Westinghouse Air Brake: How Trains Learned to Stop
Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
George Westinghouse was twenty-two years old when he patented the air brake in eighteen sixty-nine, and the invention transformed railroading overnight. Before the air brake, stopping a train meant brakemen on top of each car manually turning hand wheels, a slow and terrifying process that made high-speed rail travel nearly suicidal. Westinghouse's system used compressed air piped through the entire train, allowing a single engineer to brake every car simultaneously.
Longer trains, heavier loads, and faster speeds all became practical in a single stroke. The Westinghouse Air Brake Company operated in this building, and modified versions of Westinghouse's original design are still in use on freight and passenger trains worldwide today, more than a century and a half after a young Pittsburgh inventor figured out how to stop a machine that had no reliable way to stop.
