Westinghouse Builders Plate Info Needed

[curbdiggercarl57]

Westinghouse Builder's Plate Info Needed

Once again fleeing Denver, a buddy and I hit an old gold mining town trash/bottle dump that we’ve had decent luck at. Wasn’t the best hunt by far, but I did manage to dig this “Builder’s Plate”, with some of the iron still attached. The last patent date is Nov. 28th, 1893. I’m curious to the specifics of what exactly it was attached to. I know that 1893 was a big year for Westinghouse, supplying the electricity for the Chicago World’s Fair, and that’s about it. Any info would be appreciated.

 

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[Bigcypresshunter]

Re: Westinghouse Builder's Plate Info Needed

Lot of patent dates! Several from Stanley Tool. When I get a chance Ill search for them and I think we can figure it out what it is from.

 

[curbdiggercarl57]

Re: Westinghouse Builder's Plate Info Needed

This should help ...

Good luck ... http://www.google.com/patents

~ Nick ~

Thank you, that really helps.
Carl

 

[Bigcypresshunter]

Re: Westinghouse Builder's Plate Info Needed

I think its from an electric generator.

 

[72cheyenne]

Re: Westinghouse Builder's Plate Info Needed

Neat piece. Probably a tag from an electric motor. The first patent deals with and induction coil. http://www.google.com/patents?id=PUdOAAAAEBAJ&dq=342553+westinghouse

 

[Bigcypresshunter]

Re: Westinghouse Builder's Plate Info Needed

Another induction coil patent. It is not Stanley Tool. Its William Stanley.

 

[Bigcypresshunter]

Re: Westinghouse Builder's Plate Info Needed

Here is the Gaulard & Gibbs patent. IMO we are talking about a sophisticated little TOC Westinghouse electric power generating and distribution system with many protective patents and others pending. Probably large enough to light up the whole boom town! This diagram is cool. Notice the old leather drive belts. Cool find. Do you know the name of the town?

 

[72cheyenne]

Re: Westinghouse Builder's Plate Info Needed

Now go find one of these in that dump.

CD 286.9
WESTINGHOUSE
[010] (F-Skirt) WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC & M'F'G CO./PITTSBURG, PA. (R-Skirt) "TELLURIDE" TYPE C. SB

Aqua . . . . . . . . . . . . $7,500-10,000

or this one...

CD 309.5
WESTINGHOUSE
[010] (F-Skirt) WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC & M'F'G CO./PITTSBURG, PA. (R-Skirt) "TELLURIDE" TYPE B. SB

Aqua . . . . . . . . . . . . $10,000-15,000

BTW, your not hunting near Telluride are you, if so you have most likely found some equipment from the large Telluride Power plant.

This was snipped from the Wiki.
In 1891, Telluride's L.L. Nunn joined forces with Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse and built the Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant, the world's first commercial-grade alternating-current power plant, near Telluride. (Nunn's home can be found at the corner of Aspen and Columbia Streets, next door is the home he purchased for the "pinheads"[citation needed] to study hydro-electric engineering.) The hydro-powered electrical generation plant supplied power to the Gold King Mine 3.5 miles away. This was the first successful demonstration of long distance transmission of industrial grade alternating current power. The invention sparked the "War of Currents" between the Westinghouse Electric Corporation and the General Electric Company headed by Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan. At the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 AC current and DC current both had exhibits to appeal to the 25 million people attending the fair. Following the success of the Tesla-Westinghouse exhibit, the Westinghouse Company was awarded the contract to build the power plant at Niagara Falls. Nunn and his brother Paul built power plants in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Mexico, and the Ontario Power plant at Niagara Falls on the Canadian side. Nunn developed a keen interest in education as part of his electrical power companies, and in conjunction with Cornell University built the Telluride House at Cornell in 1909 to educate promising students in electrical engineering. Later, Nunn along with Charles Walcott, started the Telluride Association. Nunn founded Deep Springs College in 1917. All of Nunn's educational endeavors are going strong today. Each year the Telluride Tech Festival honors Nunn, Tesla, and Westinghouse, along with current day technology and science leaders.

this was clipped from this site... http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1656.htm

By 1888, the California Gold Rush was over and Telluride's miners had settled into the laborious work of tunnel-mining and milling low-grade ore. For power, they used small steam engines. First they burned the local wood. Then they used burros to cart in coal. Coal was costing an outrageous forty dollars per ton.

The "Gold King" Company was nearly bankrupt when someone pointed out what was going on in the East. Six years earlier, Edison had created the first public electric power system to provide direct current for his new electric lights. Soon after, George Westinghouse had followed suit with an alternating-current system.

The Gold King people wasted no time. In three years, they'd built a Westinghouse-style hydroelectric power system. A six-foot Pelton water-turbine, off in the mountains, drove two, one-hundred-horsepower dynamos. Three-thousand-volt power traveled two and a half miles in bare copper wire to an electric motor at the mine.

Hair raising stories are told about workers breaking six-foot electric arcs around the motor by waving their hats through them. They installed the system amid blizzards, avalanches, minus-forty-degree cold snaps, and huge water-flow variations -- all far from any technical support. They opened a school to train rough-hewn electrical engineers who could manage the system.

It took a scant twenty years for those two little dynamos to expand into the Telluride Power Company. By the early 1900s, it was supplying forty thousand horsepower to three states.

If you have the chance to ski at Telluride, or to ride the Durango-Silverton narrow-gauge railway to the top of the next mountain range, try shutting out the amenities -- the highways, elec-tricity, cold-weather gear, and hotels. Add death and disease to that. Who were these people who went into the Rockies to dig gold? It took people who lacked the most rudimentary caution to do that -- and to instantly absorb new technology at the same time.


And by all means, if you happen to find just broken specimens of the above insulators, they can still be worth big bucks. The ones pictured are one of a kind.......so far.

Copyrighted pics here.
http://swcenter.fortlewis.edu/images/P001/P00180517Page.htm
http://swcenter.fortlewis.edu/images/P001/P00180522Page.htm
http://swcenter.fortlewis.edu/images/P001/P00180523Page.htm

 

[Bigcypresshunter]

Re: Westinghouse Builder's Plate Info Needed

I searched all the patents and they are all electric related.

 

[chipveres]

Re: Westinghouse Builder's Plate Info Needed

I *think* you have the nameplate from an alternator, that is A.C. generator. Here is my reasoning: Capacity of 3000 watts makes it decent-sized electrical aparatus of some kind. The EMF is listed as 1080 volts. If it were a transformer, it would list both primary and secondary voltage. If it were a motor, its capacity would be listed in horsepower. So you *probably* have a generator. But I have been unable to confirm it, provide pix, etc.

Chip V.

 

[Bigcypresshunter]

Re: Westinghouse Builder's Plate Info Needed

I *think* you have the nameplate from an alternator, that is A.C. generator. Here is my reasoning: Capacity of 3000 watts makes it decent-sized electrical aparatus of some kind. The EMF is listed as 1080 volts. If it were a transformer, it would list both primary and secondary voltage. If it were a motor, its capacity would be listed in horsepower. So you *probably* have a generator. But I have been unable to confirm it, provide pix, etc.

Chip V.

You think? After hours of patent searching, I came to the same conclusion with the patent pictures to support it. Look at reply #8.

I think its from an electric generator.

 

[curbdiggercarl57]

Re: Westinghouse Builder's Plate Info Needed

I *think* you have the nameplate from an alternator, that is A.C. generator. Here is my reasoning: Capacity of 3000 watts makes it decent-sized electrical aparatus of some kind. The EMF is listed as 1080 volts. If it were a transformer, it would list both primary and secondary voltage. If it were a motor, its capacity would be listed in horsepower. So you *probably* have a generator. But I have been unable to confirm it, provide pix, etc.

Chip V.

Thanks, guys, you all have put an crazy amount of effort. The area we've been digging/detecting is above one of the nearby Denver mining towns, (hint, gambling is done there), and everything found seems to be late 1880's to early 1900's. Figured it came from some mining related item, used in the early 1900's. It seems most of the stuff was previously exposed by bottle diggers, and so far, no apparent act of screening finds on their part. The area is vast, and I mean vast, but obtaining permission from any owners is extremely difficult. Crazy old men will tell us it's okay to hunt a certain area, only to be told later that it's off limits. Dug one Denver token, an 1869 dime, highly underrated, and really needs to be researched hotel check claim, and many items of trivial interest. Getting out of Denver and the exercise is worth the gas alone. Thanks again, plan to do more patent searches.
Me

 

[Bigcypresshunter]

Re: Westinghouse Builder's Plate Info Needed

I *think* you have the nameplate from an alternator, that is A.C. generator. Here is my reasoning: Capacity of 3000 watts makes it decent-sized electrical aparatus of some kind. The EMF is listed as 1080 volts. If it were a transformer, it would list both primary and secondary voltage. If it were a motor, its capacity would be listed in horsepower. So you *probably* have a generator. But I have been unable to confirm it, provide pix, etc.

Chip V.

Thanks, guys, you all have put an crazy amount of effort. The area we've been digging/detecting is above one of the nearby Denver mining towns, (hint, gambling is done there), and everything found seems to be late 1880's to early 1900's. Figured it came from some mining related item, used in the early 1900's. It seems most of the stuff was previously exposed by bottle diggers, and so far, no apparent act of screening finds on their part. The area is vast, and I mean vast, but obtaining permission from any owners is extremely difficult. Crazy old men will tell us it's okay to hunt a certain area, only to be told later that it's off limits. Dug one Denver token, an 1869 dime, highly underrated, and really needs to be researched hotel check claim, and many items of trivial interest. Getting out of Denver and the exercise is worth the gas alone. Thanks again, plan to do more patent searches.
Me

your welcome. In case you missed it, I was up late and searched and found EVERY single one of your patents, like I said they are all electric related. I only posted the Stanley and the ones that would help most with the ID. One of the last patents was a lightning arrestor. Reply #8 Gaulard & Gibbs patent pretty much told me all I needed to know to make the generator ID. ...I dont know how in the world chipveres missed it.

 

[Tubecity]

Re: Westinghouse Builder's Plate Info Needed

Plus the Westinghouse plant was not located in Pittsburgh . It was in East Pitts. , located between Braddock
& Turtle Creek, Pa. , probably 10 or 12 miles from Pittsburgh. Sorry, just get tired of Pittsburgh itself getting
so much credit when very few companies were located there. Almost none of the big steel plants were located
in Pittsburgh city limits. It's nothing more than a city that made it's reputation on the backs of those living 15
to 20 miles away. Sorry to get off subject.

 

[Tubecity]

Re: Westinghouse Builder's Plate Info Needed

I've worked in the two oldest steel plants here in the Mon Valley. Many of these plants were making
steel before electricity & they used mules to do the lifting & pulling. I've seen many old Westinghouse
motors & while I'm not a motor inspector or as they call it today, an elec. technician, I often was
impressed with these old elec. motors. And all I've seen did have a horsepower rating on the plate.
So , I'm not sure what your plate was from. I pass that old Westinghouse plant everyday going to
work & it's probably less than a half mile from my companie's property. Good luck searching.

 

[Bigcypresshunter]

Re: Westinghouse Builder's Plate Info Needed

I've worked in the two oldest steel plants here in the Mon Valley. Many of these plants were making
steel before electricity & they used mules to do the lifting & pulling. I've seen many old Westinghouse
motors & while I'm not a motor inspector or as they call it today, an elec. technician, I often was
impressed with these old elec. motors. And all I've seen did have a horsepower rating on the plate.
So , I'm not sure what your plate was from. I pass that old Westinghouse plant everyday going to
work & it's probably less than a half mile from my companie's property. Good luck searching.

Most of the patents are for induction motors but taking them all into consideration, I would say it is a 3000 watt AC electric generator, and Chipverdes agrees with me too.The 1886 Gaulard & Gibbs patent shows it all. I think you could mark this one solved to stop the guessing.

Its been a long time since I lived in the Monongahela Valley. I have fond memories of my childhood. My Dad worked the Homestead plant, and his Dad... They made the steel for the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge. Those were the days when we made everything here in the US of A.

(spell check says I spelled electric wrong )

What is the power source? (M) Is that an old hit and miss engine? "POP whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh POP"

Divide 220Volt 100 watt Westinghouse light bulbs into 3000 watts = about 30 light bulbs. Probably enough to light up a whole little boom town, but most likely a mining operation. Cool find.