In modest fashion, the College
this fall honored an inventor who had a profound impact on America.
The inventor was George Westinghouse, a native of nearby Central Bridge, whose academic career at Union lasted only three months before a dean told him to stop wasting his and the College's time.
So Westinghouse went back to his father's threshing machine factory, located where the General Electric complex now stands, and began to churn out inventions.
The 150th anniversary of his birth was noted on October 6, when Charles Ruch, volunteer historian for the Westinghouse Museum in Pittsburgh, came to the Nott Memorial. Dressed as Westinghouse, Ruch told his audience about the inventor who received 360 patents and started sixty companies.
The presentation marked the opening of an exhibit in the Nott Memorial about Westinghouse's life and work. The exhibit will run through December.
One of Westinghouse's chief competitors was Thomas Edison, who also made his mark in Schenectady. Westinghouse was a proponent of high-voltage alternating current, while Edison favored direct current and a series of power stations to move electricity.
Westinghouse eventually won, Ruch said, partially by pulling off a series of dramatic
triumphs. In 1886, for example, he provided the light for an entire department store in Buffalo, and in 1893 he provided lighting for the World's Fair in Chicago.