From the recent star-studded movie “The Current War” about the founding of our industry, here’s an excerpt featuring the great inventor George Westinghouse, played by the actor Michael Shannon:
“Franklin Pope: George, [Thomas Edison’s] playing dirty. You can too.
George Westinghouse: Mm. You know, when I was a boy, my father tried to whip me with a branch. But after the first hit, it broke into three little pieces. And we just stood there, looking at this shattered stick on the ground. And then I noticed there was a leather strap hanging on the wall, so I pointed to it and said, ‘Look. That’s the better one.’ And he stopped. I can take a beating, but I have no patience for shoddy craftsmanship.”
Westinghouse, born on the sixth of October in 1846, was the main force driving our industry to alternating current. Though, Nikola Tesla’s brilliant ideas on AC generation, transmission and motors all but decided the war between Westinghouse’s system, based on AC, and Edison’s system, based on direct current.