On a train to Paris in 1901, Maurice Coster, who headed operations in France for George Westinghouse, asked his boss a question.

"Mr. Westinghouse, can you go to sleep after such a busy day?" The prolific inventor replied, "I never think of the past. I go to sleep thinking only of what I am going to do tomorrow."

The engineer's tomorrows were packed with accomplishments, as evidenced in a two-hour documentary that premieres at 1 p.m. next Sunday at the Senator John Heinz History Center, as well as an exhibit slated to open there this fall.

A gifted inventor with excellent business acumen, Westinghouse took out 361 patents and founded 60 companies that employed more than 50,000 people. His successes included Westinghouse Electric, Westinghouse Air Brake, Union Switch & Signal plus the forerunners of Duquesne Light, Equitable Gas and Rockwell International.

Most notably, Westinghouse was a force behind the adoption of the alternating current that now electrifies the world. It was his greatest achievement, accomplished with fellow inventor, engineer and Croatian-born Serbian physics wizard Nikola Tesla. Their alternating current technology beat out Thomas Edison's push for direct current as the preferred form of electricity that would light the nation's homes and streets. It was jump-started by its successful use at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and, three years later, the harnessing of hydro power of Niagara Falls to electrify Buffalo, N.Y.

"Westinghouse and Tesla worked together to create the modern electric power system we use today," said Mark Bussler, director of the documentary.

Celebrating Westinghouse's achievements is a component of the history center's exhibition for Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary this year, which focuses on people whose innovations changed this city as well as the world.

To his employees, Westinghouse was "Uncle George" or "the old man," a benevolent boss who instituted such employee-friendly policies as half-day holidays on Saturday and disability pay. He regularly visited the floors of his factories, where he readily removed the coat of his formal, vested suit and solved a problem.

He was always solving problems, a trait evident when he was just a young man, insatiably curious about the physical world, although he did not like school. After two months attending nearby Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., he returned home in that town to his father's workshops, which produced agricultural machinery and steam engines.

In the late 1860s, he came to Pittsburgh seeking the city's high-quality cast steel, as well as financing and a manufacturer to produce two of his inventions, the car replacer and railway frog, both of which benefited the railroad industry.

His first great invention -- the air brake -- dramatically improved railroad safety for passengers and freight trains by using compressed air to stop a train instead of awkward, manual hand brakes.

"The air brake allowed the country to expand westward at a much faster rate, and also it saved the lives of countless brakemen," Mr. Bussler said, adding that, "They were able to make the trains longer, heavier and safer."

He founded the Westinghouse Air Brake Co. in the Strip District in 1869, later moving it to Wilmerding, a well-designed company town.

Revenue from air brake sales allowed Westinghouse to fund other companies and inventions. He perfected switching and signaling for rail cars, founding Union Switch & Signal in 1881.

The inventor died in 1914 in New York City, but his name became synonymous with dependable, well-designed household appliances. Countless Americans can recite the 1954 advertising slogan, "You can be sure if it's Westinghouse."

The inventor's only child, George Westinghouse III, died in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1963. He had six children, five of whom have died, according to George Westinghouse IV, a real estate investor who lives in Atlanta. The last of those six children is his Aunt Margaret, who lives in Klagenfurt, a town in southwestern Austria.

As the inventor's great-grandson, George Westinghouse IV is the family historian. "In my generation, there are 17 of us, and we're all first cousins," he said, adding that an aunt and an English grandmother were pack rats who left behind numerous photographs, scrapbooks, dinner menus and wedding invitations. He's contributing many mementos to the upcoming museum exhibit.

Unlike Edison, Westinghouse shunned the media and left behind few personal or business papers. There are only about a dozen known pictures of him in the public domain.

Jill Jonnes found the train ride story in a trove of 200 letters collected from Westinghouse employees and associates in 1935. Dr. Jonnes is the author of "Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse and the Race to Electrify the World."

"He really never cared about his own personal fame," she said.

"He was very private. There's not a whole lot of information about him out there. You really had to dig for it," Mr. Bussler said.

"We do not know of any film footage of George Westinghouse or a recording of his voice. We used a lot of industrial footage from 1904 of the Westinghouse factories of the air brake works. We had film reels from the 1939 and 1964 Worlds' Fairs as well as several film reels of the Westinghouse factories in East Pittsburgh and Wilmerding. We used a lot of footage from New York City at the turn of the century," he added.

The filmmaker also looked at objects and archives of the Westinghouse Museum, now housed at the Heinz History Center, where he worked with curator Ed Reis.

Unlike Andrew Carnegie, who worked his laborers seven days a week in 12-hour shifts, Westinghouse earned a deep and lasting affection from employees that remains alive today.

"He treated them with dignity and respect, and they loved him," Mr. Bussler said.

In fact, E.E. Keller, director of the Westinghouse exhibition at the Chicago World's Fair, said while remembering his boss during the 1930s that he would have marched through fire for him.

Dr. Jonnes maintains that the originality Westinghouse and Tesla showed in their thinking is evident in how little tweaking their inventions have needed.

"The air brake he invented for trains has never been terribly improved upon. The air brake company is still there," she said, and the same is true for the alternating current system of electricity.