircraft engine business in the 1950s.

Timeline of company evolution

George Westinghouse

Pittsburgh Plant (before 1888)

1880s

Starting years

• 1886 – Founded Westinghouse Electric Company
• 1889 – renames itself the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company

1890s

Alternating currents promoter

• 1888 – introduces an induction ampere-hour meter for alternating current developed by Oliver B. Shallenberger)
• 1891 – built world's first commercial AC system (Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant)
• 1893 – supplied electric lights and power for World's Columbian Exposition and generators for Gettysburg Electric Railway
• 1895 – installed hydropower AC generators at Adams Power Plant, Niagara Falls which supplied power to Buffalo, New York (Completed 1896)
• 1899 – founded British Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company

1900s to 1920s

Growth and change

• 1901 – acquires Bryant Electric Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, which continues operation as a subsidiary
• 1909 – introduces continuous-filament tungsten light bulb; ousts George Westinghouse as chairman during bankruptcy reorganization
• 1914 – acquires Copeman Electric Stove Company in Flint, Michigan from Lloyd Groff Copeman, moves it to Mansfield, Ohio and enters the home appliance market (sold in 1974 to White Consolidated Industries)
• 1915 – New England Westinghouse Company opens for business. First product is Mosin-Nagant rifles for the Czar's army.
• 1916 – share of British Westinghouse purchased by a British holding company, which becomes Metropolitan-Vickers
• 1921 – acquires the Pittsburg High Voltage Insulator Company
• 1920s – enters the broadcasting industry, with stations like KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and WBZ in Massachusetts

1930s and 1940s

• 1932 – announces Ignitron mercury-arc rectifier
• 1934 – opens its Home of Tomorrow in Mansfield, Ohio, to demonstrate Westinghouse home appliances
• 1935 – completes longest continuous electric steel annealing furnace in the world at Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, Michigan
• 1930s – funds invention of the magnetohydrodynamic generator

Close up of Westinghouse logo on historic kitchen stove at John & Mable Ringling Museum, Sarasota

• 1937 – builds first "industrial atom smasher", a 5 MeV Van de Graaff electrostatic nuclear accelerator
• 1940s – enters aviation with airborne radar (defense electronics sold 1996), jet engine propulsion, and ground based airport lighting, gets defense contract from U.S. military to produce plastic helmet liners for the M1 Helmet
• 1941 – after years of resistance to the unionization efforts of its employees and to the National Labor Relations Act, signs a national labor agreement with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America after a United States Supreme Court decision that upheld the Act.
• 1943 – purchased the lamp division of Kentucky-Radio Corporation (Ken-Rad) in Owensboro Kentucky from Roy Burlew in exchange of 35,000 shares of Westinghouse stock valued at $1,600,000.
• 1945 – renames itself the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, and makes first automatic elevator.
• Westinghouse Aviation Gas Turbine Division (AGT) started in 1945

1950s to 1970s

Enters finance

Westinghouse Credit Corporation

• 1954 – leaves railroad (locomotive and mass transit) propulsion equipment business.
• 1955 – Westinghouse J40 engine failure causes all F3H fighters using the engine to be grounded, and all other jets using it to switch to other engines. Westinghouse forced out of aircraft engine business.
• 1960s – acquires ThermoKing, begins automated mass transit (sold 1988); adopts "You Can Be Sure If It's Westinghouse" as advertising slogan for home appliances
• 1970s – sells well-known home appliance division to White Consolidated Industries which becomes White-Westinghouse; develops world's first AMLCD displays.
• 1979 – withdraws from all oil related projects in the Middle East after Iranian Revolution

1980s

• 1981 – acquires cable television operator TelePrompter (sold 1985)
• 1982 – acquires robot maker Unimation
• 1982 – sells street light division to Cooper Lighting
• 1983 – sells electric lamp division to Philips
• 1988 – sells elevator/escalator division to Schindler Group
• 1988 – Enters into joint venture with Taiwan Electric to build Electric motors; Taiwan Electric eventually becomes sole owner of business as TECO Motor Company
• 1988 - spins Industrial and Government Tube Division off as Imaging and Sensing Technologies Corporation.
• 1988 – closes the East Pittsburgh plant, which had once been the primary Westinghouse manufacturing facility
• 1989 – sells transmission and distribution business to Asea Brown Boveri Group (ABB)

1990s to 2000s

• 1994 – sells electric power distribution and control business unit to Eaton Corporation for $1 billion
• 199x – separates IT and phone service sales into Westinghouse Communications division
• 1995 – under the leadership of Michael H. Jordan buys CBS for US$5.4 billion
• 1996 – buys Infinity Broadcasting
• 1996 – sells Westinghouse Electronic Systems defense business to Northrop Grumman for $3 billion, becoming Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems
• 1997 – sells most non-broadcast operations; renames itself CBS Corporation
• 1998 – sells remaining manufacturing asset, its nuclear energy business, to BNFL which sold it to Toshiba in 2006 which still operates it as Westinghouse Electric Company today
• 1998 – CBS Corporation creates a new subsidiary called Westinghouse Electric Corporation to manage the Westinghouse brand
• 1999 – sells itself to Viacom, Inc.
• 2005 – Viacom renamed itself CBS Corporation
• 2010 – The Westinghouse Electric Company opened new headquarters in Cranberry Township, Butler County, Pennsylvania where it preserves the industrial legacy of the original Westinghouse Electric Corp.

See also

• For other companies named Westinghouse, see Westinghouse (disambiguation).
• For the spinoff nuclear energy company see Westinghouse Electric Company.
• Westinghouse Works, 1904
• Westinghouse Broadcasting, also known as Group W
• Siemens Westinghouse, also known as Siemens Power Generation, Inc.
• List of Westinghouse locomotives
• The Westinghouse sign

External links

• Timeline of Westinghouse historical events
• "Who Killed Westinghouse?" – 1997 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article detailing Westinghouse's history and break-up
• The Westinghouse Legacy Pittsburgh Technology Council
• "What Happened to Westinghouse?". Pittsburgh Technology Council. March 1999. http://news.pghtech.org/teq/teqstory.cfm?id=229.  broken link
• "The Westinghouse Electric Company". Antique Light Sockets. http://antiquesockets.com/lighting-timetable.html#westinghouse. Retrieved 2010-07-10.