If Some Day They Say Of

George Westinghouse delivered this address in 1904, looking back on his invention of the automatic air brake in 1869, which transformed railroad safety in the United States and globally. Before the air brake, stopping a train required brakemen running across the roof of moving cars to manually apply each wheel's brake — a dangerous and unreliable process. Westinghouse's pneumatic system allowed the engineer to apply all brakes simultaneously, and it was adopted as a standard by American railroads within a few years, preventing thousands of deaths annually. The quote reflects his characteristic framing of engineering achievement as a form of public service.