Collaborate Disseminate
They say that ‘small is beautiful,’ and the Westinghouse Electric Company seems to have embraced this with the unveiling of its AP300 Small Nuclear Reactor (SMR), which combines Gen III+ reactor technology with a smaller, more economical size.Continue … Continue reading The Westinghouse AP300 small nuclear power plant fits on a soccer pitch
How do you rapidly record the output from your three million dollar analog computer in the 1940s when the results are only available on analog meters? The team responsible for the Westinghouse 1947 AC Network Calculator at Georgia Tech was …read more
Continue reading The Modding, Restoration, and Demise of a $3M Analog Computer
To get its engineers thinking about design for assembly back in the 1980s, Westinghouse made a video about a product optimized for assembly: the IBM Proprinter. The technology may be dated, but the film presents a great look at how …read more
Continue reading Retrotechtacular: Design for Assembly, 1980s-Style
These days, we have LED light bulbs that will last a decade. But it wasn’t so long ago that incandescent lamps were all we had, and they burned out after several months. Thomas Edison’s early light bulbs used bamboo filaments that burned out very quickly. An inventor and draftsman named …read more
Continue reading Lewis Latimer Drafted the Future of Electric Light
What kind of power service is in the United States? You probably answered 120-volt service. If you thought a little harder, you might remember that you have some 240-volt outlets and that some industrial service is three phase. There used to be DC service, but that was a long time ago. That’s about it, right? Turns out, no. There are a very few parts of the United States that have two-phase power. In addition, DC didn’t die as quickly as you might think. Why? It all boils down to history and technological inertia.
You probably have quite a few 120-volt …read more