George Westinghouse


Nikola Tesla should be one of the most famous and celebrated men of all time, an inventor whose discoveries opened the door to electrical power, the second industrial revolution and the birth of the modern age. Yet he was overshadowed even in his own time by men such as Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. Who was Tesla, why was he so important and why is he […]

Tesla’s Egg and the battle for electricity


Electrocute means, and only means, to put to death by means of a powerful electric current. It should not be used for a mere electric shock. This was a distinction I hadn’t full appreciated until reading Mind the Gaffe – something of a pedant’s handbook. Its first recorded use in English was on 7 June 1889 when New Jersey’s Trenton Times described how a prisoner had […]

Shocking vocabulary