Aug 05 2008
My hero’s ready to Westinghouse someone. Is yours?
From Wired.com: “Thomas Edison, never shy about exploiting a situation to his advantage, especially if it could cripple a rival, therefore built the electric chair to operate on alternating current [the preferred system of his rivals]. By associating the Tesla-Westinghouse current with something as unpleasant as capital punishment, Edison hoped to turn public opinion his way. He even suggested replacing the new coinage, electrocution, with ‘to be Westinghoused.’ It never caught on.”
That invented use of “Westinghouse” is brilliant. Which words could you repurpose for your fiction?
