westinghouse goes for broke --5/12/2026

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Today's selection-- from Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes. George Westinghouse, chief competitor to Thomas Edison, made a bold gamble for the 1893 World Fair:

“On Monday, May 16, George Westinghouse and Charles Terry arrived at the World's Fair's offices in the Rookery, a Burnham building on LaSalle Street, where almost two dozen men had assembled. Some were already nervously smoking cigars. Chief Burnham and the other members of the Committee on Grounds and Buildings were installed at a long table, where sat the sealed iron bid box. Sitting in other chairs were Captain Eugene Griffin, a second vice president for General Electric, and the firm's two local managers. Once Westinghouse and Terry were also seated, all waited expectantly as the bid box was unlocked and unsealed. Cigar smoke drifted about amid the low whispering. The final electrical joust was about to begin. Once again there were only two bids. General Electric's was read aloud first. Their new DC-only bid was $577,485, their new AC-only bid $480,694. As every man sitting in that Rookery office was well aware, these new General Electric bids were a shameless one-third the company's original $1,720,000 bid. There were various murmurings and men glancing at one another. Then, as the new Westinghouse bids were taken up to be read, silence descended, only the street noises filtering through. Westinghouse's bid for a combination of DC and AC was $499,559. The GE men squirmed and looked unhappy. Westinghouse was undercutting the trust. Westinghouse's AC offer for all ninety-two thousand lights was $399,000, $80,000 below the trust's best bid. Daniel H. Burnham, fair construction director and a forceful man of definite opinions, said promptly that the contract should go to Westinghouse. But the other committee members balked. One later memoir claimed that some were 'stockholders in the General Electric Company' still determined to see Coffin prevail. The committee retreated to a locked office. Hour after hour passed. The lights in the nearby buildings had gone dark. At 7:00 P.M., when the janitors began cleaning the halls and offices, the exhausted committee men agreed to reconvene the next morning. As they all left, Westinghouse said to a Daily Interocean reporter, 'There is not much money in the work at the figures I have made, but the advertisement will be a valuable one and I want it.'

“And so, Tuesday morning, as the lovely spring weather held, the joust resumed at the Rookery. Captain Griffin of GE sulkily insisted that George Westinghouse could not possibly carry out the contract, because, reported the Chicago Tribune, 'his patents...were involved in litigation. [GE] had injunction proceedings instituted against the use of the lamp which Mr. Westinghouse proposed to furnish.' Westinghouse laughed affably, responding, 'There wasn't the slightest question about his ability to furnish the lamps desired.' Another fair director complained in exasperation to the Daily Interocean, 'For many years the Edison Company contented itself with flooding the country with circulars trying to ridicule the Westinghouse system. One morning it suddenly awoke to find it had a competitor. Now it says that if the contract is given to Westinghouse an injunction will head him off.... One moment's thought will show how great a bluff is made.'

“However breezy Westinghouse might be, the issue of the Edison light bulb patent was deadly serious. The bitter legal war was in its final appeals, and every well-informed electrician, including Westinghouse, fully expected GE to win. What no one could know yet was whether GE would be judicially obliged to sell Edison bulbs to anyone but their own customers. Burnham agreed they should put off awarding the contract for a few days while they consulted the fair lawyers.

“In this Chicago battle of the War of the Electric Currents, Westinghouse was motivated not just by his longtime electrical dreams, but by his great dislike of GE's chief, Charles Coffin, an animosity that was completely mutual. One could easily imagine that Westinghouse would take great pleasure in denying Charles Coffin and GE the World's Fair contract, even at the lowball bids they were both now making. After all, if Coffin had been less grasping and gouging, the whole huge contract would have been his back in early April.

“On May 22, the committee once again summoned Westinghouse. by telegram, and once again he climbed aboard the Glen Eyre for the twelve-hour journey across Ohio and Indiana. Many friends urged him not to, undertake this vast· and perilous job, one where failure was a high and public probability. But sanguine as ever and wreathed in his electrical dreams, Westinghouse arrived at the Rookery the next afternoon. The lawyers had ruled in his favor, but now the committee was proposing to split the contract in two. George Westinghouse 'said he was the lowest bidder,' reported the Chicago Tribune, 'has first-class apparatus and should get the entire job.' He was not a man of half measures. When the truculent Captain Griffin again raised the light bulb patent issue, the committee asked if Westinghouse would ease their minds by providing a $1 million bond guaranteeing the contract. Certainly, Westinghouse said genially.

“Once more, the committee withdrew to wrangle. Hour after hour ticked by. Outside, the sky grew dark, and the noise of LaSalle Street down below subsided. Many cigars were smoked, and the room grew stale and stuffy. The electric lights came on in the Rookery. Finally, the committee agreed at 7:30 P.M. to vote. Quickly and unanimously, they bestowed their shimmering prize on George Westinghouse and his Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company. A sore loser, Captain Griffin responded angrily, immediately threatening that when the light bulb patent ruling went their way, Westinghouse would "be entirely in our power. He will not be able to make his own lamps and he can only buy from us. We will not injure the fair, but we will not let him continue his contract.

Westinghouse in 1884

“As for Westinghouse, he did not gloat but picked up his black umbrella and prepared to leave, telling the newsmen only, 'I shall put in ten or twelve dynamos of 12,000 lamp capacity and furnish a clean-cut, first-class system. I have about 100,000 lamps, either completed or partly so, at the works, and there will be no difficulty in furnishing material. I am required to have between 5,000 and 10,000 lamps installed by the 1st of October. This is an easy task. There will be no difficulty in furnishing the entire plant by the time of the opening of the Bxposltion.' An easy task, Westinghouse said with his signature insouciance. Electrical Engineer wondered if Westinghouse would really go through with this latest reckless endeavor. After all, he first needed to ante up another $500,000 for his $1 million bond. 'Mr. Westinghouse may not care to put up so large a bond, and the amount does seem rather heavy, but he is not the kind of man to stop short after having gone so far. Amen.' 

“The morning after George Westinghouse's return from Chicago, the 'Old Man,' as his workers called him, went straight to the company's machine shop and summoned E. S. McClelland, a top draftsman, to the front office. His employee of a dozen years appeared armed with a pad and pencil. McClelland, who had been amazed when his boss sailed off in the Glen Eyre for Chicago to seek this great electrical prize, now learned for the first time that his boss had–to everyone's astonishment–won the great contract. He also was learning what would be wanted for this gigantic Chicago World's Fair contract:

"Mr. Westinghouse: 'I want an engine.'

"Reply: 'Yes, sir.'

" '1,200 brake horse power.'

" 'Yes, sir,' with considerable trepidation.

" '200 revolutions per minute.' (Engines of that size usually run about 75 R. P. M.)

" 'Yes, sir,' with considerable consternation.

" '150 pounds per square inch boiler pressure, non condensing.'

" 'Yes, sir.'

" 'Splash lubrication.'

" 'Yes, sir.'

" 'Must go in such and such space.'

" 'Yes, sir.'

" 'I will be in again at 2:00 o'clock to see what you have.'

"'Exit Mr. Westinghouse,' said Mr. McClelland, 'leaving me in a daze. It is hard to describe the feeling of consternation that request caused. We were building 250 horse power engines [then].... A 1200 brake horse power engine to operate at 200 revolutions per minute seemed to me to be entirely out of all reason. Yet this was the task set before us. Mr. Westinghouse needed such an engine.' In fact, he needed many. The response of McClelland's boss in the drafting department was that Westinghouse was 'asking for the impossible and he just won't get it.' Yet all the draftsmen knew somehow they must produce some kind of an engine design by the afternoon, so they set to work. At 2:00 P.M., Westinghouse called to say he would not be by till the next morning. McClelland and another man stayed on in the drafting room till 2:00 A.M., striving to devise something they could show Westinghouse. The next day at dawn, very early, they all reassembled to look at this drawing, turning the drawing board .on its side for a better view. 'This setting of the board on end, strange as it may seem, gave us the solution to the problem.... As a vertical engine there was space to spare. When this solution flashed upon our minds the leading engine draftsman seemed to be electrified and became wildly enthusiastic.' Soon George Westinghouse strode in 'with his usual good-natured alertness and expectancy,' viewed the work with approval, and said, 'How soon may I have four of them?' So the work began on 'new and untried electrical machines and steam engines of a totally new design.'"

author:	Jill Jonnes
title:	Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World
publisher:	Random House Trade Paperbacks
pages:	253-257