Westinghouse Air Brake Company

"WABCO" redirects here. For other uses, see WABCO (disambiguation).

Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation
Company typePublic
NYSE: WAB
IndustryTransport
FoundedSeptember 1869 (1869-09)
FounderGeorge Westinghouse
Defunct1999; 25 years ago (1999)[1]
FateMerged with MotivePower to form Wabtec in 1999[1][2]
SuccessorWabtec
HeadquartersWestinghouse Building,
Wilmerding
,
U.S.
Area served
Worldwide
ProductsRailway air brakes
ParentAmerican Standard
(1968–99)[3]
Footnotes / references
[4]

The Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation (WABCO) was an American company founded on September 28, 1869 by George Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[5] Earlier in the year he had invented the railway air brake in New York state.

After having manufactured equipment in Pittsburgh for a number of years, he began to construct facilities and plants east of the city where homes for his employees were built. In 1889, the air brake manufacturing facility was moved to Wilmerding, Pennsylvania, and the company's general office building was built there in 1890.

In 1921 the company began manufacturing a modified air brake system for installation in trucks and heavy vehicles.[6]

In 1953 WABCO entered the heavy equipment marketplace, buying the assets of leading equipment designer R.G LeTourneau.[7] An entity known as "LeTourneau-Westinghouse" sold a range of innovative products, including scrapers, cranes and bulldozers until 1967, when it shortened its name to "Wabco". In 1968 American Standard purchased Wabco.[8]

WABCO's direct successor companies include WABCO Vehicle Control Systems, a commercial vehicle air brake manufacturer now owned by ZF Friedrichshafen; and Wabtec, a railway equipment manufacturer, which have been owned and operated independently of each other since the mid-twentieth century.

  1. ^ a b "MotivePower | Wabtec Corporation". wabtec.com. Archived from the original on October 9, 2019. Retrieved February 25, 2019.
  2. ^ Carlson, Brad (September 27, 2004). "Locomotive builder MotivePower to boost Boise workforce". Idaho Business Review. Retrieved April 22, 2017.  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference reut1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ "Westinghouse Air Brake". Fortune. Archived from the original on April 22, 2019. Retrieved January 29, 2019.
  5. ^ "Records of the Department of State". Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Pennsylvania State Archives. Retrieved August 6, 2013.
  6. ^ Westinghouse Air Brake Company. (1944). 75th anniversary of the Westinghouse air brake company, commemorating three-quarters of a century of pioneering, 1869-1944. Wilmerding, Pa.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  7. ^ "Classic machines: LeTourneau-Westinghouse C-500". November 28, 2014. Retrieved September 19, 2021.
  8. ^ EX-99.1 7 dex991.htm INFORMATION STATEMENT OF WABCO HOLDINGS INC. on sec.gov