as that of the air brake itself, securing as it does simultaneous action of all the brakes in a train with the added benefit that if the train separates, the brakes are set at once. These inventions alone entitle him to a high rank among the benefactors of humanity; and strange to say like other discoveries of large importance they were at first received by the railroad world with much skepticism, if not actual distrust. The brake was first thoroughly tested, in 1868, on an accommodation train of the Pittsburg, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railroad, running from Pittsburg to Steubenville, Ohio. The first patent was secured April 13, 1869, and the Westinghouse Air Brake Company was formed for its manufacture on June 20, 1869.
Mr. Westinghouse 's mastery of pneumatic devices led him to adapt compressed air to railway switches and signals; and out of this invention came the Union Switch and Signal Company, which has installed the switching and signaling plant in such complicated stations as the great South Terminal, at Boston, and the Union station at Pittsburg. Electricity came to take a place in this work for the automatic signals and it was through the acquaintance thus gained that he was led into the field of electric development, where his work has been even more pronounced than in the development of the brake.
In the face of great opposition he introduced alternating current machinery in America, through the purchase of the Gaulard and Gibbs patents, and controlling them he organized the Westinghouse Electric Company, now one of the greatest manufacturing concerns in the world. Through the Westinghouse alternating dynamo, water-powers have been rendered operative through long distance by electric transmission, and the great generators at Niagara Falls, and those for the elevated railroad and rapid transit system of New York and other cities, were made possible of construction and practical operation. The lighting of the Chicago World's Fair was another illustration of the use of the alternating current. To show what could be done in electric lighting with the alternating current, he organized the United Electric Light and Power Company of New York, the Allegheny County Light Company in Pittsburg, and another in Baltimore. After these had all been made successful, he withdrew from them, that he might be able to give more attention to other undertakings.
Besides the plants already mentioned, there are the great shops of the Westinghouse Machine Company at East Pittsburg, for building
