Westinghouse Electric (1886)

The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an American manufacturing company. It was founded on January 8, 1886, as Westinghouse Electric Company and later renamed Westinghouse Electric Corporation by George Westinghouse. George Westinghouse had previously founded the Westinghouse Air Brake Company. The company purchased CBS in 1995 and became CBS Corporation in 1997.

In 1998, CBS established a brand licensing subsidiary Westinghouse Licensing Corporation (Westinghouse Electric Corporation). A year later, CBS sold all of its nuclear power businesses to British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL). Soon after, BNFL gained license rights on the Westinghouse trademarks and they used those to reorganize their acquired assets as Westinghouse Electric Company. That company was sold to Toshiba in 2007.

History

Westinghouse Electric was founded by George Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1886. The firm became active in developing electric infrastructure throughout the United States. The company's largest factories were located in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they made turbines, generators, motors, and switchgear for generation, transmission, and use of electricity. In addition to George Westinghouse, engineers working for the company included Frank Conrad, Benjamin Garver Lamme, Oliver B. Shallenberger, William Stanley, Nikola Tesla, Stephen Timoshenko and Vladimir Zworykin. The company was historically the rival to Thomas Edison's electric company which was later merged into the even bigger competitor, General Electric (see War of the Currents).

Westinghouse Licensing Corporation

Westinghouse Licensing Corporation (commonly known as Westinghouse Electric Corporation) is a Delaware General Corporation Law organized subsidiary that was founded in 1998 by Westinghouse-CBS (the renamed "original Westinghouse" and predecessor of the current CBS Corporation) in managing the intellectual property assets relating to the Westinghouse trademarks produced from 1886 until 1996.

Westinghouse Licensing has its headquarters in New York City inside the headquarters of its parent, CBS Corporation; its predecessor was located in the Pittsburgh suburb of Monroeville, Pennsylvania.

History

All traces of the Westinghouse name go back to the original company's roots starting in 1886 when George Westinghouse founded the company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

After the original Westinghouse acquired CBS Inc. in 1995 from Laurence Tisch, it was about ready to transform itself from an industrial company into a media giant. Starting in 1996, it did just that, selling off many of its non-media assets that came with them.