Who Knew That Old George Was So Cool
If you've ever lived in Pittsburgh, you've in all probability heard of George Westinghouse. Pittsburgh is residence to the George Westinghouse Bridge, Westinghouse Park and EcoLight - a memorial to George Westinghouse in Schenley Park. Even if you do not reside in Pittsburgh, maybe you've heard of Westinghouse, long-life LED the company that bears the man's name. The Westinghouse firm identify adorns products from TVs to light bulbs to nuclear power plants -- even a Brooklyn, EcoLight New York high school. The corporate also used to personal television and radio stations. George Westinghouse was an inventor and engineer who held more than 300 patents over the course of his life. He each created new applied sciences and refined current ones. He helped make Pittsburgh certainly one of America's industrial centers. Lots of the businesses that he based stay in operation right now, including the Westinghouse Air Brake Firm (at the moment working beneath the title Wabtec), and the nuclear power powerhouse Westinghouse Electric Company. The man even beat out Thomas Edison in the race to build the nation's electrical infrastructure.
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Keep studying to learn more about George Westinghouse by his high five innovations. Next time you doze off while riding in a automotive, thank George Westinghouse. In 1910, Westinghouse invented a compressed air shock absorber for cars. Before that point, riding in a car may very well be extraordinarily tough. Most early automotive suspensions used leaf or coil springs. Leaf springs are curved pieces of metallic; the car's physique sits at the top of the curve, which provides considerably because the car travels over rough surfaces, relieving the bumps. A coil spring is a coiled piece of metal that compresses over bumps. A compressed air spring or shock absorber uses pressurized air or other gasses -- not steel -- to absorb bumps. In the shock absorber, stress builds up. When the automotive hits a bump, the compressed gasoline within the shock absorber pushes back in opposition to the skin forces, keeping the ride easy.
Today, many luxury automobiles and off-road automobiles use compressed air suspensions that function on related principles to Westinghouse's initial thought. Low riders and cars which have adjustable suspensions use the expertise. Who knew that previous George was so cool? But the most effective part of this story is that the compressed air shock absorber came from his early work on railroad safety. Keep studying to find out more. That wasn't always the case. Whereas early railroads knew methods to get large, heavy locomotives going, stopping them was one other matter. That is the place George Westinghouse got here in. Westinghouse invented prepare airbrakes, and fashionable trains nonetheless use his primary design. Earlier than the introduction of airbrakes, locomotive brakes needed to be applied manually: Brakemen in every automotive would manually apply the brakes primarily based on signals given by the engineer. Nonetheless, the brakemen couldn't all the time hear the alerts; they sometimes applied the brakes incorrectly, leading to accidents.
Compressed air in a tank is launched via pipes on the underside of the prepare automobiles, and the compressed air applies the brake shoes to the train's wheels. Essentially the most revolutionary part of Westinghouse's design was that it was fail-protected: If the system felt a leak in the pipes, the brakes deployed automatically, stopping the practice earlier than its velocity grew to become an issue. Westinghouse's airbrakes are nonetheless used on trains right this moment. If you use pure fuel to heat your private home or cook, nevertheless, you could have a lot more to thank George for. After his improvements within the railroad business, Westinghouse settled in Philadelphia, where he had a pure fuel well drilled on his property. The effectively allowed Westinghouse to work on his next great invention: a valve that allowed for the protected distribution of natural gas to properties. There's an issue with utilizing pure fuel for fuel at house: The gas is extremely pressurized when it leaves the well -- it has to be in order to maneuver the gas by distribution pipes.