Who Knew That Old George Was So Cool
If you have ever lived in Pittsburgh, you've got most likely heard of George Westinghouse. Pittsburgh is home to the George Westinghouse Bridge, Westinghouse Park and EcoLight - a memorial to George Westinghouse in Schenley Park. Even if you do not live in Pittsburgh, perhaps you've heard of Westinghouse, the company that bears the man's name. The Westinghouse company title adorns merchandise from TVs to mild bulbs to nuclear power plants -- even a Brooklyn, New York high school. The company also used to personal tv and radio stations. George Westinghouse was an inventor and engineer who held greater than 300 patents over the course of his life. He both created new applied sciences and refined existing ones. He helped make Pittsburgh one among America's industrial centers. Many of the businesses that he based remain in operation right now, EcoLight together with the Westinghouse Air Brake Company (currently operating below the title Wabtec), and the nuclear power powerhouse Westinghouse Electric Company. The man even beat out Thomas Edison within the race to construct the nation's electrical infrastructure.
Keep studying to learn more about George Westinghouse via his high five inventions. Subsequent time you doze off whereas riding in a automobile, thank George Westinghouse. In 1910, Westinghouse invented a compressed air shock absorber for cars. Earlier than that point, riding in a automotive might be extraordinarily tough. Most early automotive suspensions used leaf or coil springs. Leaf springs are curved items of metal; the automobile's physique sits at the top of the curve, EcoLight which provides somewhat because the automotive travels over tough surfaces, EcoLight relieving the bumps. A coil spring is a coiled piece of steel that compresses over bumps. A compressed air spring or shock absorber uses pressurized air or different gasses -- not metal -- to absorb bumps. In the shock absorber, stress builds up. When the car hits a bump, the compressed gas within the shock absorber pushes again in opposition to the surface forces, holding the trip easy.
Today, many luxurious cars and off-road autos use compressed air suspensions that function on comparable ideas to Westinghouse's preliminary thought. Low riders and cars which have adjustable suspensions use the know-how. Who knew that outdated George was so cool? But the best a part of this story is that the compressed air shock absorber came from his early work on railroad security. Keep studying to seek out out more. That wasn't all the time the case. While early railroads knew how one can get big, heavy locomotives going, stopping them was another matter. That is where George Westinghouse got here in. Westinghouse invented train airbrakes, and fashionable trains still use his primary design. Before the introduction of airbrakes, locomotive brakes needed to be applied manually: Brakemen in each car would manually apply the brakes primarily based on signals given by the engineer. Nevertheless, the brakemen could not all the time hear the signals; they sometimes applied the brakes incorrectly, leading to accidents.
Compressed air in a tank is launched by means of pipes on the underside of the prepare vehicles, and the compressed air applies the brake sneakers to the train's wheels. Essentially the most modern a part of Westinghouse's design was that it was fail-protected: If the system felt a leak within the pipes, the brakes deployed automatically, EcoLight stopping the practice earlier than its speed became a problem. Westinghouse's airbrakes are nonetheless used on trains immediately. If you employ natural gas to heat your own home or cook, nevertheless, you might have a lot more to thank George for. After his innovations in the railroad business, Westinghouse settled in Philadelphia, the place he had a natural gasoline well drilled on his property. The properly allowed Westinghouse to work on his next nice invention: a valve that allowed for the safe distribution of pure fuel to homes. There's a problem with using pure gas for EcoLight gas at dwelling: The gasoline is highly pressurized when it leaves the effectively -- it must be so as to move the gas by means of distribution pipes.
