The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an American manufacturing company founded in 1886 by George Westinghouse and headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was originally named "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company" and was renamed "Westinghouse Electric Corporation" in 1945. Through the early and mid-20th century, Westinghouse Electric was a powerhouse in heavy industry, electrical production and distribution, consumer electronics, home appliances and a wide variety of other products. They were a major supplier of generators and steam turbines for most of their history, and were also a major player in the field of nuclear power, starting with the Westinghouse Atom Smasher in 1937. A series of downturns and management missteps in the 1970s and 1980s combined with large cash balances led the company to enter the financial services business. Their focus was on mortgages, which suffered significant losses in the late 1980s. In 1992 they announced a major restructuring and the liquidation of their credit operations. In 1995, in a major change of direction, the company acquired the CBS television network and renamed itself CBS Corporation. Most of its remaining industrial businesses were sold off at this time. CBS Corp was acquired by Viacom in 1999, a merger completed in April 2000. The CBS Corporation name was later reused for one of the two companies resulting from the split of Viacom in 2005. One of the few remaining original lines of business to survive this process was the nuclear power division, which was sold to BNFL in 1999 and re-formed as Westinghouse Electric Company. The Westinghouse trademarks are owned by Westinghouse Electric Corporation, and were previously part of Westinghouse Licensing Corporation.
History
Beginnings
Westinghouse Electric was founded by George Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on January 8, 1886. Building on the advancement of AC technology in Europe, the firm became active in developing alternating current (AC) electric infrastructure throughout the United States. The company's largest factories were located in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Lester, Pennsylvania and Hamilton, Ontario, where they made turbines, generators, motors, and switch gear for the generation, transmission, and use of electricity. In addition to George Westinghouse, early engineers working for the company included Frank Conrad, Benjamin Garver Lamme, Bertha Lamme (first woman mechanical engineer in the United States), Oliver B. Shallenberger, William Stanley, Nikola Tesla, Stephen Timoshenko, and Vladimir Zworykin. Early on, Westinghouse was a rival to Thomas Edison's electric company. In 1892, Edison was merged with Westinghouse's chief AC rival, the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, making an even bigger competitor, General Electric. During the 20th century, Westinghouse engineers and scientists were granted more than 28,000 U.S. patents, the third most of any company. Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company changed its name to Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1945.
1990s In 1990, Westinghouse experienced a serious setback when the corporation lost over one billion dollars due to bad high-risk, high-fee, high-interest loans made by its Westinghouse Credit Corporation lending arm. In an attempt to revitalize the corporation, the board of directors appointed outside management in the form of CEO Michael H. Jordan, who brought in numerous consultants to help re-engineer the company to realize the potential that they saw in the broadcasting industry. Westinghouse reduced the workforce in many of its traditional industrial operations and made further acquisitions in broadcasting to add to its already substantial Group W network, including Infinity Broadcasting, TNN, CMT, American Radio Systems, and rights to NFL broadcasting. These investments cost the company over fifteen billion dollars. To recoup its costs, Westinghouse sold many other operations, including its defense electronics division, its metering and load control division (which was sold to ABB), its residential security division, the office furniture company Knoll, and Thermo King. Westinghouse purchased CBS Inc. in 1994 for $5.4 billion. Westinghouse Electric Corporation changed its name to and became the original CBS Corporation in 1997. Also in 1997, the Power Generation Business Unit, headquartered in Orlando, Florida, was sold to Siemens of Germany. A year later, CBS sold all of its commercial nuclear power businesses to British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL). In connection with that sale, certain rights to use the Westinghouse trademarks were granted to the newly formed BNFL subsidiary, Westinghouse Electric Company. That company was sold to Toshiba in 2006.
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