Patent Receipt
- When
- 1869
- Where
- United States
George Westinghouse received a United States patent for his failsafe railway air brake in 1869, an invention on which modern train braking is based.
The patent covered a fail-safe air brake design that modern trains still rely upon. In his application, Westinghouse described a 'triple-valve device' comprising a diaphragm-operated poppet valve feeding reservoir air to the brake cylinder, a reservoir charging valve, and a brake cylinder release valve. The automatic brake controls the brake pipe and provides service and emergency braking for the entire train. The Westinghouse Air Brake Company was subsequently organized to manufacture and sell the invention.
Sources
- Railway air brake Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-04
- George Westinghouse Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-05
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.