Westinghouse was a remarkable man. Born of Westphalian stock on October 6, 1846, in the village of Central Bridge, New York, he served in the Civil War and. after three months' subsequent technical education, returned to his father's engineering shop in Schenectady while still under nineteen. Two years later he married, and at twenty-three he took out his first patent for railway air brakes, the foundation of his fame and fortune.

New devices and developments tumbled out in an almost continuous cascade, but even more far-reaching was the inventor's quickness to appreciate the possibilities of alternating current transmission and the steam turbine. By 1886 he had developed the transformer of Gaulard and Gibbs to the point of commercial use, in 1893 he obtained a contract for the first hydroelectric plant at Niagara, including 5000-hp a.c. generators, in 1895 he put Tesla's induction motor on the market in both slipring and squirrel cage forms. In this year also he gave up his unqualified support of the gas engine and took out a licence to make Parsons steam turbines for power stations.

Side by side with this technical work, Westinghouse formed or acquired a score or so of companies to commercialize his various interests. Two of present concern were the Westinghouse Machine Company, which made prime movers, and the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, both of East Pittsburgh. Nor were his activities confined to America. Shortly after his first visit to England in 1871 a European Brake Company was formed, and in 1889 came the Westinghouse Electric Company Limited of London.

The last was the forerunner of a vast scheme of worldwide expansion, planned during the next few years and carried out over a somewhat longer period. It also paved the way for another Company, whose works and doings are the subject of this book.