Westinghouse Electric (1886)

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Westinghouse Electric Corporation

Westinghouse logo (designed by Paul Rand)
Fate	Sold
Successor	Viacom, Inc. (after 1997 renaming to CBS Corporation)
Founded	as Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company (1886) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Defunct	1999
Location	Monroeville, PA
Industry	Electronics, etc.
Key people	George Westinghouse, Founder

The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an organization founded by George Westinghouse in 1886 as Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company. The company purchased CBS in 1995 and was renamed CBS Corporation in 1997.

George Westinghouse had previously founded the Westinghouse Air Brake Company. 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. The company pioneered long-distance power transmission and high-voltage transmission. In addition to George Westinghouse, engineers working for the company include William Stanley, Nikola Tesla and Oliver Schallenberger. It was historically the rival to General Electric.

[edit] Timeline of company evolution

• 1889 - renames itself the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company
• 1890s
  • 1891 - build world's first commercial AC system (Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant)
  • 1893 - supplies electric lights and power for Chicago World Fair
  • 1895 - installs hydropower AC generators at Niagara Falls which supplied power to Buffalo, NY
  • 1899 - founds British Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company
• 1900s
  • 1901 - acquires Bryant Electric Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, which continues operation as a subsidiary
  • 1909 - ousts George Westinghouse as chairman during bankruptcy reorganization
• 1910s
  • 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: Mosin-Nagant rifles for the Czar's army.
  • 1916 - share of British Westinghouse purchased by a British holding company, which becomes Metropolitan-Vickers
• 1920s - enters the broadcasting industry, with stations like KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• 1930s - enters the nuclear age with an industrial atom smasher.
  • 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

• 1940s - enters aviation with airborne radar (defense electronics sold 1996), jet engine propulsion, and ground based airport lighting.
  • 1945 - renames itself the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, and makes first automatic elevator.
• 1950s - enters consumer finance with Westinghouse Credit Corporation
• 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
• 1979 - sells off all Oil Refineries and closes other civic projects in Iran after the Iranian Revolution.
• 1980s - acquires cable television operator TelePrompter (sold 1985) and robot maker Unimation; sells street light division to Cooper Lighting, elevator/escalator division to Schindler Group, and lamp division to Philips.
  • 1988 - closes the East Pittsburgh plant, which had once been the primary Westinghouse manufacturing facility.
  • 1989 - sells watthour meter division at Raleigh, North Carolina to Asea Brown Boveri Group.
• 1990s
  • 1994 - sells electric power distribution and control business unit to Eaton Corporation for $1 billion
  • 1995 - 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.

[edit] See also

• Westinghouse Works, 1904
• Westinghouse Broadcasting, also known as Group W

[edit] External links

• Timeline of Westinghouse historical events
• "Who Killed Westinghouse?" - Contemporary Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article detailing Westinghouse's history and break-up