By that I mean history that is well documented and we have first hand descriptions and accounts. This DVD fits the plate to feed my hunger. George Westinghouse may not be the best known person when it comes to great inventors, yet he should be. If you ask the average person the simple question who was the father of electricity? Almost certainly the answer will be Thomas Edison. Edison is the name that is taught in our schools, and indeed Edison did make a great contribution. Although few of Edison’s ideas have lasted the test of time, he is never the less the man admired. If you dig a little deeper with people they may say the name Nikola Tesla. Tesla had great ideas, and he certainly is an enigma even today. Tesla was the consummate showman, his demonstrations of the Tesla Coil are legendary. But who really brought electricity to Americans? It would be foolish to not recognize the great contributions of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, but most serious historians will point to George Westinghouse as the real innovator. Interestingly enough George Westinghouse was not originally very interested in Electricity, his first inventions were aimed at the rapidly growing and increasingly dangerous Railroad business. In 1998 the fossil fuel power plant business of the Westinghouse Corporation was taken over by Siemens AG. Shop for the latest Westinghouse Fridges, Dishwashers and more. Discover bargains and the latest Westinghouse products online with The Good Guys. Westinghouse Women In Nuclear; History; Why. Nearly 500 people worked 43 hours and 25 minutes. Toshiba and Exelon Nuclear Partners to Collaborate on Nuclear Project in Saudi Arabia Westinghouse Electric Company. The Westinghouse Air Brake system revolutionized first passenger and then freight trains. With his first fortune made he next leaps into the quest to harness and transmit electricity. Westinghouse’s approach was completely different from Edison, while Edison was fixated on DC (direct current), Westinghouse preferred the radically different AC (alternating current). Using a combination of archival material and modern commentary we get to learn a great deal about this industrial powerhouse. I thought it was strangely fitting that the producers invited Emmy award winner Carol Lee Espy to do the narration.
Espy is a TV and radio host for KDKA in Pittsburgh. It was the first commercial radio station in the nation, and it should not come as a big surprise that it was owned by George Westinghouse. It did not seem to matter what problem it was, Westinghouse could find a solution. No better example of that is in the famous . He realized early on that AC offered great advantages over DC, it was easier to step up the voltage, and it could be transferred far longer distances with no loss of power. But, and it was a huge BUT, what can you do with it? Everything at the far end was geared to DC. Westinghouse’s solution? Invent new things, lots of them. From light bulbs to motors, from radios, to refrigerators. By the early 1. 95. American households that did not have something with the Westinghouse logo on it. In fact it was Westinghouse’s success that also signaled its demise. The company name still lives on, but it is no longer the sprawling empire that the quietly spoken and generous George Westinghouse had created. I can not recommend this DVD enough. Anyone that wants to really understand the social history of the post Civil War period should watch this. It would also be a wonderful tool for anyone who is involved with teaching this period of history. You can order your copy of Westinghouse by using the Amazon link above, or by contacting the distributor Janson Media directly. Simon Barrett. Let Others Know About This Post. These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. It appears from this PCB history that several companies also deliberately misled workers, customers, regulators and the public for many decades, allowing the PCB problem to spread and become much worse.(Courtesy of Fox River Watch). To see photos and learn what the Anniston plant makes now, visit http: //www. The company’s name changed to the Swann Chemical Company. Some complained of loss of energy, appetite and libido as well as other skin ailments. These symptoms are now known as classic first signs of PCB exposure. Monsanto produced PCBs at plants in Sauget, Illinois and Anniston, Alabama (until 1. PCB’s have been produced in other countries including Italy (Caffaro), France (Protolec), Japan (Kanegafuchi Chemical Co.), Germany (Bayer), and they may still be produced in Russia. One Monsanto engineer allegedly called it “as perfect as any industrial chemical can be.” . Public Health Service described a wife and child, both of whom had developed chloracne, a combination of blackheads and “pustules,” merely from contact with a worker’s clothes. The same official wrote, “In addition to these skin lesions, symptoms of systemic poisoning have occurred among workers inhaling these fumes.”. Public Health Service, state health officials from Massachusetts and Connecticut, and others. Before World War I, the Halowax Corporation, in New York City, began manufacturing chlorinated naphthelenes as a coating for electric wire, and companies like General Electric began using it. The president of Halowax, Sandford Brown, told the meeting that they had observed no problems in their workers until “the past 4 or 5 years. In 1. 93. 6 three workers at the Halowax Company died. Autopsies of two revealed severe liver damage. Halowax then hired Harvard University researcher, Cecil K. Drinker, to investigate. He exposes rats to these chlorinated compounds, to see if they could discover the underlying cause. The Harvard researchers made “a number of estimates of chlorinated hydrocarbons in the air of different factories,” then designed experiments to expose rats to similar levels. The rats also suffered from severe liver damage. Conference notes report that “the chlorinated diphenyl is certainly capable of doing harm in very low concentrations and is probably the most dangerous . Kaimer, assistant manager of General Electric’s Wireworks at York, Pa., said, “It is only 1 . Eight or ten of them were very severely afflicted—horrible specimens as far as their skin conditions was concerned. One man died and the diagnosis may have attributed his death to halowax vapors, but we are not sure of that. Vosburgh of Schenectady, N. Y., attended the meeting. He said, “About the time we were having so much trouble at our York factory some of our customers began complaining. We thought we were having a hysteria of halowax mania throughout the country.” Monsanto Chemical Company was represented at the meeting by R. Kelly told the meeting, “I can’t contribute anything to the laboratory studies, but there has been quite a little human experimentation in the last several years, especially at our plants where we have been manufacturing this chlorinated diphenyl.” He went on to describe the results of Monsanto’s human experiments: “A more or less extensive series of skin eruptions which we were never able to attribute as to cause, whether it was impurity in the benzene we were using or to the chlorinated diphenyl.”. Kaimer described the HUMAN reaction of GE executives to the disfigurement and pain of GE workers exposed to PCBs: “. The first reaction that several of our executives had was to throw it out—get it out of our plant. They didn’t want anything like that for treating wire. But that was easily said but not so easily done. We might just as well have thrown our business to the four winds and said, . Sanford Brown, the president of Halowax, concluded the meeting by stressing the “necessity of not creating mob hysteria on the part of workmen in the plants” where chemical- safety inspections were being made. Problems with PCBs and napthalenes, he predicted, “may continue, probably will continue for years.” . In further research for Monsanto, Drinker warned that adequate ventilation was necessary when handling the chemicals. Barnes of Westinghouse’s medical department wrote, in an internal company memo, that long- term exposure to PCB fumes “may produce internal bodily injury which may be disabling or could be fatal.”. Edward plant on the east shore of the Hudson River. Soon, GE began mixing PCBs with oil in their own formula they called Pyrosol. In 1. 95. 2 it began using PCBs in its plant in Hudson Falls. By 1. 97. 7, GE had dumped 5. PCBs in the Hudson River. Gaffey, studied the exposed workers, comparing their health against the health of a similar group of workers who were not exposed to dioxin or 2,4,5- T. Suskind published in the JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION: “This published study of the workers exposed in the 1. However, the medical records produced . Suskind published two other reports on the same accident, using his same data, to reach the conclusion that dioxin does not cause cancer. In fact, Westinghouse’s in- house knowledge about PCBs was so sophisticated that the company participated in federal and industry task forces and working committees on PCBs. Monsanto researchers and executives began writing confidential memos describing their fears about the chemicals’ toxic effects, but they drafted plans for continuing to sell them despite these suspicions. Along with other chemical manufacturers, the company publicly expressed skepticism about PCBs’ association with disease, but over the next decade the evidence became harder and harder to dismiss. According to the record of one lawsuit, new PCB oil can be contaminated with dibenzofurans at concentrations of up to 1. As the oil ages, according to documents from Monsanto’s files, the concentration becomes considerably higher. The city now has several contamination sites, including some Superfund sites due to PCBs. A Swedish researcher, Dr. Soren Jensen, was trying to study DDT levels in human blood when a mysterious group of chemical compounds kept recurring in his samples, interfering with his analyses. The chemical was so pervasive that his first task was to determine whether it was natural or synthetic. Tests had to be developed to distinguish PCBs from the pesticide DDT. A two- year investigation established that the mystery compound was chlorine- based and chemically similar to DDT. Jensen knew it wasn’t a pesticide, though, because he found it in wildlife specimens collected in 1. All of Sweden and its adjacent seas were contaminated, even hair samples taken from his wife and three children showed traces of the compound, with the highest levels in his nursing infant daughter. The mystery pollutant was everywhere he looked. Eventually, Jensen says, “I was convinced that what I had to deal with were chlorinated biphenyls, but I didn’t have the faintest idea where such compounds were used in the society.” Searching the literature, Jensen learned of PCBs’ industrial uses. A German chemical manufacturer provided Jensen with a sample, which he analyzed and found to match the “peaks,” or chemical readings, found in a massively contaminated white- tailed eagle. Jensen published his research which found PCBs in 2. Sweden, in other fish, and in an eagle. The report revealed the capacity of PCBs to “bioaccumulate along the food chain.” The chemicals, which take many years to biodegrade, pass easily through the lipid portions of cell membranes and are readily absorbed into mammalian fat tissue. Animals at the top of the food chain, like whales, polar bears, dolphins and humans, can store PCBs at highly concentrated levels. Neither did Riseborough’s findings take the company by surprise: a January 1. PCBs in shorebirds warns a Canadian colleague to “expect publication from California.” . Many showed immediate symptoms including severe chloracne, respiratory ailments, and failing vision. Two out of 1. 2 children were stillborn and nearly all of the babies showed signs of PCB diseases. Since then, more than 5. Subsequent studies published in leading medical journals showed that PCBs cause a statistically significant increase in lung cancer . It was from the “Yusho Incident” that scientists would soon document birth defects, low birth weights, and numerous other chronic effects from PCB exposure. Nine years after, there was a sixfold increase in liver- cancer deaths among affected men and threefold among women. Ultimately, researchers found liver cancers at 1. Despite international attention to the Yusho Incident, just two months later Monsanto’s corporate- development committee set a four- year goal of increasing by 2. Therminol heat- transfer fluid – essentially the same PCB product that poisoned the Japanese victims. In the United States, Therminol was used as a heating medium inside the coils of deep- fat fryers. They say, Westinghouse officials led them to believe PCBs were entirely safe. Jason Morrow, a former union local president at the plant, recalls employee meetings in which then- plant manager Donald M. Sauter “washed his hands and face in what he told workers was liquid PCBs to convince them not to worry.” A Westinghouse spokesman, Christopher C. Newton, confirmed for BUSINESS WEEK magazine that Sauter “dipped his hands” into PCBs at a meeting. Robert Riseborough of the University of California at Berkeley, who happened upon it in the course of his research on peregrine falcons. Monsanto launched its public- relations defense the next day by denying that the chemicals were PCBs. The source of marine- life residue identified as PCB is not yet known. It will take extensive research, on a worldwide basis, to confirm or deny the initial scientific conclusions.” . Evidence of contamination .
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