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George Westinghouse
(6 Oct 1846 - 12 Mar 1914)
American engineer, inventor and industrialist.
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Science Quotes by George Westinghouse (4 quotes)
[Pavel Yablochkov’s electric lamp is] the starting point for the creation of a new branch of industry.
— George Westinghouse
In 'Opasnosti elektricheskogo osveshcheniia', Elektrichestvo 4 (1890): 68. 2. As quoted in Loren Graham, Lonely Ideas: Can Russia Compete? (2013), 176.
If someday they say of me that in my work I have contributed something to the welfare and happiness of my fellow man, I shall be satisfied.
— George Westinghouse
In Quentin R. Skrabec, Jr., George Westinghouse: Gentle Genius (2007), 237.
The alternating current will kill people, of course. So will gunpowder, and dynamite, and whisky, and lots of other things; but we have a system whereby the deadly electricity of the alternating current can do no harm unless a man is fool enough to swallow a whole dynamo.
— George Westinghouse
(1884). As quoted in Francis Ellington Leupp, George Westinghouse: His Life and Achievements (1918), 149.
They could have done it better with an axe.
— George Westinghouse
(1890) On the first use of the electric chair—the horrendously botched execution of William Kemmler, condemned murderer. As quoted in 'Warden Durston's Record: The Man Who Botched the Kemmler Execution', New York Times (18 Aug 1890), 5.
Quotes by others about George Westinghouse (1)
Just as certain as death, Westinghouse will kill a customer within six months after he puts in a [alternating current] system of any size.
Found in Jonathan R. T. Hughes, The Vital Few: American Economic Progress and Its Protagonists (1965), 194. The author did not use quotation marks, or footnote any source, but did skip to the next line and use indented lines, when he stated Edison’s stubborn (and rather malicious) opposition to alternating current for home service. [Webmaster, as yet, has not found any earlier use of these words attributed to Edison, and is therefore fairly skeptical, and doubts that this is a verbatim quote, because it seems to have no earlier provenance. But this book may have been used by others to repeat these words as a quote. For example, without citation, in Isaac Asimov, Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 71. Can you help identify a primary source?]
See also:
- 6 Oct - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Westinghouse's birth.
- George Westinghouse - First American AC power plant
- A Life of George Westinghouse, by Henry G. Prout. - book suggestion.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
