The Transformer Inventor - William Stanley

Historian Tom Blalock talks about the life of William Stanley Jr. who worked for both Westinghouse and General Electric. He is the inventor of the first practical transformer and helped make AC power possible. Tesla was not the final contributor to transformer technology, however Stanley was, and continued to develop higher and higher voltage transformers. Stanley left Pittsburgh, the home of Westinghouse Electric to live in the clean air of the Berkshires, there he formed a small manufacturing plant for his electrical transformers. He split with Westinghouse who threatened to ruin him, and joined forces with General Electric. Like Thomas Edison who fell out of grace with GE, eventually so did Stanley, and he went on to invent the metal thermos (the Stanley Cup). This is a partial story of the life of William Stanley Jr. one of the most influential engineers of alternating current technology.