Horses of Iron

Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature Science and Arts
by William Chambers and Robert Chambers
Nov.17, 1883

AN ELECTRIC TRAMWAY.

Electricity has for a considerable length of time been utilised in houses here and there for ringing bells and doing other little services; but advantage is now being taken of the new force for purposes of locomotion. By the invention of the dynamo machine, the energy of the electric current is transformed into mechanical action, which can be communicated by a very simple process to the driving axle of the machine to be actuated. Visitors to the Crystal Palace have seen the toy tramcar in the Palace grounds propelled by electricity, on which a curious public rides at sixpence per head per journey. Similar playthings have been in operation at the various electrical exhibitions on the continent; and at Leytonstone, Berlin, Charlottenburg, and elsewhere the principle has also been applied over short distances in a more practical fashion. But the electric tramway between Portrush and Bushmills in the north of Ireland is the first of its kind which has been constructed by a public company for the purposes of profit. It is, moreover, the longest electrical railway in the world.

The line starts from Portrush, the pretty watering-place whose terraces of stately houses cluster round the most north-westerly promontory on the rocky coast of Antrim. Though excessively dull, Portrush is truly regarded as the queen of Ulster marine resorts. Its visitors go there apparently not for amusement, but to lead an amphibious life for a month or two, and to amass a fund of superfluous health for the rainy winter. They may be seen from June to October quietly sunning themselves by the sea, and forming gay patches of life and colour on the brown rocks and yellow sands. The coast scenery is very fine, and the sea-views are magnificent. Faintly breaking the far water-line are the dim forms of Islay and Jura. Westward of the little town, projecting into the rolling Atlantic, are the wild headlands of Donegal; while in the opposite direction, the bold profile of the Giants' Causeway jags the eastern sky. The Causeway is distant from Portrush eight miles; and the high-road, for a considerable part of the distance, runs along the wall of chalk cliffs which here form a barrier to the waves, and the lower portions of which have been worn by the action of the sea into peaks, arches, basins, and other grotesque shapes. The road at certain points passes within a few feet of the edge of the cliffs; and here and there the view to landward is shut out by masses of grass-covered rock, which slope gently, sometimes abruptly, into the pasture-lands beyond.

Portrush-Bushmills_Tramway_1890.jpg

It is along this road that the tramway has been laid. The line occupies one side of the road; and from this slightly raised trampath all ordinary traffic is excluded by a granite curbstone. The gauge is only three feet, and to twice that extent the Company monopolise the highway. It is intended that the line shall eventually be carried as far as the Causeway; but at present it runs no farther than Bushmills, a thriving village, famed for whisky and salmon, six miles from Portrush. The steel rails are laid level with a gravelled surface. They were at first insulated in asphalt and copper-fastened to each other. A central station was erected at Portrush, and the electricity was generated from this point by a dynamo, worked by a stationary engine of about fifteen horse-power. The attempt to convey the electric current along the rails was found to give fair results for nearly two miles; but in wet weather the leakage of electricity into the ground was so enormous that the effort in this direction was abandoned. It then became necessary to insulate the current more completely. This was done by the erection, parallel with the line, of a third iron rail, raised on wooden posts about two feet from the ground, and insulated by means of caps of insulite, which is formed by driving paraffin oil into sawdust at great pressure. Where there are gates leading from the public road to the adjoining fields, the current is conducted across such openings by an insulated underground cable, so as to leave the occupiers of the land in undisturbed possession of their rights of way. If the hand or the foot is placed on this conducting rail, a slight but not unpleasant shock is felt. The tension of the electric current is regulated by self-acting governors attached to the apparatus which drives the generators, and is thereby prevented from being dangerous to life.

By means of the elevated rail, the difficulty previously experienced in transmitting the electric current equally over the whole six miles of the line was successfully overcome. The Company then resolved to dispense with the use of the stationary engine at Portrush, and to work the tramway by thunderbolts forged by water. The works necessary for this purpose have been erected at a part of the river Bush near Bushmills, known as the salmon-leap. The stream, after dashing over the rocks and boulders which at this point obstruct its peaceful course, tumbles through a deep, tree-shaded gorge, and passing the village, empties itself into the sea. The whole neighbourhood is beautifully wooded. Two miles farther east are the ghost-haunted peaks and pavements of the Giants' Causeway, from whose elevated ridge the ground slopes, in many a billow of autumn-tinted foliage, to the salmon-leap. By an artificial channel, springing from the bed of the river above the falls, the water is conveyed for some distance in a direction parallel with the stream, finally falling through two cylindrical 'shootings,' erected on the face of a cliff thirty feet high. At the base of these 'shootings' are two turbine-wheels, which produce a total of about ninety horse-power. The revolution of the turbines turns a massive upright shaft, which in turn communicates with a side-shaft connected with a fly-wheel attached to one of Siemens' dynamos in an adjacent building. From the dynamo, the electricity is conveyed by an underground cable to the terminus of the line at Bushmills, about three-quarters of a mile distant, and thence along the third rail to Portrush, supplying the moving cars at any point on their journey.

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The method of utilising the electric current is as simple as it is effective. Projecting from the side of the traincar are two flexible steel brushes, resting on the conducting rail; and the current is thus transmitted to a dynamo placed in an invisible compartment beneath the carriage. This dynamo, revolving in sympathy with the developing dynamo on the Bush river, turns the wheels by means of a chain-gear, and so causes locomotion. In this way, without any apparent motive-power, the electric carriage, with its fifteen or twenty passengers, glides gracefully over the line, with occasional flushes of light from the metallic brushes as they sweep along the elevated rail, and from under the wheels, as if the sparks are being crushed out as it rolls along. There is no more noise than is caused by the contact of the brushes with the rail; no smoke, no disagreeable fumes, nothing to mar the pleasure of driving in an open conveyance. The gradients on the road often reach one in forty, or one in thirty-five, and for a short distance, over one in thirty. In ascending these inclines, the speed is perceptibly lessened; but the cars come downhill with the same regularity of motion that marks their progress on the most level part of the track. This comparative steadiness of speed is obtained by reversing, when necessary, the direction of the electric current, and by the use of the ordinary mechanical breaks. If several cars be running along the line at different places, the whole force of the current rushes to the assistance of those which are going uphill, and consequently there is no waste of power at the points where it is not required. Although the cars can be driven at a rapid rate, the regulation pace is not more than twelve miles an hour.

That the first electrical tramway in the United Kingdom should have been started in a remote corner of Ireland, is due to the enterprise of Dr Anthony Traill, and his brother Mr W. A. Traill, who has acted as engineer of the line. These gentlemen have, in part at least, solved the problem of the transmission of force to a distance. So far, the financial results of their novel experiment are fairly satisfactory. During the seven months ending in August last, forty-seven thousand passengers were conveyed over the line, and there was also a considerable goods-traffic An average income of fifty pounds per week all the year round would, the projectors state, suffice to pay the working expenses and give a dividend of five per cent, on the capital expended; and since the tramway was opened in January last, the receipts have varied from twelve to one hundred pounds per week. One advantage of the new motor is, that it is not necessary to carry a heavy engine along the line, or to carry any fuel. A powerful dynamo on a car weighs one ton; and as the rolling-stock is light, the wear and tear of the line is much under that incurred on tramways less favourably situated. If the hopes of its promoters are realised, this latest development of the applied science of the nineteenth century will mark an era in the history of locomotion.

"...thunderbolts forged by water." Nice...
 
Journal of the Royal Society of Arts
April 22, 1887

Proceedings of the Society

Seventeenth Ordinary Meeting
Wednesday, April 20, 1887

The paper read was -

ELECTRIC LOCOMOTION

By A.Reckenzaun.


No less than seven papers bearing upon the subject of the transmission of power by means of electricity have been read and discussed in this room within the last six years, Mr. Alexander Siemens, in 1881, taking the lead with an interesting address on "Electric Railways and the Transmission of Power by Electricity." This gentleman again favoured us in April, 1883, with an account of the great progress made during an interval of two years by Messrs. Siemens on the Continent, and he was followed at the same meeting by Dr. Edward Hopkinson, who presented an equally interesting communication on “The Portrush Electrical Railway.” A few weeks later, Professor George Forbes enlightened us with his most instructive paper, entitled “Electricity as a Motive Power.”

The late Professor Fleeming Jenkin described, in 1884, an ingenious system of electric haulage called “Telpherage.” During the same session, I made an attempt to explain the principle of applying electricity to the propulsion of “Electric Launches;” and last year, on the 22nd of January, Captain Douglas Galton, in his excellent paper on the “Results of Experiments on Mechanical Motors for Tramways at the Antwerp Exhibition,” presented us with most valuable data concerning mechanical traction.

Yet, with all this vast amount of useful information before me, I have had little difficulty in selecting a point of view from which we may regard the subject to-night. The ground has been so well prepared on the various occasions enumerated, that there is now no necessity on my part to explain the principles involved in generating electricity, and transmitting or converting the same for the purposes of electric locomotion. I therefore beg leave to offer the following observations as an appendix to the aforementioned papers, and to bring forward fragmentary descriptions of details of construction, and also, where possible, of working expenses and the amount of traffic on several electric tramways in this country and on the continent of Europe.

Experiments with electric motors and their application to purposes of locomotion date as far back as 1834, when Professor Jacobi first investigated the principles involved. The history of these early attempts, as well as the work of subsequent inventors who helped to develop the ideas of Jacobi, Paccinotti, and others, up to the present day, would prove far more interesting than the present essay; but I trust that the facts and figures of this paper will in some measure compensate for omissions concerning historical data.

It has become the custom to distinguish between different systems of electric tramways, by the methods adopted in conveying the energy generated in the stationary dynamo to the electro-motor which moves along with the car, and we may divide these systems as follows :-

1. The system in which the ordinary rails serve as conductors of the electric current, the axles of the car being insulated from the wheel tyres, and circuit with the motor established through a contact brush, or roller, sliding along the rails.

2. The system of overhead conductors. In this a number of strong posts are placed alongside the line, carrying slotted tubes or rods of metal, upon which sliding or rolling contact-carriages are placed, and these communicate electrically with the car-motor by means of a flexible cable.

3. The system of the “third-rail conductor,” which is placed between the ordinary rails, or alongside the line, on insulators a short distance above ground.

4. The system of underground conductors enclosed in a channel, with a central slot for the free passage of the contact-carriage.

5. The system of well-insulated underground conductors, with no channel, temporary contact being made through short sections of surface contact-rails with the motor on the car during its passage over that particular section on which the car is moving at the time.

6. The system of applying secondary batteries within the car, carrying stored energy along with it, whereby the vehicle is rendered independent, so that it can run on any line of suitable gauge without alteration to the roadway.

7. The system of applying secondary batteries to a separate locomotive, which hauls an ordinary car or cars behind it.


Members of the Society of Arts, and readers of the technical journals, will recollect that on the 12th of May, 1881, an electric tramway between the Lichterfeld station of the Berlin-Anhalt Railway and the Central Military School, a distance of one and a half miles, was opened to the public. Not many weeks ago, I visited that district near Berlin in order to obtain some information concerning the working of the tramway, and I have the satisfaction of telling you that the electric cars, although in continuous operation for a period of six years, have exhibited no signs of deterioration, and there have been no mishaps worth mentioning. The rails, which serve as conductors, are laid along the high road principally, and a small portion of the line runs across fields. No special means of insulation were used, the rails being fixed in the ordinary way to wooden sleepers, laid transversely along one side of the road. Electrical contact between sections of rails is effected through flexible copper loops. With such short lines of comparatively little resistance, the electromotive force can be kept low, and, in the case of the Lichterfeld line, it amounts to only 90 or 100 volts, and is therefore not dangerous to the touch of man or beast. Several roads cross this line, and at such crossing places the rails are cut out of circuit by means of underground cables; contact boxes, with switches, are placed near the crossings, in order that the current may be sent through these insulated sections of rails if requisite. The house containing the steam-engines and generating dynamos is situated close to the rails, but at a distance of about one-third of a mile from the Lichterfeld terminus. There are two steam-engines, each of 6 horse-power nominal, and two Siemens dynamos; one is a horizontal engine, and this is generally in use when one car only is running; the other is a Dolgourouki high-speed rotary-engine, coupled direct to the dynamo, running at 700 revolutions per minute; this latter comes into requisition when the traffic demands the second car. According to the printed timetable, one car makes 24 journeys a day, between 7.47 a.m., and 11.21 p.m.

I have not been able to ascertain the working costs of this line, but it must be very low, since the engines and dynamos are in the house, which also contains the pumping machinery of the district waterworks; one engineer and one stoker attend to both the hydraulic and the electric apparatus, the same boiler serving both purposes, and these men find time to attend to minor repairs. On the car is a driver, but no conductor. Each vehicle carries 24 passengers; it weighs, when empty, but including motors and gearing, 3.2 tons. The average speed is 12 miles an hour, and one journey occupies nearly eight minutes, for which a passenger has to pay 20 pfennige; this is nearly 2 1/2d. About 100,000 passengers are carried annually. One remarkable fact in connection with this successful enterprise is, that the cars, although identical in every other respect, are fitted with different kinds of gearing, with a view of ascertaining practically the efficiency of each. Those who have devoted their attention to the subject of electric locomotion are well aware that the choice of the mechanical transmission between the fast running motors and the comparatively slow motion of car wheels is one of considerable difficulty. To the uninitiated it seems the easiest thing in the world to reduce, for instance, 800 revolutions of one shaft to 80 revolutions of another shaft; but when the arrangement has to be applied to a tram-car, where space is limited, noise objectionable, dirt and dust in abundance, then one obstacle after another seems to appear. This branch of our subject really deserves a separate and exhaustive treatment, if we had sufficient time at our disposal; but as I have chosen such a sweeping title, I shall have to confine my remarks on mechanical gearing within very narrow limits. With regard to the Lichterfeld cars, the one which ran some 13,000 miles per annum, or nearly 76,000 miles since the opening of the line, is fitted with a peculiar kind of transmission, little known in this country. The motor, in this case, is fixed underneath the floor, in the middle of the car, with the shaft of the armature parallel to the axles. The motor shaft carries a pulley of small diameter with 27 V-grooves cut upon its rim; one of the car axles has a large pulley with 13 grooves, and the other car axle carriesa similar pulley upon which 14 V-grooves are cut. The wheel-base is 5 feet 9 inches, consequently the centres of the pulleys are only 2 feet 10 1/2 inches apart. Within the grooves run 27 cords of spiral steel wires, so that one driving axle is worked by 13 and the other by 14 cords from one common pulley on the motor. The steel cords, a sample of which is on the table, are made of a pair of wires wound closely upon a mandril rather less than one-eighth of an inch in diameter; the mandril is afterwards withdrawn, so that a stiff and yet flexible spiral is left with an external diameter of barely 7/32 of an inch. The ends of each spiral cord have steel eyes screwed into them and soldered, and when placed in position these eyes are connected by a steel wire link. One curious fact about these spirals is, that they stretch very little, and experiments have shown that one single cord will suffice to draw the empty car on a clean level line, whilst 8 cords were used for a car full of passengers; therefore, with 27 there is a good margin of safety. As may be expected, this mechanical arrangement works without noise or vibration. Some experience is required in putting the cords upon the pulleys, for, I am told, if stretched too tightly, they are liable to break at the joints, and if too loose they will slip when starting; but with careful attention on the part of the engineer in charge, very few breakages occur. There are only moderate gradients on this line, the worst, of 1 in 100, is about 460 yards in length; the question, therefore, remains whether this kind of gearing would suit a more difficult line. The second spare car belonging to this tramway is fitted with pitch-chain gearing; as in the former case, the motor is placed centrally underneath the floor, with its shaft parallel to the car axle, but only one of the pair of axles is connected by means of the chain to the toothed wheel of the armature. There is some noise and vibration with this arrangement, more current is required, and slightly less speed is obtained with this vehicle than with the other; consequently, chain-gearing must be less efficient than steel cords, the motors and all other conditions being similar.

Another line on which the ordinary rails serve as conductors of the electric current is that of Mr. Magnus Volk, at Brighton. When opened by the Mayor of Brighton, on August 2nd, 1883, the line was only a quarter of a mile long, running from the Aquarium entrance to the Chain Pier; 30,000 passengers having used it during the first five months of its existence, Mr. Volk obtained permission to extend it as far as Kemp town, a distance of nearly a mile from the Aquarium. The rails are fastened to wooden sleepers which rest upon the shingle along the beach, and no special insulation is employed; the necessity of passing under the Chain Pier involved a gradient of 1 in 28 on the west side and 1 in 14 on the east side of the pier. Two cars connected together, and containing 60 passengers, mount these inclines without difficulty. Each car, when empty, weighs 1 1/4 tons, and with 30 passengers about 3 1/4 tons; the speed is limited to eight miles an hour. The motive power in this case is a 12 horse-power gas-engine placed at one end of the line, driving a Siemens compound-dynamo, which generates a current of about 20 ampéres at 160 volts when one car is running. As a rule, only one car is used, but on bank holidays and special occasions, when the traffic is great, the second car is put upon the line. The average distance made by each car last year, I am told, was 23,475 miles, and the expenses per car mile amounted to only 2d. This is remarkably low, considering that gas is used in the prime mover, costing 3s. 3d. per 1,000 cubic feet, and this item alone amounted to 1.11d. per mile; for wages .7 of a penny was expended; oil, waste, &c., .07 of a penny, and the repairs to machinery came to .12 of a penny per car mile. The number of passengers last year averaged 8.51 per car mile, and the total expenses amounted to 55 per cent. of the gross receipts. On the Brighton cars leather link belts are employed for transmitting the power of the motor to the driving axle; the armature shaft is provided with a 5-inch pulley; this gears into a 24-inch pulley, on a countershaft fixed under the car. Mr. Volk used plain leather straps at first, but found them unsatisfactory, whilst the linkbelts proved quite practical, after an experience reaching over a period of nearly three years. A sample of a worn-out belt of this description has been sent to me by Mr. Volk. The belts slip a little at starting, but this is not considered a disadvantage, since it eases the motor; the bearings of the countershaft are adjustable by means of a slide, so that any slack caused by stretching of belts may be readily taken up. No protection is provided for the gearing, there being no mud to contend with, but I fear that this arrangement would hardly be suitable for the ordinary street cars. Judging by the large traffic which the Brighton line enjoys, one would think that it is highly popular; it is so with the public, but a section of the Town Council is opposed to the enterprise. The line was severely damaged by storms, in September, 1883, December, 1884, and October, 1886, involving a large outlay for repairs, to the anything but “permanent way." That it is a success in every way, excepting the storms from within the Town Council, and storms from across the sea, may also be gathered from the fact that a million passengers have already been carried, without injury or mishap to one of them.

Coming now to lines worked by means of overhead conductors, on the plan of Messrs. Siemens and Halske, the most carefully constructed, if not the most important, is that of Moedling, near Vienna. This is the property of the Austrian Southern Railway; the rails wind through a lovely country district for a distance of 2.8 miles, and terminate in that beautiful spot with the ugly name -Hinterbruehl.

I am indebted to Mr. C. Jenny, Engineer of the Southern Railway, and to Dr. Dolinar, electrician of the Moedling tramway, for their extreme courtesy in conducting me over the line and stations, and for allowing me to inspect every detail concerning the working of the same. Like most of the existing electric tramways, this has a large traffic during the summer months, but a comparatively small one in winter. The number of passengers carried during the year 1886 was 342,257, of these 320,000 came between the 1st of April and the 31st of October, whilst in the five remaining months only 22,257 persons availed themselves of this mode of transit. The month of August, with 72,600 travellers, stands highest in the list, and January, with 2,557 passengers, stands lowest of all. The revenue of seven months of the milder seasons is fifteen times as great as the revenue of the remaining five months, but the working expenses were not at all proportional, barely as five to one, and with all that the average cost did not amount to 3 1/2d. per car mile, inclusive of every item of expenditure, the sum of which came to £1,700 for the year ending December 31st, 1886. The number of car miles was 91,002, with a consumption of 545 tons of coal, at 7s. 6d. the ton. This was a very inferior “brown coal,” with an evaporative power of barely one-half that obtained with anthracite. The cost of fuel, therefore, came to .54 of a penny per mile, representing a consumption of 13.4 lbs. per car mile. With coal of the best quality, 7 lbs. per mile would suffice, but the price of this, in Vienna, is more than double that of “brown coal.”

The generating station is situated at the Moedling terminus; it contains three portable engines of 12 h.p. (nominal) each, and six Siemens compound dynamos, each capable of producing 500 volts and 50 amperes. When two loaded cars are running, i.e., one electric car, to which an ordinary car is attached, the indicated power of one engine varies between 12 and 20 h.p., according to the position of the vehicles relatively to the line during the outward journey. From the plan on the wall, it will be observed that the track is not an easy one; it consists almost entirely of curves, with radii of from 60 feet and upwards. Moreover, the terminus of Hinterbruehl lies 120 feet higher than that of Moedling; thus the line consists of a series of gradients, so that for the outward journey a considerable amount of tractive power is necessary, whilst on the return journey the cars run almost entirely by the force of gravity, and the driver touches the switch only when starting and at the sharpest curves. During the winter months one electric car suffices, and then one engine and one dynamo are used, attended by an engine driver and a stoker. In summer, when three engines, six dynamos, and six double cars are running, three stokers are required. The maximum number of journeys, each of 2.8 miles, last summer was 180 a day, with six electric and six ordinary cars coupled in pairs, and the minimum number of journeys in winter with one car was 24 per day; the time allowed for one journey is 20 minutes. There are four stopping-places along the line, and the average speed allowed is 9 1/2 miles an hour. The conductors - the metal ones, not the animate being on the car - are carried on posts 18 feet high and 90 feet apart, except on sharp curves, where they stand at a distance of 45 feet from each other. These conductors are made of slotted tubes, in lengths of 15 feet each, and soldered together when placed in position. To prevent them from sagging, stout wires are stretched over brackets on the tops of the posts, and fastened to the tubes half way between the posts. The bore has to be made perfectly smooth and clean, so that neither mechanical nor electrical resistance is offered to the contact carriage sliding within. The diagram shows the arrangements on an enlarged scale; the actual diameters of the tube are 1 inch internally and 1 5/8 inches externally. The contact carriage consists of a flexible piece of flat steel, upon which three gun-metal pistons are fastened. These pistons, which have to be renewed every two months, are made in two halves, with springs in the middle, whereby a slight pressure is produced between the surfaces in contact. The resistance of the conductors is 2 ohms, and the insulation in damp weather never falls below 6,000 ohms. Measurements gave a difference of potential of 500 volts at the dynamo, and 390 volts at the furthest end of the line when three electric cars were running, and this would correspond to a current of about 18 ampéres per car. All the electric cars on this tramway are fitted with spur gearing; but I will reserve any remarks on this mode of transmission until I am describing another line worked on the same principle. The Moedling-Hinterbruehl Tramway has been working successfully since 1884, at an average cost of 3.42d. per car mile, inclusive of every item of expense.

The second line, almost identical with the last one, as far as electrical details are concerned, is that of Frankfort-on-Main, in Germany. It leads from the “Roemerbruecke,” in Frankfort, through the villages of Sachsenhausen, Oberrad, and through the town of Offenbach; its total length is 4.1 miles; it has a double track laid with ordinary tram rails, thus differing in this respect from the Moedling line, which has a single track with three passing places, and ordinary railway rails of a light construction. Single cars, as well as trains composed of one electric and one ordinary car, run between Frankfort and Offenbach every twenty minutes, from six in the morning until eleven o’clock at night. The entire rolling stock consists of fourteen vehicles, ten of which are fitted with electric motors. All are constructed to carry twenty-four passengers; but the weight of the electric cars is four tons, empty, and that of the others about two and a half tons. The engine-house is situated at Oberrad, nearly half way between the termini. It contains two horizontal steam-engines of 120 horse-power each, and four vertical Siemens dynamos, each capable of generating a current of 70 amperes and 300 volts. Ordinarily on weekdays, four pairs of cars are running, when one engine, working at half-power, is used for driving two dynamos. With eight electric cars and four ordinary cars on the road, the engines indicated 164 horsepower. The average speed allowed on this line is seven and a half miles an hour, and one journey occupies forty minutes, inclusive of stoppages at eight stations.

The Frankfort Offenbach Tramway has been in operation since April, 1884; last year, 990,238 passengers were conveyed, and 292,269 car miles were run, at a cost of 3.83 pence per mile, including the following items :

Wages and salaries of directors,
clerks, &c..................................... 2.23d.
Fuel (7.54lbs. of coal per mile)........ 0.65d.
Oil,waste,&c.................................. 0.13d.
Repairs of machinery, cars, and per-
manent way................................... 0.82d.


If we could deduct the directors’ fees, repairs to roadway, and such items, which do not really belong to the costs of motive power and maintenance of the same, then the expenses per car mile might come to less than 3.5d.

With reference to the overhead conductor, I need only mention that the slotted tube is used in the same manner as at Moedling, with the exception that its resistance in the present case is only 1.6 ohms, and the contact carriage is somewhat differently constructed, as will be seen in the diagram on the wall. Instead of three gun-metal pistons made in halves, there are two solid iron pistons without expansion springs. These parts have to be renewed every three or four weeks, at the cost of 1s. for each carriage.

A skeleton plan of this line is shown on the upper diagram on the wall; the lower represents the Moedling track. There are several gradients, the stiffest of which is 1 in 32 for a distance of 100 yards; another of 1 in 45, 150 yards long, with a curve of 110 feet radius upon it; and a third incline of 1 in 80, 300 yards in length. To those that study the subject of mechanical traction, the following data relating to the tramway under discussion may be interesting. The energy expenses was measured on the car as well as on the generating dynamo, simultaneously, when the total weight, propelled at the normal speed, was 8.35 tons, comprising one electric car hauling an ordinary car and passengers:-

....................................Electrical Measurements
...........................................H.P......H.P.
.........................................on car...at Dynamo
Running on a level road......... 3.87 .... 6.47
Running up gradient 1:45
without curve........................ 8.00 .... 13.5
Running up gradient 1:45
with curve............................. 9.70 .... 16.7
Starting up gradient 1:150..... 10.20 .... 26.4

I have already stated that spur gearing is used on the Moedling cars as well as on those of Frankfort; concerning the working of the latter I will now submit a few particulars. The train of wheels on one of these cars consists of a pinion on the motor shaft having 17 teeth which gears into a spur-wheel of 56 teeth keyed upon a countershaft. On this counter-shaft is the second pinion of 26 teeth, and this drives the spur-wheel of 52 teeth fixed to the car axle. We get thus a ratio of 1 to 6.6, nearly, between the motor and the car wheels; the whole set of wheels weighs 4 cwt., the electric motor, also, is very heavy, so that the driving apparatus of one car comes to about 26 1/2 cwt. It must, however, be noted that the motor runs at the comparatively low speed of 500 revolutions. A considerable amount of noise is produced by this gearing, so that the sensation felt inside the electric car is anything but agreeable. As regards the economy of spur gearing for tram-cars of this description, the experience gained is not at all favourable; the pinion of the motor, for instance, which is made of hard gun-metal, wears out in a month; the diagram on the wall shows the teeth of one of these pinions in full size when new and after four weeks'work. The second sketch on the same diagram is a copy of the teeth of one of the cast steel spur-wheels on the driving axle, their shape when new, and after ten months'wear. One of the cars is now being fitted with wheels having double helical teeth, and it is expected that these will work more smoothly, and be more durable. I am indebted to Mr. Prins, the manager, and to Messrs. Dill and Strauss, of Frankfort, for their kindness in conducting me over the line and premises, and for affording me every facility in studying the whole arrangements. Overhead conductors of a different form to those just described were constructed by Messrs. Siemens and Halske for the electric railways in the mines of Zankerode, in Saxony, and the Hohenzollern colliery, in Upper Silesia. The Zankerode line has been in operation since the autumn of 1882, and the Hohenzollern was started in August, 1883; another is now being constructed for the salt mines of Stassfurt. In all these, the conductors are made of bars in the shape of an inverted T fixed along the roofs of the mines. Sliding contact pieces grip the edges of the lower flanges of these bars, and insulated wires lead from the slides to the electrical switch on a small electric locomotive which hauls a number of trucks. An interesting description of the Zankerode line is given in Mr. F. J. Rowan's paper, recently read before the Mining Institute of Scotland. Mr. Rowan states that the cost of haulage, including 15 per cent. for depreciation of plant, came to only .77 of a penny per ton, when 660 waggons were drawn per day of sixteen hours.

Concerning the Hohenzollern line, Mr. Zacharias, of Berlin, has kindly placed his notes, which contain many details of its construction and working, at my disposal, but unfortunately our time is limited, and I can therefore give very few particulars at present. Two sets of rails are laid underground, for a length of 820 yards, and there are several curves of from 15 to 30 feet radius; about forty trains run daily, with one locomotive and fifteen waggons; each Waggon carries nearly half a ton of material, and the cost of haulage is said to be about 1/2d. per ton.

The steam-engine and dynamo are placed near the top of the shaft, 250 yards above the working level; when running at 277 revolutions per minute, the generator gives 350 volts and 37 amperes. Each waggon weighs when empty 1,210 lbs., and when loaded, a little over a ton; the electric locomotive weighs 2.1 tons, and the whole train of fifteen waggons 17.8 tons, running at an average speed of seven miles an hour. For transmitting the motion of the motor to the driving wheels, two pairs bevel wheels, one pinion, and two spur wheels are employed.

Among the lines on which the “third rail" system of conductors is used, the electric tram-way of Portrush and that of Bessbrook, both in Ireland, must be considered the most important. The Portrush line, which was described in this room four years ago, is the longest electric tramway in the world; its rails traverse the country a distance of six miles, between the terminus of the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway and Bushmills. Since the reading of Dr. E. Hopkinson’s paper, important additions have been made by the installation of two 50 horse-power turbines, driven bya 26-feet water-fall on the river Bush, which is 1,600 yards away from the nearest point of the tramway. The electric resistance of the line is 1.9 ohms; the generating dynamo gives a maximum current of 100 ampéres, with 250 volts E.M.F. Since water-power has been applied to produce the electric energy, the working expenses have not amounted to three-pence per car mile. The cars are fitted with pitch chain gearing. Mr. Traill, the managing engineer, informed me that he is satisfied with the working of this gear. An extension of this line is in contemplation. The Bessbrook-Newry Tramway is three miles in length, single rail of 3 ft. gauge, with gradients averaging 1 in 85, the maximum being 1 in 50. In this case also, water-power is available, there being a constant supply of three million gallons a day, with a fall of 28 feet, and part of this is utilised in a turbine which developes 62 h.p., and actuates two dynamos of the Edison-Hopkinson type, each capable of transforming the mechanical energy of 30 h.p. into electrical energy equivalent to 25 h.p., with an E.M.F. of 250 volts. Two electric cars, each capable of carrying 38 passengers, and weighing, when fully loaded, eight tons, run on this line; besides these, there are six goods waggons, with a capacity of two tons of freight per waggon. A train consists of one passenger-car and several waggons, generally three of the latter. The maximum speed attainable is 15 miles an hour, but, to conform to established rules, only 8 to 10 miles an hour are actually made. The line was passed on behalf of the Board of Trade in September, 1885, and from that time to the commencement of the present year, 30,000 train miles were run, 150,000 passengers carried, and 15,000 tons of goods were hauled. The cost of propelling a train containing the full complement of passengers and six loaded waggons is said to be fourpence per mile, including wages, repairs, and rental of water-power. Chain-gearing is employed for the purpose of transmitting the power of the motor to the car-axles. These particulars were kindly given to me by Dr. E. Hopkinson.

Mr. Holroyd Smith has devised an underground conductor contained in a channel, which is provided with a slot for the free passage of the electrical contact slide. The most important application of this system on a large scale is that at Blackpool, where it is worked on a line nearly two lines in length. Descriptions of this tramway have appeared in most of the technical journals, and Mr. Smith having read several papers before scientific societies, I need not dwell upon the details of construction, but will confine myself to a few general remarks. The roadway runs along the coast; ten cars of various sizes comprise the rolling stock, the largest having a seating capacity for 56 passengers, and the smallest carry 30 persons. At the generating stations there are two steam-engines, each of 25 horsepower nominal, driving four shunt wound Elwell-Parker dynamos, which give a maximum current of 180 ampéres, with 300 volts. The E.M F. ordinarily employed is 220 volts, which is reduced to 168 volts at one end, and 185 at the other end of the line, the generating station being situated near the middle of the tramway. From all accounts this line has proved quite successful. It was opened in September, 1884. I have not been able to obtain particulars as to the number of car miles run and passengers carried, consequently I cannot establish the relative cost, but Mr. Smith informed me that the expenses do not reach 4d. per car mile. VVhilst on the Moedling and the Frankfort tramways the resistances of the conductors are 2 ohms and 1.6 ohms respectively, the calculated resistance of the underground copper tubes at Blackpool is only .041 of an ohm. We do not know the actual resistance of these conductors, but I should think it must very much exceed that found by calculation, considering the great fall of potential at different points of the line. In one of the papers read by Mr. Holroyd Smith, we find some extraordinary statements with regard to insulation, and consequently leakage, in his system of underground conductors :—

“Measurements were taken of the insulation of the line during construction, and 150 yards’ length was found to give 4.490 ohms. The average working loss, through leakage, may be taken at 25 amperes, which, at an electromotive force of 200 volts, is equal to 7.2 h.p.”

Professors Ayrton and Perry have devised a system of conductors which is said to overcome the objections against losses arising from bad insulation. Instead of supplying electricity to one very long, perhaps imperfectly insulated, rail, they lay by the side of the railway a well insulated cable which conveys the main current. A third rail, which is rubbed by the moving train, is divided into a number of sections, each fairly well insulated from its neighbour and the ground; but at any moment only that section which is in the immediate proximity of the train is connected with the main cable, the connections being made automatically by the moving train. The loss of power by leakage is very much lessened through this arrangement, since any possible electrical contact between rails and earth is confined to that particular section upon which the train moves at the time, and connection from the surface rail to the insulated cable is made automatically by the pressure of the vehicles upon springs underneath the conducting sectional rails. Such an arrangement could scarcely be applied to ordinary street tramways, for if the sectional rails were laid flush with the roadway, then any other vehicle would, by its weight upon the rails, cause connection with the main cable.

In order to prevent the possibility of any extraneous force, other than that provided by the electric car, from making contact between surface rail and underground conductor, Messrs. Pollak and Binswanger have devised an ingenious plan, illustrated in a diagram on the wall. Underneath each electric car is a powerful magnet, and underneath each rail section, within a thoroughly insulated trough, is an armature of iron, which, when attracted by the influence of the passing magnet, makes contact between the cable and the surface rail, and through the latter with the switch of the car motor. No external force but that of a strong magnet, therefore, can draw electrical energy from the insulated underground conductor, and since the surface rail sections are each very much shorter than a car or train, no other vehicle following or preceding in the same track will be influenced by the current. Neither the Ayrton and Perry system nor that of Pollak has been tried on any tramway, therefore no opinion as to efliciency can be formed at present, but these systems seem worthy of an extended trial.

The idea of employing secondary batteries, the stored energy of which sets the motor in motion, and with it the car, suggested itself to the earliest inventors; indeed, the principle of applying batteries to the propulsion of a vehicle containing them was actually demonstrated in the year 1839, by a Scotchman named Robert Davidson; he used primary batteries, which proved a very expensive mode of generating electric currents; the method of storing energy in accumulators was unknown at that time. Today, we are able to convert the energy of a waterfall or of coals into electricity by means of dynamo machines having an efficiency of 90 per cent., and more. The current thus produced can be made to decompose the acidulated water in the secondary cells which contain electrodes, or plates, capable of absorbing the oxygen and hydrogen resulting from the decomposition of water; and finally, the gases thus stored re-combine whenever we desire it, and manifest themselves in the form of electric energy capable of doing mechanical work through an electric motor. As transformations of energy always involve some loss, so there is a loss in this electro-chemical conversion, amounting to from 25 to 30 per cent. In order to establish a comparison between a system having conductors and one having accumulators carried in the cars, we have, in the first place, to ascertain the efiiciency of the conductors in the one case and that of the secondary battery in the other. The efficiency of a conductor depends upon its resistance and the current transmitted. Let us take for an example a tramway similar to the one at Moedling, with a conductor of 2 ohms resistance, 20 amperes of current for each car, and 500 volts E.M.F. at the terminals of the charging dynamo. Supposing that only one car was running on this line, then the waste of energy would be practically nil at the commencement of its journey from the generating station, but it would be 20(squared) X 2 when it approaches the furthest end of the line; the average resistance, or that due to half the length of the conductor is 1 ohm; therefore the average loss is only 20(squared) X 1 = 400 watts, against 500 X 20 = 10,000 watts generated by the dynamo; consequently the efficicncy of the conductor comes to 96 per cent., since we lose only four per cent. With six cars on the line equally distributed, and using, together, 120 ampéres, the loss will be 14,400 watts out of 60,000 produced at the station, and then the efficiency is only 73 1/3 per cent., and so on, by increasing the number of cars, and with it the current, the efficiency gets less and less. With the accumulator system, on the other hand, we have a constant loss, no matter how long the line, provided that the quantity of energy stored is sufficient for the time, and it matters not how many cars run at any time on the same tramway. If the cars at Moedling were fitted with accumulators, then the weight to be propelled would have to be increased by, at least, 20 per cent , and this would entail a corresponding augmentation of power, in order to keep up the same speed, therefore a greater consumption of fuel would be the result. But we have seen that the item of fuel really plays a minor part in the total expenditure, in fact, it is only about 16 per cent. of the whole, hence we need not look upon the question of the loss of energy with too critical an eye. According to the report issued by the jury of the Antwerp Exhibition, a resume of which has been presented to this Society by Captain Douglas Galton, the consumption of fuel with the accumulator car came to 6.16lbs. per mile, which, at 16s. the ton, costs little more than 1/2d. This car, however, carried only 34 passengers, and the line was practically level. On the other hand, the steam-engine employed was an old portable engine, which did other work besides charging the accumulators of the tram-car. From practical tests made with cars of my own design, here and on the Continent, I have ascertained that the consumption of fuel need never exceed 8 lbs. per car mile on ordinary tram-lines in towns, provided that the weight of the accumulator carried on the car does not exceed 25 cwts.

Viewed from the standpoint of convenience, the propulsion of tram-cars through the medium of secondary batteries must be conceded to be second to none. The battery occupies no valuable space when stowed under the seats, while the motor, with its attachments, can be placed underneath the car. There is no interference with the permanent way, and for city trafiic such a service ought to be found eminently practicable.

The last system on our list is that of the separate locomotive, carrying accumulators within, and hauling an ordinary car behind it, I have placed this at the bottom of the list because it is the latest, but, from all appearances, it will be the first electric system to be adopted on a tramway in London. The early adoption of electric locomotives is partly due to the progressive spirit, the energy, and perseverance of the North Metropolitan Tramway Company, but mainly, perhaps, to the vigorous enterprise of the Electric Locomotive and Power Company, who work the patents of Mr. Elieson, their energetic manager. I have recently had the privilege of witnessing trial trips with six of these locomotive engines. It was a pretty sight to see these vehicles running along Romford-road, one after another, on a dark night, each brilliantly illuminated by its own electric light. Mr. Elieson has prepared a diagram now on the wall, from which the details of construction can be seen. The mechanical connection of the motor with the axles is very ingenious. Instead of the electro-motor being a fixture, it turns round upon a vertical pivot. The horizontal armature shaft carries on its end a bevel wheel, which gears into a large circular rack. At the lower end of the pivot there is mitre gear connected to the driving axle. Reversal of motion can be effected by a clutch which brings one or the other mitre wheel of the axle into gear with that fixed to the pivot. Each of these locomotives weighs nearly seven tons, and this is the only disadvantage one can think of when examining the system. These engines have been ready for some time, they would have been earning money long before now, but for red tape and Acts of Parliament. Before we can run electric cars in this country we must have an Act of Parliament. To obtain one takes a year or more. It causes an immense amount of trouble and expense to get an Act of Parliament, and the worst of it is that each company has to apply separately for it; it is this awkward circumstance which retards the progress of electric locomotion on tramways in this country. Whereas, on the Continent of Europe and in the United States of America, there are dozens of electric tramways at work to the satisfaction of everybody, here in England, the home of the dynamo machine, the country where the electric motor has found its highest development, we have so few opportunities to demonstrate their advantageous applications. With regard to America, there are electric tramways at work in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Saratoga, Califomia, New Orleans, Toronto, Detroit, Windsor, Chicago, Cleveland, Montgomery, Denver, and in other parts. The American capitalist encourages electrical enterprise because it is worthy of every encouragement when untrammelled by unnecessary legislation. I have made out a strong case in favour of electric traction. Any electrician sitting at home in his arm chair can reckon out upon paper what electric locomotion ought to cost, but I have made it my business to travel from place to place and examine into the details of the actual working electric tramways. Practical men want figures based on facts, not estimates. Through the courtesy of the engineers of the oldest lines I have obtained data which render the question of cost beyond doubt, and we have seen that the entire working expenses of those lines do not exceed - or need not exceed - 3 1/2d. per car-mile. There is no reason why these expenses should exceed 3d. per mile, when the most efficient machines of the present day will be applied.

Electric locomotion includes numerous other applications of the motor besides tramways, but I must stop short at this stage of the subject, having already trespassed beyond the usual limit of time.


DISCUSSION.

The CHAIRMAN said they had never had in that room within his recollection any paper on this subject in which the facts were more clearly enunciated than they had been in this case. It had hitherto been very generally the practice for those who brought forward papers on electrical matters to trust very much to their imagination and to their hopes for that future when those restrictive Acts of Parliament to which reference had been made had been swept away; but Mr. Reckenzaun had not given vent to the promptings of his imagination. One fact had struck him very much on making a very rough estimate of the cost, namely, that while the early lines established by Siemens and Halske showed a cost of about 1d. per ton per mile, in all the later lines the estimate came out about half of that, which showed a very great advance in the practical application of electricity. The cost of horses on tramways came to from 7d. to 10d. per car mile, which was probably about 3d. per ton per mile, so that there was a considerable difference between the cost of electrical haulage and that of horse power.

Mr. M. Holroyd Smith said this paper could not be called an exhaustive one, because it would take several days to treat exhaustively so large a subject, but it was more comprehensive than he thought it could have been in the time, and he complimented the author on having given so much information in so short a time. He might also be praised for having said so little about his own particular work. Considering he was one of the first to use secondary batteries for the propulsion of tram-cars, and that his work has been taken advantage of by more than one, who were now making a profitable employment of his skill, it was certainly very commendable that he had not said more on that point. He agreed with him that secondary batteries would be very advantageous on certain lines, but he did not agree with him as to their efficiency compared with that of direct working. There were two strong lines of demarcation in this matter -direct driving and batteries. Either primary or secondary batteries might be employed, and when using the direct current, it might be done with the actual rail, by overhead or side bars, or underground conductors. On going into the calculation, he should be able to show that, taking a line five miles in length, and working one car an hour over it, it would be cheaper to run it by secondary batteries; but if the lines were working a quarter of an hour service - and tramways did not as a rule pay unless the service was more frequent than that - it would be much cheaper to use direct driving. Even with a central channel constructed in the same manner, and at the same cost, as he had laid in Blackpool, it would cost less to construct a five-mile line, and equip it with channel, motors, gear, engines, dynamos, &c., when driving direct, than to equip all the cars and provide the surplus batteries, &c., for the secondary battery method. He should also say that the cost of the construction of the central channel at Blackpool was not to be taken as the standard for the future. As had been said, the resistance of these conductors was very low, and it was purposely so arranged, because he saw it would be better to spend a few hundred pounds more than was absolutely necessary on the copper tubes which formed the conductors, and on the structural details of the central channel, than to run any risk of failure, and therefore, in every item he had erred on the side of safety. It would be quite possible to construct a line at a little more than half that cost, and making that important alteration to the calculation, it would be found that direct driving would compare still more favourably with secondary batteries. In towns like London, where there were busy thoroughfares, tramway directors found the rail their greatest trouble, and omnibus and cab drivers were always using bad language about the groove which would form along side the rail, they did not want another rail, until further advance was made in public opinion, and it was possible that tramway companies in such a situation would adopt secondary batteries; but as he had pointed out in that room before, he regarded secondary batteries merely as a means of educating the public mind. One point which would be very interesting to discuss at greater length than was then possible was that of gearing, and he would again compliment Mr. Reckenzaun in not having brought forward his claim as being the first to use worm gearing on large tram-cars, although he (Mr. Smith) had used it on a small experimental car before, but he did not venture to adopt it for large cars until he saw Mr. Reckenzaun was successful. He said most unhesitatingly that he found it the most effective mode of transmitting the power from the motor spindle to the axle, taking all points into consideration. He might mention that the reason he could not give more detailed information to Mr. Reckenzaun, was that his directors had special reasons at the time for not desiring the details of their results to be made public, but he might say that the practical working at Blackpool was more economical than any of the figures given in the paper. He must take exception to one calculation put forward tending to show that by increasing the number of cars on a line the efiiciency would decrease very rapidly. That was entirely contrary to his experience. He found that during the winter months, when only three cars were running, and the number of passengers per week was under 3,000, the total working expenses were about £20; in the summer months, when the passengers were 45,000, and there were ten instead of three cars, crowded instead of empty, the total working expenses were only £45. He was also struck with the figures given as to the number of passengers carried, and the car accommodation on other lines. On none of the lines had they cars which would seat 56, as they had in Blackpool - and very often they carried from 60 to 70; and instead of reckoning the people by tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, they were now in the second million, and not one single accident had happened to anyone. With regard to the diagram with Messrs. Pollak and Binswanger’s name upon it, illustrating a magnetic system of making contact between an underground conductor and a sectional surface rail, it was evident to him that no working test had been made, because he knew from his own numerous experiments in the same direction that the details there shown would not be successful in practice.

The CHAIRMAN inquired if the Blackpool Company had paid a dividend.

Mr. M. Holroyd Smith said it had, and not only so, but having, at the request of the directors, taken some fees due to him in shares instead of cash, he had sold them at 10 per cent. premium, and was, therefore, better off in consequence.

Sir John Jenkins said he was connected with a tramway or short railway, from Swansea to the Mumbles, one of the oldest in the kingdom, the Bill for which was originally for a canal, but though it passed as such on the second reading, it came out of the House of Commons as a railway, in 1804. The cost of running on this was less than on ordinary tramways, and the question in all these cases was really which was the cheapest motor. As Mr. Holroyd Smith had said, there was a great objection to electricity on account of the third rail, but independently of that, he did not think the time had yet arrived when electricity could compete with steam power, where it was practicable to use it. Still they were much indebted to the scientific gentlemen who occupied themselves with this subject, and who, he trusted, would ultimately achieve a success which would be beneficial not only to themselves, but to the nation at large. The cost of Mr. Reckenzaun’s mode of working would be about 3 1/2 d. per train-mile, but the cost of the small line he referred to was not more than half that. It ran not upon the road, but parallel to it. Of course, on great railways, he knew the cost was much higher, and horse-power, as the Chairman had said, came to about 7d. or 8d., and, in some places, 9d. per train-mile. On the railway he referred to almost every possible motive power had been tried, including sails, but nothing was so economical as the steam-engine.

Mr. Magnus Volk thought the spiral wires referred to in the paper, running at a very high velocity, would wear considerably, and would not be successful. A somewhat similar plan was tried at Shoreham, and it seemed as if the whole thing would be torn to pieces in a few days, but possibly that might be due to faulty construction. Pitch chains were used on the Ryde pier railway, which he lately visited, and he was informed that they suddenly gave way, without any warning, causing considerable delay. Spur gearing had been used in Ireland, but though when first fitted it was tolerably silent, when he was there, it made so much noise that conversation in the car was almost impossible. He had found leather-link belts the best of all. He first tried single leather, but this broke every day or two, then double belts, which did not last much longer, as one lap slipped off the other. The leather-link belts had now been in use three years, and the portion shown had helped to drive a car over 50,000 miles. It was not worn out, but was a piece taken out to shorten the belt, which would have to do the next season’s work. They stretched a little on being first put on, but there was an arrangement for taking up the slack. Toothed gear he found caused a great deal too much vibration in the car to be pleasant, though some people liked it, thinking it was spare electricity given off which did them good. The Brighton line was not perfect by any means, but he had from time to time made various improvements, and he had a great deal of opposition to contend with. Still, next August, he should have kept the line open for four years; he had run about 100,000 car-miles, and carried about a million passengers, the cost being just under 2d. per car-mile. All repairs were paid for out of revenue, but he put aside nothing for depreciation, for he never knew during the winter whether he should find the line there at all in the morning. Apart from damage by storms, it had paid a dividend of 20 per cent. With regard to light railways running through a poor district, he would remark that if steam were employed you must carry a considerable number of passengers to make it pay at all; but with electricity you could run a small car, seating five or six people, at almost the proportionate expense that you could carry thirty or forty, and thus, where it would not pay to run half-hourly, you might run a car every five minutes, and so work up a traffic. He agreed with Mr. Holroyd Smith as to the comparatively small extra cost of working extra cars. Last summer, for the first time, he worked a second car, and when his quarter's gas bill came in he found it was only increased by £3. Great pains had been taken at Blackpool to secure a very low resistance in the conductors; but if more pains had been taken in the insulation, he thought a better result would be attained, for he found that Mr. Smith’s loss by leakage was just about the same as his own, where there was no attempt at insulation at all except by the sleepers. He should like to know Mr. Smith’s experience as to the electrolytic effect of the current that escaped. He had found some 3/4 in. bolts, which he put in last October, were last week reduced to about 3/8 in. He did not think the magnetic system would be practicable, for a car going at anything like a fair speed would not have time to act on the armatures so as to pick up the current. The idea was very pretty and clever, but he did not think it would work.

Mr. Kapp said he had had no experience of electric tram-cars, but he knew something about gearing, and he did not think the spur gearing had yet had a fair trial. Mr. Reckenzaun’s worm gearing had been very successful, but that was probably because it was well adapted to the work it had to do, and other gearing equally well designed might also answer as well. The noise could be avoided in various ways; you might have slanting teeth, or might split up the width of the wheel into narrow portions, so as virtually to have several wheels side by side, and shift them by a small angular distance, less than the pitch of the wheel, and so obtain a tooth consisting of several steps. In this way the violence of the blow of two teeth coming into contact would be very much reduced, and it was this blow which caused the noise. He had seen a very large spur gear on this principle on one of the large steamers of the Messageries Maritimes, the propeller shaft being geared to the engine shaft in this way, and the noise was hardly more perceptible than that of a shaft directly driven.

Mr. R. Capper said the question after all, with regard to the application of electricity to tramway working, was whether it would pay. He was interested in the railway mentioned by Sir J. Jenkins, which was now 84 years old, and naturally, having to carry three-quarters of a million of people a year, they looked at all these things very closely, but he had never yet come across any instance of an electric motor, as applied to tramways, which it would answer their purpose to adopt. There was still a field open to anyone who could show them how to make that six miles of line pay better by electricity than it did at present with locomotives.

General Brine thought electricity would never pay as a motive power, or take the place of steam, which could hardly be surpassed. If anything were likely to interfere with it, it would be petroleum. Electricity might do very well on the Thames, or in tram-cars, going at the rate of seven to ten miles an hour, but anything beyond that was out of the question.

Mr. Binswanger said he thought the system invented by Mr. Pollak and himself, had been rather severely criticised. Seeing that it had only been completed a few months, there had been no opportunity to try it practically, but gentlemen of quite as high standing, and as large experience, as Mr. Holroyd Smith, had spoken very favourably of it, and the models which had been constructed worked very well. In an ordinary street you could not use an open channel, which would become full of water and clogged with dirt, and if the conductors were enclosed, he did not think any other mode of making contact would be so good as a magnet.

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Mr. Richardson said he was interested in the North Metropolitan Tramway Company, and he hoped they would be able in a short time to show some practical results at Stratford. Within the last year they had obtained the necessary Act of Parliament, and the application was now before the Board of Trade for permission to run the engines of Mr. Elieson. When the system had been practically tested, there would come the question of cost, but he did not think on this point Swansea could be taken as a criterion for the metropolis, for coal there was much cheaper than in London. Besides that, the line ran by the side of the road, on agricultural land, where there was no chance of accident, and any locomotive could be used, whereas in the metropolis one which was almost noiseless would have to be employed. Their small district, where they only carried 45,000,000 or 50,000,000 of passengers per annum, could not compete with Blackpool or Brighton, but they were under more stringent regulations, and would not be permitted to lay down a third rail; there were quite accidents enough with two. They were endeavouring to give the plan a thoroughly fair trial, and were laying down very substantial rails, weighing 90 lbs. a yard so at to carry well the engines of seven tons each.

The Chairman, in proposing a vote of thanks to Mr. Reckenzann, said they were much indebted to Mr. Richardson for his reply to the somewhat dogmatic assertion of General Brine, that electricity would never pay as a motive power. In one sense that was quite true, because electricity was not a motive power; it was a means by which motive power could be transmitted from one point to another, and as a means for the transmission of energy it had certain peculiar advantages, which sooner or later must make it one of the most useful agents for this purpose which nature afforded. He was quite sure that, after the remarks of Mr. Capper, more than one electrician would rush down to Swansea and submit a proposal by which the traffic over the pretty railway to the Mumbles would be carried for less than half what it now cost.

The vote of thanks having been carried unanimously,


Mr. Reckenzaun, after thanking Mr. Holroyd Smith for his complimentary remarks, said he had probably misunderstood him slightly. Of course the loss of current through resistance increased with the number of cars, but any engineer would so proportion the size of his conductor to the probable traffic, that that loss should not exceed a certain maximum. He had purposely said very little about secondary batteries, not because he was personally interested in them, but because he had desired to confine himself to accomplished facts. He had given the figures as to various lines in actual works, and was only sorry he had not been able to obtain as full details from Mr. Smith as from other engineers. It was not worth while disputing who was the first to use worm gearing; anyone was at liberty to do so, and he hoped many would try it. He should be very glad if Mr. Smith could furnish the exact cost per car-mile on his line. With regard to Sir John Jenkins, his remarks referred rather to a railway than a tramway, and there was a great difference between the two. The traction power necessary on a railway was only about one-third that on an ordinary street tramway with a grooved rail, which was always more or less clogged with dirt; and any comparison between steam and electric motors must be made with reference to the particular circumstances of each case; you could not make a general comparison. Some locomotives on town tramways had given results as low as 2 1/2d. per mile when the engines were new, but after a time, when repairs were included, they worked out as much as 9d., the cost of repairs being much greater than that of providing motive power. He did not think Mr. Volk could have seen the spiral wire he had described, which would have been abandoned long ago if it had not worked satisfactorily. With regard to Mr. Capper’s observation, he would admit that electricity could not compete with steam on ordinary railways; it did not profess to do so; but he believed there was a great future before it on tramways, where the conditions were different; where they had to compete with horses, or with steam-engines under special restrictions as to noise and smoke, which caused a great waste of energy. Even in the case of railways, where water power was available as at Portrush, electricity might eventually be able to compete with steam.
 
APPENDIX. An Abbreviation of Patents, From The Records of Her Majesty's Patent Office, From 1630 up to The Present Time.

No. 8,644. Date, 1840.
HENRY PINKUS, St.Martin's-lane, Patentee.- "Improvements in the methods of applying motive-power to railway carriages, canal boats, and agricultural machines." As to the latter, in a given area of land a central station is erected, in which is here placed an electric battery or batteries, having wells and tanks placed in the same. From the station main pipes are laid down, having at intervals of 200 yards or so, short, vertical, supply branches, terminating in a box with a moveable lid. In the main pipes wires are laid connected with the positive and negative poles of the battery, thus constituting electric circuits. In the locomotive engine an electric magnetic engine is applied, and in order to set the former in motion, chemical action is induced in the batteries at the station tanks, and electrical influence being thus generated, the force of which acting through the metallic circuit, the wires passing round a small drum will put the impelling engine in motion.

From here:
http://marysgasbook.blogspot.com/2009/08/mr-pinkess.html
Henry Pinkus came from Philadelphia and in 1826 had done a deal with one Hercules Poynter (or Paynter). The nature of this and its relation to the East London Gas Company was to be crucial some ten years later. Pinkus and Poynter set up something called the Domestic Gas Company. This was a ‘new method’ of making gas (weren’t they all!) in which rather than get your gas from a gas works you made it at home yourself. The gas was made in your ordinary domestic grate and then stored in ‘the cellar or some other convenient location’. Pinkus and Poynter promoted this from an address in the Strand. Whether any of them were ever bought is not known - the suggestion being that the smell kept the customers away.

In the next few years Pinkus acquired a string of patents which related to gas making and similar subjects. It might be noted that at the same time a Henry Pinkus enrolled at University College for a course of natural philosophy, heat and chemistry.

In the 1830s Pinkus seems to have changed his interests from gas to locomotion. In 1834 he advertised a model of atmospheric propulsion, claiming to have been experimenting on this since 1825. He demonstrated this at an address in Wigmore Street in the West End. The project was seen by a number of prominent engineers of the day and, following some changes, a demonstration railway may, or may not, have been built along the Kensington Canal.

The really strange thing about this is that the person who made atmospheric traction work a couple of years later - and who had undoubtedly seen what Pinkus was up to - was none other than Samuel Clegg himself, the father of gas lighting! Within a couple of years Pinkus was suing Clegg for infringement of his patent. As we will see this was not the first time that Pinkus had seen the inside of an English Court of Law.
 
The Social Side of The Electric Railway
A paper by T.C.Martin
Editor of The Electrical Engineer, New York

READ BEFORE, AND PRINTED BY, THE NEW YORK ELECTRICAL SOCIETY—ELECTRICAL SECTION OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE.

April, 1890.

A Month or two ago we had the pleasure of listening in this hall to a most interesting paper by Mr. S. Dana Greene on the development of electric traction. I had previously promised the secretary of the society a paper on the same subject, but I felt it would be useless for me to traverse the same ground again. Mr. Greene spoke with authority, and not as one of the newspaper scribes; and I was glad to learn from him and accept most of his conclusions. I recognize the fact, however, that he dealt with the topic mainly on its technical side, as a specialist of experience, and that there was still a very important branch of the subject on which a few helpful words might be said - namely, the relation of the electric railway to the public and to social conditions generally.

Few of us stop to think of the enormous difference that facilities for travel make in our lives. I do not refer to the opportunities and appliances for long journeys, but to the simple everyday transportation that we calmly accept as a prime condition of existence. It is probably safe to say that every one of us came here to-night, and will go home, without depending on our legs to make the trip. But this is altogether modern, and to the generation immediately preceding ours would have seemed as unlikely as that, from total lack of exercise our legs should become atrophied and own no function of pedestrianism. Yet now that we have enjoyed the advantages that the means of artificial locomotion already familiar give us, we want more. The Harlemite does not consider it rapid transit unless he goes from City Hall square to the rocks and goats above Mount Morris park in an hour and a half, and his discontent with the steam railway on stilts becomes daily diviner and deeper. The citizen of Brooklyn is not satisfied to be reduced to a despairing calculation as to whether he is after all better off by being jammed and gouged on the bridge than by balancing on one trodden toe upon the old ferry boats, before he can reach his little vine-clad, mortgaged home at the back of the east wind. And as for the Jerseyman, it is needless to say that of all the ills of his wearisome daily travel, he is able to commute only one. Still, we are infinitely better off in choice of location for our homes than were the people of Manhattan before us, who knew not the elevated railroad, and never gladdened their eyes with the majestic spectacle of the platform of Brooklyn Bridge at a quarter to six on a wet March night, with the cable broken down. If you will take the trouble to invite the candid opinion of the "oldest inhabitant" as to the vanished Broadway stages, the early street cars, and the ancient ferries, you will learn that we have scored a distinct advance. That is why we all want something better.

This is a barbarous age we live in, but we have a foretaste of the civilization that awaits our descendants. We are beginning to learn that luxury is a relative term. A hundred or even 50 years ago there was no such thing as luxurious travel. Washington came to New York to be installed as president, in a manner that a fastidious drummer might now despise. De Quincey was willing to give five years of his life for an outside place on a stage coach that carried down from London through the English counties the news of a great event. We save our five years and our health, and get all the thrill we want, by blocking up the sidewalk on Park Row, and reading the newspaper bulletins as they cover one another on the boards, like successive waves of emotion, rolling in from the unseen but tangible, throbbing distance. We know what the past was. The blizzard of two years * ago brought us down to the normal, average conditions of semi-savagery in locomotion as it prevailed prior to the introduction of the steam road, conditions that need all the glamor of the romancist to be made even tolerable as a picture to the New Yorker who boards the Pullman special for the south, and has had his pleasure in Florida, and returned before the storm that was in progress when he left has gone eastward to discover Europe.

What steam has been to long-distance travel in replacing the stage coach and the sail, electricity is in turn to urban travel in replacing the horse car and the cable road. Later in this paper I will indicate the manner in which electricity may sooner or later realize the best and brightest promises made on behalf of the trans-continental steam railroad, but our first thought is as to electrical travel within towns and cities, and the manner in which it affects social relations, by modifying as with the harlequin wand of transformation all the conditions to which we have heretofore been subjected.

In speaking of this great advance in electricity as applied to the comfort and convenience of man, I do not wish to be understood as praising a perfect thing. We are in the early stages of practical electric locomotion. The pioneer work has been done by young men, still among us, much too near their salad days to fall into the reminiscent vein. It is barely three years ago that I had myself the honor of bringing before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers the first statistics published on American electrical railways, when I seized with brazen audacity upon every bit of a track that could possibly bear inclusion as a road. I would be understood rather as appearing in advocacy of an improvement in many respects crude, but that is not yet appreciated even as it stands. We of the electrical industry have a great duty in this respect, of preaching the advantages of electric locomotion, in season and out of season; and by our persistency we can help the art along. The phrase that good wine needs no bush was not coined by an American advertiser, and the idea that electricity will make its own way is not justified by the history of any great invention that has yet subserved the needs of mankind. Electric locomotion is, however, ready for adoption at an opportune moment. It offers itself at a time when every thing else that has been tried for urban travel, has revealed objections and disadvantages, the more keenly realized because of our higher conceptions of what such travel may be. It is a singular principle that as a system or device reaches perfection something comes forward to supersede it. The horse coach was at its height of speed and comfort when the steam engine challenged it. The white-sailed China clipper was never swifter than when it lowered its flag to the conquering steamship. And so to-day, the horse, the cable and the steam locomotive have shown the utmost that they can do, just as the electric motor rolls to the front and takes the stage, as the means best suited to the peculiar requirements of passenger traffic in modern towns and cities. I do not say that it will banish these competitors from the scene, but I do maintain that its superiority will quickly gain it the decided preference. I am always suspicious of an invention or improvement that is going to knock out everything else, like a charge of dynamite. History is against any such phenomenon. What we do see is a limitation of the antecedent methods and appliances to the sphere within which they are most useful and economical. The old is restricted to its proper place and function as by a ring of fire; the new goes on making its own kingdom until at last its boundaries of achievement are also determined. Thus, as Tennyson puts it, "God fulfils himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world."

The first of the social considerations to which I would direct notice is the effect on the public of the adoption of electricity as a motive power for street railways. The struggle for supremacy in urban passenger work has already narrowed down strictly to the horse, the cable and the electric motor. As everybody knows, steam motors are completely out of favor for use within city limits. Their glorious record of half a century in long-distance travel does not deceive anyone dwelling in a city as to the insuperable defects and nuisances of noise, smell, smoke, dust, steam escape, oil drippings, etc., which may more readily be tolerated, remotely, in the open country. Perhaps I am wrong, but I believe we shall not see any more steam roads in New York, and that imposing as are the statistics of the Manhattan elevated system to-day, they will be eclipsed in a very few years by those of the newer form of electric locomotion. And may not the same be said as to the horse? There are now close upon 15,000 horses engaged in hauling street cars around this city. It is high time that every one of these was dispensed with, as well for its own sake as for that of the city, whose air it assists in polluting and whose population it aids in driving into exile. Allowing an average space of 40 square feet to each horse, or a stall 9 feet by 4 1/2 feet, we find that in stall space alone those 15,000 horses occupy 600,000 square feet of floor in their stables. These horses are required to operate some 2,400 cars, an average of about seven to the car if every car were in commission at once, which is not at all the case. But even if nearly all the cars were wanted, an average of 10 h.p. each would be ample in the central station of an electrical plant, bringing us to a liberal allowance of 25,000 h.p. But here comes in the remarkable though not unfamiliar fact that a steam plant will go into much less space than an animal power plant of equal capacity. Mr. C. J. Field, who is known to many of you as a constructing and mechanical engineer, informs me that his recent practice shows that a generating electrical plant for 20,000 h.p., to operate all the street cars of this city, could easily be placed in a building 100x150. The engines and the dynamos would be placed on the first floor, and the boilers on the second floor. The generators in such a plant would be multipolar, 500 h.p. each, directly connected to the engines, and each engine would be of a vertical triple expansion type, of 500 h.p. each. This gives only 1 1/2 square feet to the horse-power, and we may offset the space for feed, etc., by that for coal, etc. I have tested these figures by those of recent electric light stations in actual operation, and they are found to be very fair and reasonable. It might be objected that all the power would not be bunched in this way; but even with half a dozen generating stations of 2,000 h.p. there would only be an increase in space required of about ten per cent. From this remarkable but strictly proper comparison, we can form an idea as to the economy of real estate, bearing in mind also the fact that horse car stables are generally wooden or brick sheds, only one or two stories in height, while an electrical plant may be run up as high as an apartment house or an office building, just as ornate without, just as clean within.

Hence there can be no mistake in the statement that electricity is a direct boon to the urban population that clings to the city, loves the city life, and that if crowded out from it into the country suffers all the pangs of banishment. Indirectly, too, it is a further boon because with horses a great portion of the district surrounding the car stables is also spoiled for human habitation. The whole region within what I would define as "the area of smell" is unsavory and unhealthy the year through, and the consequence is that while the taxing and renting value of it is lessened, the death rate is run up. "Do not insult a respectable animal who has come from the country to do his share of the work of the world," says one authority, "and has brought with him the memory of the sweet hills and skies at least, by immuring him in one of those cramped, rickety, rotten, slovenly, damp dungeons, where a dumb beast would lose his self-respect and his courage, beneath an oppressive weight of miasma, and hideous, gloomy, nasty confusion." And so say all of us, and all of us are glad to note a vast improvement in this respect. The stables are better ventilated now as a rule, but the trouble is just there. If they were not so well ventilated, the neighborhood would be sweeter, and would be fitter for human beings to live in. The poor die quicker that the horses may suffer longer.

An objection I may anticipate is that, after all, such large generating plants would not be desirable with their huge smoke stacks, their discharge of gases, etc., upon the atmosphere, their receipt of coal and their removal of ashes. I would reply that it is by no means necessary for such plants to be, as the stables must be, right upon the main lines of travel. They would by decided preference be located near the water's edge, out of the way. Moreover, the stacks would be, as they are to-day in large electric light plants, high enough to carry off all smoke or smell far beyond perception. Perhaps the familiar smoke stack is not an aesthetic object, but it can be made so. There are steeples in this town that on the score of their beauty are not fit to compare with smoke stacks near them.

Much that I have said under this head with respect to electricity applies to the cable. That system has been an immense advance in street car travel, and is destined to many years of usefulness yet. It is worthy of much praise; but it will not hold its own with electricity, simply because it is deficient in some things that electricity possesses to a pre-eminent degree. It has been a forerunner for electricity. It is not only enormously costly in its first installation, but has the disadvantage of being a unit. The whole of the road and all its power hangs by that one cable. If the cable be duplicated in the conduit, the expense is again so much the heavier, while the criticism as to risk still stands. Moreover, a cable car cannot go backward at its driver's will. Onward it must go, Mazeppa-like, strapped down to its carrier, no matter what unfortunate contingency impend, or what obstacle lies in its path. It cannot greatly vary its own speed. An electric car is so manageable that it will reverse in its own length or less. But the greatest trouble of all with the cable is that it is always the one thing, while there are very few towns or cities that are alike in offering just the rigid Procrustean conditions it meets. There are about 50 cities in the United States with a population of over 50,000, but there are between 700 and 800 street railway companies, if not more; so that even if all the places in the first category could justify the heavy expenditure on a cable system, there are hundreds of others unable to do so. We need not wonder then that at their last convention in Minneapolis, the street railway men gave electricity such a hearty welcome, adopting the enthusiastic if not elegant language of a committee report which said that it "filled the bill to perfection." Nor need we wonder that the street railway company in Minneapolis has just thrown aside an unused cable plant that cost $400,000, and is putting in electric cars and over 100 miles of electric road.

Why does electricity "fill the bill," and in a manner that interests the public? Well, for the reasons given already and for others. It is above all things flexible, plastic, protean. It can be applied in half a dozen different ways, and be absolutely safe for human life in any and all of them. The street railway may be equipped with an overhead system for supplying the current to the motors, and to that system, well built, with trim ornamental poles, lines well run and guarded, little or no objection can be offered. The air is God's own insulation; we know none better, none so cheap, and a wire is well insulated up aloft. The Bostonians, who are people setting no small store by their refined, acute and cultivated taste, have adopted poles and wires in preference to the hideously ugly lattice work tunnels we have in New York to hold up our elevated roads, and I admire them for it. It is possible that Boston may have an elevated road, but if so it will be a handsome electric one. Or, if the overhead wire be objected to, as it may, there is the conduit system, which is fully able to give a good account of itself if well put in and plenty of money be spent on it. It is true that the wires are not exposed in the conduit system, but otherwise there is not much operative difference between it and the overhead method. There may be difficulties in heavy wet, or snowy weather, but we shall see them all overcome. Or should this or its modifications again be found fault with, there is the ideal storage battery system, where each car starts out "on its own hook," an independent, self-contained unit. I don't exactly know why we call it the "ideal system." It is either within reach or beyond. If within reach, it is not "ideal," but ought, speaking from the public standpoint, to be adopted wherever there is actual need for it. It may be a trifle expensive, But that is certainly not one reason more why the public should do without it. It may be somewhat difficult to put and keep in order. "Coaches, Sammy," said the elder Weller, sententiously, to his son, "coaches is like guns - they require to be loaded with werry great care afore they go off," and that is about the case with the storage battery cars. But they do go off, and we know from the approval they have met with that they do hit the mark of popular approval, - and that is one of the main things I am talking about to-night.

It is in one or other of these systems or modifications of them that electricity will become familiar to the public of this country in street railway work. It will, I think, be chiefly for a long time to come, the overhead system, which is not costly to put up, is not expensive to maintain, can be operated economically at about half the running charges of animal power, and fully answers the requirements of the vast majority of our thriving, intelligent centres of trade and manufacture. All these methods are safe, and none of us ever heard, or expects to hear, that the current of 500 volts they have employed has taken a single human life. The motor cars cannot "explode," the daily papers to the contrary notwithstanding. They scatter no dust or ashes; they do not litter the streets with offensive refuse, but rather ozonize the air; they are pleasant to ride in and they do not damage the paving. They require good tracks for their best operation, and naturally make their worst showing on the automatic mud sprinklers that so begutter the roadways in this city. But the roadbed between the tracks they never touch. It might as well be a continuous plot of flowers. In the outskirts of Boston, some of the electric cars whose aerial wires run hidden between the overarching trees, have their tracks laid down on a narrow green lawn for three or four miles; and at a remove of but a few feet, it seems to the spectator as though the cars were gracefully skimming over the smooth grass, in effortless flight, like low-darting, even-poised swallows.

I have just spoken of the outskirts of Boston, and this brings me to another important point wherein electric cars are an element making for the public good. They help a man to get farther away from his business, and yet bring him nearer to it. "Rapid transit" by their means is no longer a deceiving phrase, or the proud monopoly of one or two big cities. The smallest city in the country is at once given a command it never had before over the territory around it. The smallest store keeper or the humblest clerk can revel in the sweets of rural life, if he wish. His electric car, running at 15 or 20 miles an hour, will give him more of home life - a few golden minutes with the children in the morning, an earlier return to the wife at nightfall. The whole social atmosphere of the place is vivified, and the social bonds are knit closer, as they always must inevitably be where the facilities of travel are increased, and the opportunities of intercourse are multiplied.

Nor is this all. Rapid transit of this nature opens up a number of districts that before were practically inaccessible for residential purposes. There are few of us who care to practice the ancient form of dissipation known as early rising, agreeing rather with Charles Lamb, in the idea that to rise with the lark or go to bed with the sheep is a popular fallacy. There are still fewer of us, who, even for the sake of rural delights, care to isolate and immure ourselves in remote suburbs reached with difficulty. In vacation time, it is true, we often seek the loneliness of the woods, or the solitude of the mountains, that we may commune with Nature and hear the still small voice of our better self; but when we are doing the world's work 50 weeks in the year, we want to be handily situated for reaching our desk or bench. If a man lives in the city, he pays a high rent and takes Irish views of the landlord question. If he lives far out, and wastes his time in travel, he is in hearty sympathy with the eight hour movement. I look upon electric roads, therefore, as likely to prove a beneficial agency in the more equal distribution of a happier population around any centre, thus increasing the return on outlying property, while, by the encouragement of retail trade, enhancing the profit of the area lying within the region thereafter more legitimately restricted to business occupancy. I have watched with much interest the manner in which electric roads have already thus developed suburban areas. Booms are not a particularly healthy feature of progress, but they may be, and not infrequently are, genuiue and real; and I know nothing more likely to bring on a real estate boom of the best character with permanent results than the installation of a well-managed electric road, enabling a man to leave his work at 6 o'clock, and be sitting down to his supper seven or ten miles out, if he wish, under his own roof-tree, at 6.30.

Having thus discussed the effect of electric roads on the community and on the individual citizen, I will add a word as to their effect on the wonderful impersonal entity, "capital." If all that I have said be true as to the general benefits, it follows that the wealth and ease of the community are materially increased; but what I refer to now, is not the direct enhancement of values, so hard to trace out, though so palpable, but the stimulus given to saving habits by the better opportunities of investment. Careful analysis of the working of electric roads goes to prove that when operated with skill and discretion, they are 50 per cent, less expensive to run than horse railroads are. What does this mean? One thing it means is that many roads can be built that would be out of the question with horses. Another is that roads not paying can be placed on a dividend basis. In 1888, out of 19 horse roads reporting in New York city, 10 showed a deficiency. Last year their net earnings were much better, but it is evident that a horse road is not always a mine of wealth, though it may be of fertilizers. A third point is the establishing of a new class of investments of a solid, enduring nature. It is within everybody's knowledge that the accumulation of capital tends constantly to the reduction of interest to a minimum. There was a time when the long stocking and the iron chest were the common bankers for the savings of the timid; and the capital that was bold earned the double reward of its bravery and scarcity. As Walter Bagehot, the economist, has remarked, the English people have always wanted to put their money into something safe that will yield five per cent.; and this is undoubtedly one reason why English capital, free and fluent, is so much a power in the finance of the world, and why so much comes this way. As Mr. Bagehot says :- "In most countries, most men are content to forego interest; but in more advanced countries at some times there are more savings seeking investment than there are known investments for." It is thus in America, so far as "safe" investments are concerned, and by safe I mean such as do not require the active care and ceaseless thought of the capitalist, but may be held by trustees, widows, hospitals, universities, savings banks and the like. The competition of capital for the best class of government bonds, municipal bonds, railroad stocks, &c, has reduced the return on these to a very low figure, whether in America or England or Germany; and the result is that we see to-day, as never before, the planning of enormous trusts and gigantic industrial enterprises, which represent in no small degree the endeavor of capital, or savings, still to enjoy its wonted income, but in newer fields. Now I look upon the street railway business of the country, under the regime of electricity, as offering one of the best opportunities for local capital, and for what may be called the organization of local savings, which might otherwise lie around in napkins, like the unjust steward's talent, and be of no use to anybody. The capital in street railways in America to-day, reaches from $175,000,000 to $200 000,000. If the statement I have made as to the superior economy of electrical power be true, how much greater becomes the earning capacity of this investment, and how much greater are the attractions held out to construct the hundreds of new roads that are still wanted and will be called for as our towns and cities grow. Of course, I am aware that it may be said that this showing might lead to a demand for lower fares. It might, but the public is intelligent enough to know that other things are more necessary, such as better cars, with better heat and better light; improved tracks, faster running time and shorter headway; so that the 150,000,000 passengers on the street railroads every year may travel in all safety and comfort. Street railroads are peculiarly suitable as a field for local investment. Their operation can be watched all the time. They run under a man's eye when he is on the street, or past his window when he is home. He knows something of their officials; he can influence the domestic legislation they are subject to; he can assist in more ways than one to swell their earnings.

The next important point to which I would direct your attention is the effect that the electric railway has upon the employees of the service. It cannot be denied that the introduction of electricity in this respect marks a decided advance in the social condition and aptitudes of a large body of men. I have never yet met with anybody or anything that could place the work of a horse car driver in a favorable light. One certainly could not fairly expect a man who spends the day with his nose at the tail of a car horse to realize a very high ideal of life and duty, especially when the whole of his work is done under conditions exhausting alike to temper and physique. It is out-door exposure the whole time, whether in summer heat or winter blast. Half the time it is an exercise of sheer brute strength, and no car driver believes in his heart that a horse-power is only 33,000 foot pounds a minute. His aching wrists and dislocated shoulders tell him that Watt was far below the mark in putting it at that figure. And then, the worry of the street traffic. We have all of us noticed the conscientious persistence with which draymen and coachmen will keep on the car tracks in front of a car. An investigation made two or three years ago in Chicago showed that at one point in the streets there, 97.6 of the street traffic sought the railroad, while at another it was 87 1/2, and at a third, 90 per cent. Against such odds the driver with his restless or apathetic team has to make his way and keep to the running schedule; fighting all the time with the fear of an accident either to his car or to some hapless foot passenger.

With an electric car, the matter is not one of muscle and brawn, but of average intelligence and ordinary readiness of decision. A better class of men are wanted and forthcoming, or the same men are relieved from physical wear and tear, and thereafter can earn their bread in the sweat of their brow and not that of their body. A woman might easily run an electric car. The motorman gets instantaneously by the turn of a switch the exact degree of power that he wants; he can apply his brakes readily; and if he needs to run backward up-hill he can do so, sitting down at his switch. It is not necessary to expose him to the weather. His fears as to running people down are materially lessened by the gain in control of the car and by the further fact that an electric car takes up only half the space on the street that a horse car and its team do. The work is not less safe than cleanly. You may remember that when steam roads were started in South Carolina, one of the negro drivers tied down the safety valve and then sat on it. As a result, cotton bales were placed between the locomotive and the coaches to protect the passengers in case of explosion. The new driver was, however, still on the wrong side of the bales. In electric cars both driver and passengers are free from harm. John Bright once said that the safest place on earth was a first-class carriage in an express train; but to-day it may be fairly affirmed that no vehicle can compare as to freedom from danger with the electric street car.

A feature of this refinement of the work is that it must necessarily be attended by better pay for the higher intelligence and skill. Mere brute strength does not command good wages nowadays, except in a prize fighter, and the further we get away from animal conditions the better do we find the status of the individual or the occupation to be. The remarks made above as regards the drivers apply equally to the staff at the generating plant. People sometimes wonder why there are so many hostlers around car stables, but when you remember that well-kept car horses work only two hours and a quarter daily, you will see that they need a good many attendants at the stables during the other 20 odd hours. In place of these grooms and hostlers you have, with an electric plant, a skilled force of steam engineers and mechanics, each trained for the special function which the principle of the division of labor has shown him to be best qualified for.

And here let me inject the pertinent remark, that this new and successful development of electricity is one reason more why the mechanical engineer and steam engineer should master electrical principles and practice, whether for the higher walks of his profession or for the humbler duties of running a plant. The coming of electricity, and its application to light and power, has afforded a grand stimulus to steam engineering in every department, and may not improperly be claimed to have created the modern high speed engine. Sir William Thomson has said that the electrical engineer is nine-tenths a mechanical engineer. To this I will add a corollary, and say that the mechanical engineer may be a master in these new electrical fields if he will only add the one-tenth to his education. The time is at hand when the mechanical engineer will not be considered worthy of his name or his calling unless he is also an electrical engineer, as familiar with Ohm's law as he is with Carnot's or Mariotte's.

Incidentally through this paper I have referred to the effect of the electric railroad upon horses. It has, indeed, been most gratifying to see how readily the electric railroad has rallied to the support of the Humane Society. It is a humane society itself. Whether he wished it or not, the electrical engineer in this instance is conferring a great boon on the horse. We sometimes do the greatest good, as we do often the greatest evil, unconsciously, rather than of set purpose; and so, here, the inventors of the modern electric motor and the electric car have released the horse from one of the most painful and exhausting services that it was ever put to. Investigations over a long period have shown that with the pavement dry a horse would meet with an accident in every 78 miles of travel on granite; on every 168 miles with the pavement damp, and every 537 with the pavement thoroughly wet. Unfortunately for the horse, though happily for the rest of us, the first two conditions generally prevail on our streets; and hence the horse has a poor outlook as to accidents. But it is not the accident the horse has so much to dread, after all, as the constant strain and the pull of a heavy load from its dead rest every few hundred yards. It is generally admitted by street railway men that car horses fail because of this feature of their work, and that it helps to cut down their railroad life and utility to the average of from three to five years. If you want to see these conditions at their worst, take Broadway, once our pride, now one of the most overrated throughfares in Christendom. The pavement is abominable, and the horses, like the foot passengers, can be seen struggling for a grip on the uneven, slippery stones, all the way from one end of it to the other. The traffic on the street is so great that I have noted full cars making a dozen halts and starts from dead rest between Chambers and Barclay streets - two blocks. It does not require an expert to foresee the effect of such wear and tear on animals. In Cincinnati, recently, on installing an electric equipment, a street railway company advertised its horses for sale for family and carriage purposes. I have not observed any such advertisements in New York city. The street railway managers are more modest or more truthful here than they are on the banks of the Ohio. The only persons likely to regret seriously the departure of the street car horses from this city would be the horse dealers and feed supply houses, and possibly the street cleaning contractors, though they get their pay anyhow.

I might point out that as a further offset to this displacement of a certain amount of labor in an elementary form whether that of the horse or the human being in charge of him, we have the stimulus given to a higher class of labor, not only in the station engineer, and motor car driver, but in the electrical expert and inventor. Society benefits greatly by this, just as it does by the superior skill and efficiency implied in the maintenance of such a system as that of the Pennsylvania Railroad company. The running of express trains and fast steamships demands the exertion of the best qualities of a man, as well in the conception of ideas of improvement as in the details of solid construction and vigilant management. Here, therefore, we strike at once into a new field of design and invention, one that promises to be as large and fruitful as any other known to the application of electricity. There have already been several hundred patents taken out on the special subject of electric railways, and the whole air is alive with rumors of the ideas and inventions assuming shape. In a year or two it will be a wise motor that knows its own father. Each new step is a prophecy of a dozen more. Each new patent is a "father of its country," a germ of endless fertility. We begin to learn our resources. "Is there any load that water cannot lift?" asked Emerson, "If there be, try steam; or if not that try electricity. Is there any exhausting of these means?"

Now and then I hear the objection that people would be the quicker to adopt electric locomotion if it were not so beset and made costlier by patents. This is not true, and I have no patience with the spirit that begrudges the inventor his reward. Why do we use the great inventions? Simply and solely because they effect an economy for us in some way or other, chiefly in time or money. If they did not, we should care little about them, and the inventive geniuses of the day would be mere common clay to us. But, on the contrary, the inventor is revered and admired, and is encouraged by the wealth and fame he can earn. Occasionally one hears the expression of an idea that the inventor is wanting in public spirit and devotion to science because he takes out patents and does not invite the world to revel in the riches he reveals while he is content to starve over a crust in a garret. A few weeks ago, Mr. Edison told me that he had found one of his greatest intellectual pleasures in reading "Evangeline." But why should it be less public spirited for Edison to secure a patent on his phonograph than for Longfellow to obtain a copyright on his poetry? Why should not Bell have a patent on the telephone when Victor Hugo protects his "Notre Dame?" Is it not as right for George Westinghouse to derive a princely income from his life-saving airbrake as for Gilbert and Sullivan from their comic operas? Shall not Elihu Thomson enjoy some revenue from his new art of electric welding, as well as Bronson Howard from his "Shenandoah?" It is time that the ideas on this subject were set in the right perspective. Our inventors enjoy the benefits of the patent system because, like the novelists, the poets, the musicians and the artists, they are public benefactors. They promote the public welfare, add to the public comfort, increase the public wealth. The field of electric locomotion will be but one more opportunity to demonstrate this truth. There is no patent on the horse, but the patented electric motor can beat him on every point every day in the week.

Such then, are some of the reflections to which our subject invites us, at this early stage of its development, and there is but one other point to which after this section, I shall refer inclosing. Before I leave the electric street railway, I would again say as I said at the outset, that I am not presenting this latest application of electricity as perfect. It is not; on the contrary it is in development and improvement under our very eyes. It is endeavoring to harmonize with its environment. The questions and problems that it opens up are very much like the concentric shells of the Chinese ivory puzzle balls; and we have not yet reached their core. It has one or two family quarrels on hand. The telephone is hardly yet on speaking terms with it. But we know fairly well where the solution of each difficulty lies, and we are on the way to it. Nor am I in any sense an apologist for the shortcomings of our pioneer work. Electric railroad men have made mistakes, are making them now. That cannot be helped. Heaven save us from the men who cannot make mistakes; they will never learn. The conditions in electricity as an industry change with lightning rapidity. A Russian general once remarked of the political situation in Central Asia, that it changed every minute; and so it is in regard to the onrush and uplift of electrical discovery and enterprise. This very fact explains why much of the earlier electric railway work has been of an unfinished, unkempt kind. Mr. Charles Francis Adams, some years ago, in his interesting little work on railroads, said :- "It is a matter of curious observation that almost uniformly those early railroad builders made grave blunders, whenever they tried to do their work peculiarly well; they almost invariably had afterwards to undo it." This is not an excuse, however, for slovenly work. It is better to make blunders trying to do well than in lazily neglecting one's duty; and though it hurts a man who built for eternity to see his work ripped out in five years, he has the serene, sustaining consciousness of right effort and honorable performance. The electric street railway will the sooner achieve its social destiny if the engineering done upon it be the highest and best that the art at each instant will allow.

The topic I have reserved for brief final mention is that of electrical long-distance travel. This is the department of the subject in which imagination has not yet sobered down into invention. Our fancy still plays around the possibilities, and so far from realizing the social side of teletravel, people have not yet awakened generally to the idea that it has any serious, practical side at all. Our patriarchial poet, Whittier, expressed his surprise a month or two ago in his "Burning Driftwood," when he wrote :-

"Far more than all I dared to dream,
Unsought before my door I see;
On wings of fire and steeds of steam
The world's great wonders come to me."


The steeds of steam are now an old familiar story; but the mechanical Jay-Eye-Sees of the coming day bid fair to be those with "wings of fire;" and then our speed may be something more nearly approximating that of light. It is amusing, however, to see how quickly our generation has become accustomed to teletravel. Did not the Royal College of Bavarian Doctors seek to forbid railway travel because it would induce delirium furiosum among the passengers, and drive the spectators crazy? Did not an English quarterly say: "We would as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired from one of Congreve's rockets as to trust themselves to the mercy of a machine going at the rate of twelve miles per hour?" And did not our own General Webb in 1835, after a railroad journey, with ladies, from Boston to Providence, exclaim in horror: "To restore herself to her caste, let a lady move in select company at five miles an hour, and take her meals in comfort at a decent inn." Such alarming and conservative extracts have a familiar sound, perhaps, but I can assure you that they are positively of the ancient date mentioned and not extracts from recent New York newspapers. The fact remains that to-day we have ceased to regard a speed of 60 miles an hour in railway travel as extraordinary, and are casting about for the means with which to attain a higher rate even than 75 miles, of which record was made in 1886, on a short run. This acceleration is, it appears probable, to be found best, or only, in the use of electricity, for the reason that the electric motor may drive directly on the axles, that it need not offer much resistance to the air, or smash the track, and that it does not have to carry its own supply of fuel and water. There are men in this audience who have seen such an electric locomotive making with ease 120 miles an hour, and who propose to propel it at 180 miles an hour. If these things be so - as they are - we know that with electric teletravel, the public will have to accustom itself to strange new conditions, exceeding in scope and power those of the last fifty years. The change will come in our time, and the present telegraphic and telephonic facilities are but an education for it. When we can talk instantaneously with friends in Boston or Philadelphia over a wire, we resent the inadequacy of the means of fast and far locomotion that should enable us to meet them face to face if we wish to do so. When we see electric cars in our streets traveling easily at 15 and 20 miles an hour, and know that on a clear, unbroken, straightaway track we could go from New York to Philadelphia or Boston with the same agency and kindred apparatus, in about an hour, American ingenuity and enterprise will not rest until the thing is done. That will be the first stage in the next evolution of travel.

At the present time electric street railroads are running or building in nearly 150 of our towns and cities, with some 2,000 cars on about 1,200 miles of track. So far as urban traffic is concerned, the new departure has been made. Electric locomotion is with us, an assured fact, the most civilized form of travel, as the electric light is of illumination and the telegraph or telephone is of communication. Already over 150,000,000 nickel ballots are being cast yearly in its favor, and the welcome to it is universal. In the northwest that brand-new cable plant costing $400,000 has just been thrown aside to make room for it. In the south, it is saluted with the exclamation of the delighted darkey, - "First dey freed de negro, and now dey freed de mule." In New York we are waiting on Providence and the aldermen, but we shall not be satisfied till this city is abreast of other progressive communities in the adoption of that which has given, in so short a time, so many proofs of its ability to promote in every respect the highest social welfare of the citizen.


The address was followed by the exhibition, with the aid of the magic lantern, of over 50 views of electric roads in as many American towns and cities, and of the leading systems. These views were explained with running comment.
 
From Horse Power to Horsepower
BY ERIC MORRIS

University of California Transportation Center
Access newsletter, Spring 2007

http://www.uctc.net/access/30/Access 30 - 02 - Horse Power.pdf

Amazing article about horse economics etc. Some excerpts:
In 1898, delegates from across the globe gathered in New York City for the world’s first international urban planning conference. One topic dominated the discussion. It was not housing, land use, economic development, or infrastructure. The delegates were driven to desperation by horse manure.

The horse was no newcomer on the urban scene. But by the late 1800s, the problem of horse pollution had reached unprecedented heights. The growth in the horse population was outstripping even the rapid rise in the number of human city dwellers. American cities were drowning in horse manure as well as other unpleasant byproducts of the era’s predominant mode of transportation: urine, flies, congestion, carcasses, and traffic accidents. Widespread cruelty to horses was a form of environmental degradation as well.

The situation seemed dire. In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. One New York prognosticator of the 1890s concluded that by 1930 the horse droppings would rise to Manhattan’s third-story windows. A public health and sanitation crisis of almost unimaginable dimensions loomed.

And no possible solution could be devised. After all, the horse had been the dominant mode of transportation for thousands of years. Horses were absolutely essential for the functioning of the nineteenth century city - for personal transportation, freight haulage, and even mechanical power. Without horses, cities would quite literally starve.

All efforts to mitigate the problem were proving woefully inadequate. Stumped by the crisis, the urban planning conference declared its work fruitless and broke up in three days instead of the scheduled ten.


SADDLED WITH THE URBAN HORSE
The horse pollution problem was not a new one. Julius Caesar banned horse-drawn carts from ancient Rome between dawn and dusk in an effort to curb gridlock, noise, accidents, and other unpleasant byproducts of the urban equine.


Nearly every item shipped by rail needed to be collected and distributed by horses at both ends of the journey. So as rail shipments boomed, so did shipments by horse. Ironically, railroads tended to own the largest fleets of horses in nineteenth-century cities.

This situation was made even worse by the introduction of the horse into an area from which it had been conspicuously absent: personal intra-urban transportation. Prior to the nineteenth century, cities were traversed almost exclusively on foot. Mounted riders in US cities were uncommon, and due to their expense, slow speeds, and jarring rides, private carriages were rare; in 1761, only eighteen families in the colony of Pennsylvania (population 250,000) owned one. The hackney cab, ancestor of the modern taxi, was priced far beyond the means of the ordinary citizen.

This changed with the introduction of the omnibus in the 1820s. Essentially large stage coaches traveling fixed routes, these vehicles were reasonably priced enough to cater to a much larger swathe of the urban population. By 1853 New York omnibuses carried 120,000 passengers per day. Needless to say, this required a tremendous number of horses, given that a typical omnibus line used eleven horses per vehicle per day. And the need for horses was to spiral even further when omnibuses were placed on tracks, increasing their speeds by fifty percent and doubling the load a horse could pull. Fares dropped again, and passengers clamored for the new service. By 1890 New Yorkers took 297 horsecar rides per capita per year.


MAKING HAY: FEEDING THE URBAN HORSE
The consequences of the horse population boom were sobering. While the horse may be a charming and even romantic animal, when packed into already teeming and unsanitary cities its environmental byproducts created an intolerable situation.

Horses need to eat. According to one estimate each urban horse probably consumed on the order of 1.4 tons of oats and 2.4 tons of hay per year. One contemporary British farmer calculated that each horse consumed the product of five acres of land, a footprint which could have produced enough to feed six to eight people. Probably fifteen million acres were needed to feed the urban horse population at its zenith, an area about the size of West Virginia. Directly or indirectly, feeding the horse meant placing new land under cultivation, clearing it of its natural animal life and vegetation, and sometimes diverting water to irrigate it, with considerable negative effects on the natural ecosystem.

And what goes in must come out. Experts of the day estimated that each horse produced between fifteen and thirty pounds of manure per day. For New York and Brooklyn, which had a combined horse population of between 150,000 and 175,000 in 1880 (long before the horse population reached its peak), this meant that between three and four million pounds of manure were deposited on city streets and in city stables every day. Each horse also produced about a quart of urine daily, which added up to around 40,000 gallons per day for New York and Brooklyn.

The aesthetics of the situation require little editorial comment. Horse droppings were not only unsightly but their stench was omnipresent in the nineteenth-century city. Urban streets were minefields that needed to be navigated with the greatest care. “Crossing sweepers” stood on street corners; for a fee they would clear a path through the mire for pedestrians. Wet weather turned the streets into swamps and rivers of muck, but dry weather brought little improvement; the manure turned to dust, which was then whipped up by the wind, choking pedestrians and coating buildings. Municipal street cleaning services across the country were woefully inadequate.

Moreover, thanks to the skyrocketing horse population, even when it had been removed from the streets the manure piled up faster than it could be disposed of. Manure makes fine fertilizer, and an active manure trade existed in the nineteenth-century city. However, as the century wore on the surge in the number of horses caused the bottom to fall out of this market; while early in the century farmers were happy to pay good money for the manure, by the end of the 1800s stable owners had to pay to have it carted off. As a result of this glut (which became particularly severe in summer months when farmers were unable to leave their crops to collect the dung), vacant lots in cities across America became piled high with manure; in New York these sometimes rose to forty and even sixty feet. Needless to say, these were not particularly beloved by the inhabitants of the nineteenth-century city.


Data from Chicago show that in 1916 there were 16.9 horse-related fatalities for each 10,000 horse-drawn vehicles; this is nearly seven times the city’s fatality rate per auto in 1997.


In addition, horses often fell, on average once every hundred miles of travel. When this took place, the horse (weighing on average 1,300 pounds) would have to be helped to its feet, which was no mean feat. If injured badly, a fallen horse would be shot on the spot or simply abandoned to die, creating an obstruction that clogged streets and brought traffic to a halt. Dead horses were extremely unwieldy, and although special horse removal vehicles were employed, the technology of the era could not easily move such a burden. As a result, street cleaners often waited for the corpses to putrefy so they could more easily be sawed into pieces and carted off. Thus the corpses rotted in the streets, sometimes for days, with less than appealing consequences for traffic circulation, aesthetics, and public health.


Due to the costs of feeding the animals and stabling them on expensive urban land, it made financial sense to rapidly work a small number of horses to death rather than care for a larger group and work them more humanely. As a result, horses were rapidly driven to death; the average streetcar horse had a life expectancy of barely two years. In 1880, New York carted away nearly 15,000 dead equines from its streets, a rate of 41 per day.


As difficult as it may be to believe for the modern observer, at the time the private automobile was widely hailed as an environmental savior. In the span of two decades, technology eradicated a major urban planning nightmare that had strained governments to the breaking point, vexed the media, tormented the citizenry, and brought society to the brink of despair. Yet, given the environmental problems that the automobile has brought, it is worth asking: was this a Faustian bargain?
 

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Headlines of the Past!
Trolley Cars Collide
by Brooklyn Eagle (edit@brooklyneagle.net), published online 07-20-2011

The following report was published in the Brooklyn Eagle on July 20, 1901:
Trolley Cars Collide

“A small trolley accident at Bergen Beach last night when the rush for that cool spot was on, stirred up a whole lot of excitement for a time and led to the circulation of rumors that several lines had been lost. Flatbush Avenue car No. 2,628 had just passed the corner of East 75th Street and Avenue W, when it slowed up. The motorman of Nostrand Avenue car No. 1,667, crowded with people, didn't stop in time, and there was a crash.

“The air was quickly filled with shrieks of frightened women and the shouts of men, who were trying to avert a panic. Four people were found to be injured by the rear-end collision, but all of them refused medical assistance, although an ambulance call was turned in as soon as the news of the accident reached the Bergen Beach Company.

“The injured gave their names as follows: Mrs. Louis Myers, 77 Seminary Avenue, Rabway, NJ; Richard J. Foss, 1,371 Broadway; James Haviland, 39 Cornelia Street; Charles Fritz, 332 Ellery Street. Neither of the cars was badly damaged by the force of the collision.”

The first electric trolley ride in Brooklyn was on April 19, 1890. The new method of transport allowed people to travel to all corners of the city on the cheap. By 1919, there were 40 different trolley lines in Brooklyn, an abundance that inspired the nickname “trolley dodgers” for Brooklynites (a certain famous baseball team took this as their name and then shortened it to simply The Dodgers).

But the electric lines quickly proved more dangerous and accident-prone than their horse-drawn predecessors. In 1893, subway commissioners called for safety measures to be applied to the new lines, such as speed limits. There was public debate over the trolley system and its dangers versus its advantages. Who was responsible when people were struck and killed by the trolleys? The operators? The owners of the companies?

A dramatic broadside published in 1894 was titled “Crop Of Murders,” with the image of 17 little coffins representing the people that had been killed by trolleys that year. In 1895, the Eagle ran a story headlined “Must Be Stopped: Trolley Death List Is Too Long.”

Electricity was still relatively new, and people were amazed but wary of its powers. In a letter to the Eagle in 1892, when the electric lines were not yet widely in use, one reader wrote, “Electricity should never be used. It is too dangerous, but monopoly desires it. The monopolists will not govern it themselves. No insulation can prevent its power. It goes through iron and earth like the lightning from the sky. I would never build a house in Brooklyn if the trolley system were accepted.”

Trolleys faded from our streetscape in the 1950s, when city buses became the favored method of aboveground public transit, even though they were (and are) probably even more deadly than trolleys. And there was certainly never a beloved baseball team named ‘The Bus Catchers.’
 
Harold Lloyd shows us how it's done in 1928...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkqz3lpUBp0
[youtube]lkqz3lpUBp0[/youtube]

These are scenes from his 1928 movie "Speedy". From here:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/mobile/m/speedy/
Speedy_1928.jpg
Harold Lloyd, Ann Christy
In theaters Apr 07, 1928
Unrated, 1 hr. 11 min.

Cast:Harold Lloyd, Ann Christy, Bert Woodruff, Brooks Benedict, Ernie S. Adams, James Bradbury Jr, Josephine Crowell, Jimmie Dime, Byron Douglas, Bobby Dunn

Director: Ted Wilde

Rated: Unrated
Running Time: 1 hr. 11 min.
Genre: Action & Adventure, Comedy
Theater Release: Apr 07, 1928

Synopsis:This was comedian Harold Lloyd's last silent film, and one of his most charming. Lloyd's character here is called Harold "Speedy" Swift, an upbeat young man whose fatal attraction for baseball always causes him to lose his jobs. After his latest firing, he impulsively spends a day at Coney Island with his sweetheart, Jane Dillon (Ann Christy). Ann's grandfather, Pop Dillon (Bert Woodruff), meanwhile, has a dilemma -- he runs the last horse-drawn trolley in New York City, and the railway magnates desperately want his route. Since Pop won't sell it to them, they plan to get it by underhanded means. Pop must make his rounds at least once every 24 hours, so the magnates hire thugs to stop him. Speedy hears about this plan and, being gainfully unemployed, takes over the route to protect the old man. But the magnates then steal the trolley, and the climax of the film involves Speedy's dash to find the trolley and get it back to its route before the 24 hours are up. He makes it just in time and then forces the magnates to buy the route for a cool 100,000 dollars. This picture was shot on location in a Manhattan that now looks almost quaint for all its concrete and steel. Baseball legend Babe Ruth had a cameo role, playing himself as a very harassed fare when Speedy is working as a cabbie. Their wild ride ends at the old Yankee Stadium. Other historically interesting sites include Coney Island's Luna Park, and Columbus Circle and Wall Street as they were in 1928. In the film's climax, the trolley has a spectacular crash at the Brooklyn Bridge -- this accident was not planned, but was left in the film anyhow. At the time of this picture's release, Lloyd was a top box-office draw, a bigger moneymaker than Charlie Chaplin (whose releases during the '20s was infrequent) and Buster Keaton (whose quirky comedy wouldn't be fully appreciated for several decades). While Lloyd made some fairly amusing sound films, he never again matched the quality of his silent work.
~ Janiss Garza, Rovi
 
Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England
1889

Report on the Implements Exhibited at Windsor, 1889.
By Thos. H. Thursfield, F.S.I., Reporting Judge.

No part of the Jubilee Show of the Royal Agricultural Society, held under the presidency of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor in 1889, more fully exemplifies the great progress and the wonderful development of agriculture during the fifty years' life of the Society, than does the Implement and Machinery Department...

The Electric Carriage (Art. 1175), exhibited by Messrs. Immisch & Co., of Maiden Electric Works, Kentish Town, London, N.W., is a facsimile of the one supplied to His Majesty the Sultan of Turkey, and is constructed to carry four persons. The electric motor is an "Immisch" one horse-power machine, the power being transmitted to the carriage wheels through suitable gearing placed under the body of the vehicle. The energy which drives the motor is stored in thirty accumulators of the E.P.S. type, containing sufficient power to run the carriage at a speed of ten miles per hour. The steering arrangements are extremely simple, and an ordinary foot-brake is also provided, which can be operated by the driver. A switch-box placed immediately in front of the driver enables the speed to be varied according to circumstances. The carriage was charged and was then tried by Sir Jacob Wilson and others, as well as by the Judges, in the Show-yard. It was easily managed and steered, but seemed, with a full complement of passengers, too heavy for the power available, and it would appear that the weight of the accumulators requires to be materially reduced in proportion to the power developed.

Sultans electric trike mentioned before here:
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=8099&start=362
file.php


...except the Sultans carriage from the year before was described as only "twenty-four small accumulators" versus thirty at Windsor so if all in series it seems Immisch might have bumped up the volts 25% in the interim. But one HP still sucked for a heavy trike with four passengers...
:cry:

1oCk
 
The Crystal Button
Or, Adventures of Paul Prognosis in the Forty-Ninth Century

by Chauncey Thomas
1891

Editors Preface
OPEN LETTER TO THE PUBLISHERS.


Dear Sirs:- For three months past, the undersigned has been engaged in the pleasant task of editing, for a Boston gentleman, the manuscript of a novel entitled "The Crystal Button, or Adventures of Paul Prognosis in the Forty-Ninth Century," which may perhaps commend itself as a fitting companion-piece to Mr. Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward."

Of course, neither author nor editor has any idea that it will rival that remarkable production; but, in many ways, it helps to supplement with details the same general picture of future possibilities that Mr. Bellamy has so skillfully and attractively painted.

Permit me to state briefly that the present imaginative work, of which the accompanying table of contents will give some idea, was written many years ago by the well-known coach-builder of Boston. The thought was to foreshadow the future possibilities of mechanical and material development; and the work of authorship was entered upon as a means of diversion from the cares of business.

The original manuscript, now before me, shows that it was begun in 1872, and that the author wrote the closing page on February 9, 1878. The slight story, now cut in two and used as "Introduction" and "Conclusion," was written somewhat later, but bears no date.

About the year 1880, the author showed me this manuscript, and asked advice whether it was suitable for publication in book form. I read it with great interest, but reported that, in my humble opinion, it needed and well merited somewhat more finish, and also required to be sustained by some sort of narrative. It is to be feared that this report served to shelve it, for I heard nothing more about it until I read Mr. Bellamy's book in August of last year, when its remarkable similarity in general scheme to that of " The Crystal Button" led me to request an opportunity to re-read the latter. As a result of correspondence that followed, the author expressed willingness to make it public, providing I would undertake the work of rearranging and editing it, which agreeable task is now approaching a finish.

I believe it to be a good book, in every way helpful and stimulating, decidely practical in many of its suggestions, and covering a great variety of topics that seem to me to appeal to the interests of large classes of readers.

Its chief defect, if such it may be called, is the fact, already stated, that its general scheme so closely resembles that of Mr.Bellamy's book that it would be difficult to convince the public of its priority, - a task I should shrink from undertaking, although I know it to be a fact. It is unfortunate that its scene should likewise be laid in Boston; but there seems no sufficient justification for an editor's attempting to change the locality, especially in view of the danger of complicating numerous references that might easily be made inexplicable.

On the other hand, the author departs from Mr.Bellamy's track by dealing mainly with mechanical and material development, as the table of contents clearly shows; and just here he naturally possesses originality and strength, being one of the ablest mechanics and inventors that the American coach trade has thus far produced. It is only near the close, in the chapters entitled "Law," "Government," and "Money," that he enters Mr. Bellamy's field, and he does so by cross-paths. To the suggestion that the introduction of certain notes in passing might help to emphasize or supplement some of Mr. Bellamy's views, the author has not only prohibited this, but also requested the removal, so far as possible, of everything in his original manuscript that might suggest parallelism with any ideas presented in "Looking Backward," although, at the same time, he expresses general approval of the ideas therein advanced.

In the judgment of the editor, however, the all-important point of the present book is its theory of the simple but effective means by which the world finally attains the high level of the new civilization, which is described through the teachings of a reformer known as John Costor, whose text is ever "Truth! Truth!" It is Costor's emblem, the crystal button, that very fittingly gives the title to the book. Upon this foundation of truth, exerting its benign influence in wholly peaceful ways through the instrumentality of the individual, the family, social life, the arts, the government, and finally through the grand consolidation of all governments, he erects the pillars of his ideal state. Whatever Socialism and Nationalism may or may not accomplish, this lesson of truth-loving and truth-observing is certainly a kind of seed that can hardly fail to produce good fruit, whatever the soil on which it may chance to alight. In this, as you will observe, consists the moral force of the book.

Please pardon the length of this letter, but I feel desirous to do my duty, as far as I am able, in adequately introducing the work to your attention; and, with your permission, it will give me pleasure to submit the manuscript to you as soon as it is completed.

Very respectfully yours,

George Houghton.
Yonkers, New York, February 10, 1890.



CHAPTER XXIII

The Transcontinental Railway.


"For variety," said Marco, "we will return to the city by one of these electric road-carriages, which is likely to be quite as swift as the aerial car, and we shall then have an opportunity to inspect the transcontinental railway line. I am sure that will interest you, for it is based on a principle which was only entertained as a vague theory in your century. And, if we lose no time, we shall be able to take a glimpse of the evening train as it shoots by."

"By all means, then, let us hasten."

"The electric carriage must hasten for us. The road to the city from this point is one of the best, and there are no restrictions as to speed, so our driver will be able to show you the possibilities of his machine."

With these words, Marco called a carriage, explained to the driver that he wished to be at a certain point at a certain time; and, without an instant's delay, they coursed down Meridian Peak and into one of the great boulevards leading toward the city, which blazed and glistened in the afternoon sun-glow.

Meanwhile the carriage itself attracted Paul's attention, by reason of its simplicity and beauty, and the surprising ease with which it glided along the level highway. In form, the body was not unlike that of the primitive coupe, giving accommodation to two passengers inside, while the driver occupied an outer and elevated seat at the rear, after the style of the Hansom cab. The source of power was invisible; and, judging by the attitude of the driver, the means of applying it was well-nigh automatic. Marco explained that the electric battery was snugly packed under the seat they occupied, and that the supply of power was equal to about a day's travel with their present load and under the favorable conditions of the road before them.

"And about what speed are we now making?"

"The driver can tell us, as a dial before him keeps that fact constantly recorded, so that he can time himself to make any given distance with the greatest accuracy."

An inquiry addressed to the driver brought the response that, while coasting down the hillside, they had for a short space made a record of twenty-one and one tenth miles per hour, but that this was now reduced to eighteen and four tenths.

Marco further explained that the body and wheels of the vehicle were composed entirely of metal; but such was the accuracy of adjustment that not the slightest sound was heard, excepting the firm, even roll of the wheels as if they clung to a metal track, and the occasional peal of a musical bell as they approached a crossroad or a vehicle going less rapidly than they. The danger of collision was greatly reduced by the fact that all vehicles approaching the city were divided from those outward-bound by a double row of elms inclosing three middle paths for pedestrians, bicycles, and saddle-horses; so that speed was seldom slackened excepting at some of the great crossways.

"So horses are allowed here."

"Yes, we are still outside the city limits."

Between the towering Pyramids they soon swept; down the incline toward the river, alive with gay water-craft; over the Old Bridge, populous with statues; and then, by a swift curve, under the porte-cochere of the railway station, where they learned that the evening express was due in two minutes and a quarter. The station-master showed them an indicator in his office, on which the approaching train was shown by an index finger; and, at the same moment, alarm bells began to sound along the roadways. The window of the station was thrown up, and they looked out to see the track.

"But I see no track!" exclaimed the astonished spectator.

"I will explain that later," said Marco. "Here comes the train!"

There was a flash - a glisten - a slight suspension of breath and dizziness as the air seemed caught from the lungs - a little puff of dust - and it was gone!

"Is that a railway train which passed," gasped Paul, "or a whirlwind?"

"That," - answered the station-master, smiling at the visitor's surprise, "is our regular evening express, which will land its passengers within sound of the Pacific's waves in twenty-four hours from now."

"And now about the track."

"Before we look at that," said Marco, "I want to propose that we visit the main station and car-shops, where you will have an opportunity to examine the rolling-stock. My object in pausing here was simply to show you a train under full speed."

They therefore re-entered their carriage, took another short course, obtained a permit and a guide, and were conducted into a spacious car-house, where several trains stood side by side.

At first glance, Paul thought each train was continuous from end to end, and it was practically so, although there were provisions for disconnecting its parts and lengthening or shortening it according to the demands of custom. Each train was several hundred feet in length, and the entrance doors were at the sides.

While he stood looking at them, a bell struck, and one of these solid trains moved slowly and smoothly past him, gradually attaining speed, and with such silent celerity that Paul stared after it in dumb amazement as it vanished in the far distance.

"What kind of wheels, what kind of axles, and what kind of roadways have you, to admit of speed like that?" asked Paul; "and what speed is it possible for you to attain?"

"To answer your last question first," said the guide, "our fastest trains travel at the rate of three degrees of longitude [over two hundred miles] per hour. The rails, wheels, journals, and boxes are all either solid, or cased with hardened steel, and are perfectly true."

"I see," said Paul excitedly, - "I see that this is an age of perfection, and that, with the perfect mechanism you have to deal with, you can easily and safely make somewhat over four times the speed we used to boast of. Why not? We did well to accomplish what we did, over the rough jounces of our crooked rails and decaying wooden sleepers. But your track? I have not yet seen any track. I see only these fences, - what is the purpose of these fences?"

"They are the tracks," said the guide, solemnly eying the visitor, as if he did not quite understand the cause of his surprise.

Paul advanced and asked: "On which side of this fence was the train that has just left us?"

"It was on both sides," said Marco, laughing; "in fact, it was astride of this fence. It is simply a single-track railway."

Upon examining the single rail on top of the supposed fence, Paul found that it consisted of a number of steel bars, placed on edge and bolted together by lapping joints so as to make it continuous, and fixed in a grooved capping of cast-iron, all being planed and fitted with the greatest nicety. The lower part of the fence-like support of the rail proper was extremely strong and stiff, having a wide base and being bolted to a solid stone foundation.

Paul walked around the front end of one of the "transports," as he noticed the guide called these trains, and found it to be pointed like the prow of a boat, and the lower part cleft to the height of the rail, which latter was about six feet above the foundation. On the top of the transport was a longitudinal projection, like the inverted keel of a boat, or still more like the dorsal fin of an eel. "This covers the wheels," said Paul to himself, "and the axles are across the top, or probably under the framework of the top." On questioning the guide, he found this to be the case.

"These transports, as you see, are very light structures," said Marco, "great weight having been found inconsistent with great speed."

"I believe you are right," said Paul; "yet in my day we had night cars weighing over thirty tons each, whose carrying capacity was only fifteen passengers, or two tons of dead weight to each passenger carried; while, at the same time, we had cars of only one twentieth that weight which easily carried the same number of passengers and their luggage over the roughest roads. I suppose," he continued, "that a train on a double-track road could hardly be made to attain the high speed that has been named."

"No," answered Marco, "for experience showed that they were liable to jump the tracks, or do something else that was undesirable. You see, this is no experiment. Centuries ago, it was settled that the use of a single track was the only practicable means of combining speed and safety. By this arrangement, the weight is disposed on either side and below the top of the rail, for the transport bestrides its support just as a rider does his horse, thus giving a maximum degree of stability and safety."

"I should think curves, turnouts, and drawbridges would cause trouble."

"So they would," said Marco, "if we had them; but the rail for a fast line has no curves, and no breaks excepting at terminal stations, where all transfer ways are placed. No switches are ever used on the fast lines."

"A very wise precaution, too," said Paul. "Those old switches we used to tolerate had a multitude of crimes to answer for. But how do you prevent the overhanging sides of this transport from rubbing and grinding against the ironwork below the rail? It must sometimes be 'out of trim,' as we would say of a boat; and this transport is really more like a boat than like any rail-car I have ever before seen."

"Look underneath here," said Marco, "and you will readily understand how that is avoided. Here are horizontal wheels, which rest against the sides of the iron support. When speed is attained, these wheels separate a little, by an arrangement worked by the swift passage of air through the clefts dividing the two parts of the transport. Thus they come into action only when the motion is slow, as in starting or slowing up. Moreover, as you doubtless know, great velocity insures stability. A body moving with swiftness shows no tendency to oscillation. And here again, on the roof, is another device intended to preserve the proper poise. It works automatically. You see this longitudinal rib on top, which covers the wheels. It looks smooth and continuous, but it is, in fact, cut out in various places between the wheels, and these cut-out sections are mounted on upright shafts and turned to the right or left as the car tilts, however little that may be; and the swift current of air, striking these rudders, helps further to keep the transport vertical and steady. If you were to ride in one, I think you would be surprised to find how perfectly this quality of steadiness has been attained."

"No doubt, no doubt! Indeed, I am now ready to believe that the generations of masterminds that have dealt with these questions since my day have removed all difficulties which puzzled railway managers in my time. Yet these points cannot but present themselves to my mind, and suggest questions. For instance, supposing the engineer should forget to apply the brakes at the proper time, I should think, in case of a smash-up, that a transport and its passengers would be demolished beyond recognition."

"Unquestionably," answered Marco; "but we do not throw as much responsibility on human agency as you were accustomed to do. We supplement man's powers by every possible mechanical contrivance. These brakes all act automatically. Whenever the transport approaches a point on the road where a regular stop is to be made, the brakes are thrown into action by an attachment to the track, or, rather, to the frame that supports it. A long, swelled projection on the frame actuates an arm on the transport, and thereby throws on the brakes and shuts off the steam at the same instant. This, of course, applies only to regular stopping-places. In case of emergency, the engineer uses his judgment, but we leave as little to his judgment as possible."

"I suppose it is all right," said Paul, "but we used to have an idiom to the effect that 'accidents will happen in the best regulated families,' the truth of which we frequently exemplified; and I should think such speed would be fruitful of disaster. Imagine another train coming in contact with it from behind, as was not uncommon in the early days of railroading; why, not a person in either transport could escape instant annihilation."

"That can never happen," said Marco, "for the positions of all transports are known at all times all along the line; and in case one made a stop from any unexpected cause, every other would be immediately notified by telegraph, and none would be allowed to leave a station unless the track were open to the next principal station."

"That is a good arrangement. Yet I should still expect trouble of some kind would result from such speed. I should expect, for instance, that the wheels would sometimes fly in pieces, and come crashing through the middle wall into the passengers' quarters."

"All I can say is that it does not happen. Of course, every possible precaution is adopted. The wheels are of the best quality of steel forgings, and no more liable to break than a circular saw, which can safely be run at double the speed."

"I should suppose, also," continued Paul, "that engines heavy enough to drive these carriages could hardly be worked fast enough to turn the wheels at the required speed without great loss."

"A very good point," replied Marco, "but I will answer it by showing you the engine itself."

Walking down to the middle of the transport by which they were standing, they entered the engineer's compartment, and Paul soon perceived how this difficulty was overcome. High overhead were the axles of the great driving-wheels. These axles were provided, not with cranks, but with gears. The gears were rather small-toothed, very small and bright, broad-faced, and arranged in pairs, two wheels being placed side by side, the teeth not corresponding in position. The crank-shaft, which passed through from side to side in the space between the tread of the driving-wheels, carried two pairs of crown wheels and engaged the four pairs of pinion wheels on the axles above. The speeding-up was about three to one. The steam cylinders were horizontal, and placed as near the middle of the shaft as possible. All the arrangements were very beautiful, and they commended themselves to Paul's practiced eye as perfection realized.

"Well," said Marco, as his companion completed his survey, "what do you think of it?"

"I think," said Paul, "as a jockey might, after inspecting a famous horse, - 'it looks as if it had ninety in it.' But do you find no difficulty in starting these engines?"

"We probably should," answered the young engineer, "but we avoid that liability by employing an auxiliary starter, worked by compressed air, which gives it a good send-off. The engine is perfectly capable of making a start from a standing position, but it would be a little slow."

"I understand. Now, one thing more, if you please, and if time will allow. I should like very much to see something of your system of electric signals. I shall probably not be able to comprehend them, but even a glance at them would interest me, because I have given considerable attention to that subject."

They walked toward the manager's office, and as they did so, Paul watched the great transfer platform slowly moving the transports into position for starting. He also saw another of these movable sections of the road in a monster turntable, waiting to receive one of the transports, which, like a land steamer, was gradually swinging about, as if at her dock.

Upon entering the office, the young man directed Paul's attention to a long case, which had a double slide in front, and a metallic back on which were engraved the names of cities.

"There," said Marco, "this represents the length of road from here to Megothem, two hundred miles or an hour's distance from here. These are the names of the stations along the road, and these little moving objects represent the precise positions of all the transports now en route, either going or coming. Whenever a stop is made by any one of them, a gong is sounded, and this signal is repeated when it starts again. The manager, by a glance, can thus keep the run of things as speedily and accurately as he can tell the time of day by looking at the clock."

"We used a similar device in connection with our passenger elevators in buildings," said Paul, "so I can readily understand how the principle might be extended and applied in this case. It is excellent. Has the manager also some means of communicating with the trains while in transit?"

"Oh, certainly. Each transport is in telegraphic connection with every station on the line, so that messages can be passed to and fro whenever desirable."

"Good, very good! And the result is" - "No accidents," broke in Marco, "and no opportunity for accidents."


CHAPTER XXIV.

Mount Energy.


"Now, then," said Marco, "prepare to be again surprised, and supremely so, by a sight of what we call 'Mount Energy.'"

A further short course in the electric carriage brought them to the outskirts of the city, where they alighted at the foot of a rocky hill; and on its brow Paul beheld a lofty rampart or tower of stone, circular in form and more than two thousand feet in diameter, surmounted by what appeared to be a naval display of tall-masted vessels, sailing in stately procession around the margin of its summit. "Well, well!" exclaimed Paul, "I don't understand at all what this means."

"This," said Marco, "is one of many similar towers from which we mainly derive our mechanical power, aud this is the largest. Here is where we produce the compressed air that moves our cars and drives our machinery; here are located the electric generators that give us light; and here we separate hydrogen from water, that it may be used for warming our houses in winter and cooking our food. These processes are chiefly performed by power caught directly from the winds. Mind you, we no longer look upon the winds of heaven as uncontrollable and pitiless forces that are to be feared and shunned. We invite their cooperation; and, with a little ingenuity in handling them, they have become very docile and helpful friends."

"I see, — you have tamed our eagles into domestic fowls. But do you not find them rather inconstant? I should suppose that their wings would often be becalmed, and that your machinery would soon stop."

"That is where the ingenuity comes in," said Marco. "Like most other difficulties, this one is not insurmountable, as you will soon see. But before I try to explain, let us walk up the incline leading to the working level, and there you will be able to see and understand for yourself most of the appliances that are employed."

The terraced road before them, after reaching the summit of the hill, entered a long arched roadway or sloping bridge that led to the top of the wall, where an arched opening gave entrance to the interior. They slowly climbed this steep incline, stopping frequently to take breath, and also to enjoy the charming panoramic view of the contrasted scenes of city and country life by which they were surrounded. Out of the sunshine they then passed through the topmost arch and last tunnel, that led through a solid wall thirty or forty feet in thickness, into the midst of the animated scene of the interior. Paul was fully prepared to be surprised, but the reality far surpassed his expectations.

The entire roof of the vast tower was slowly revolving above their heads like a horizontal wheel. At intervals between the circumference and centre were lines of iron framework, forming circles within each other, and these frames supported a great number of wheels on which the roof rested and revolved. Attached to the iron frames and operated by the wheels were innumerable condensing engines, and other strange-looking contrivances that Marco explained were electric generators and hydrogen liberators. Upon inquiry, they learned that, as the breeze blowing was moderate, only one fourth the entire number of machines were at present connected; but that, with a high wind, all could easily be pushed to their full capacity, and the amount of work they accomplished, as exhibited by tables of figures, was beyond the power of Paul's mind to grasp at once.

"Before we go up on deck," said Marco, "I may as well explain the principal features of this wind apparatus. You noticed the solidity of the wall through which we entered. Well, on top of this wall is a circular canal, extending around the whole structure. Floating in this canal is an annular vessel, nearly filling it, which carries the principal weight of the deck that covers the entire area, and also the weight of the masts, sails, and rigging. The wheels on which the deck rests help incidentally to support it, but are mainly employed in accumulating and transmitting the power."

While Marco thus spoke, the visitors reached the great central shaft, around which curved a stairway, and this they followed until they stepped through an opening at the top and stood in the midst of the revolving platform, surrounded by sunshine and the flash of white sails. In the centre arose an iron tower or mainstay, that seemed to pierce the clouds; while around the rim of the deck, at regular intervals of one hundred feet, stood the masts, uniform in height, and much higher than the mainmasts of the largest ships. Sixty of these masts completed the circle. They were held firmly in position by stays radiating from the iron tower, and also by stays extending from one to another and to projecting spars resembling bowsprits. Each mast was provided with a double series of booms, swinging both inwardly and outwardly, the lower ones being very long, while those at the top were shortened like the yards of a square-rigged ship. On these swinging booms were arranged the sails, which opened and closed like the wings of a butterfly, trimming themselves automatically to catch the faintest breeze. Paul could easily see that the strength of the masts, sails, and rigging was calculated to withstand the most furious gale, and that no reefing was ever necessary. The great circular ship was always in working order, day or night, blow high or blow low, without the need of ever calling poor Jack to tumble up and spread or shorten sail.

Paul gazed without speaking upon the great white wings as they swept noiselessly, but irresistibly, around the grand circle. He felt small and weak as he contemplated the proportions of this marvelous work of human hands, and estimated the enormous horse-power it must represent. "There is really a sort of majesty about it," he finally ejaculated.

"I think so, too," said Marco, "and I often pay a visit here to get nerved up, as it were."

"I begin," added Paul, "to see the significance of all this. In the rapid succession of unaccustomed sensations I have experienced during the past two days, I have had little time for thought; but I can vaguely feel rather than understand what this means. The world's coal-fields are no doubt exhausted, and you have no fuel for either steam-power or heating purposes. Consequently, you are obliged to resort to this mode of obtaining power through the medium of compressed air, and to this mode of securing heat through hydrogen and light through electricity. All are produced here, and the power that produces them is that of the winds."

"You are a keen observer, sir," said Marco, "but not altogether correct in your premises. As a matter of fact, our coal supply is not yet exhausted, but vast quantities have been wasted, and we never allow ourselves to use coal for producing power so long as we can conveniently substitute wind or falling water, and our steam is mainly produced by the heat of the sun's rays."

"Steam by the sun's rays?" said Paul inquiringly. "Ah, that was Ericsson's prophecy. But have you really learned how to secure useful work from the sun?"

"Yes, indeed," rejoined Marco. "In the long, hot days of summer, when the winds are light, it is a powerful auxiliary, on which we have learned to depend. We no longer complain of hot weather: we know it means cheap power, that will be carefully stored and prove invaluable in a thousand ways. The sun apparatus is at work to-day, and, if you are ready, we will immediately visit it. It covers the south wall of this structure, and we can descend by this elevator directly to the works."

"One more question, first," said Paul. "I see you have two strings to your bow for the production of energy; but supposing wind and sun both fail to lend their shoulders to your work, as they must at times, what then happens?"

"The same as usual," answered Marco. "Everything proceeds; nothing stands still. We merely make a draft on the surplus energy we always keep on storage, which is intended to be sufficient for at least a full month's supply without assistance from any other source. The supply has never yet been exhausted."

"How can you store sufficient compressed air to meet such a requirement, and where do you store it?"

"Storage is not difficult. For instance, the wall that supports these upper works is a vast water cistern, which is sunk far below the surface of the ground; and resting upon the water is the air-receiver, which is of the full size of the interior space. This is open at the bottom, and rises as the air is forced into it. It has a vertical range of one hundred feet, and is loaded to maintain a pressure of three atmospheres. It is not an open inverted cistern, but is formed like a honeycomb of upright hexagonal cells, and these cells communicate with each other by openings near the top, so that the pressure is equal and constant."

As Marco spoke, he drew Paul toward the elevator; the door opened, and they took their seats in the car, which rapidly descended.

"I see," said Paul; but he said the words a little dubiously.


CHAPTER XXV.

The Solar Steam-Works.


At the bottom of the elevator shaft, Paul and Marco entered the engine-room of the Solar Steam-Works: this extension to the main structure was crescent-shaped, and extended from the southeast to the southwest, covering about a third of the main wall. The floor was occupied by a long line of powerful steam-engines, following the curve of the wall, all vigorously, but noiselessly, at work.

"The heating apparatus," said Marco, "which is the chief attraction for us, is on the floor above; and if we ascend by the eastern entrance, we shall see it to the best advantage, as the sun is now on the west side."

Passing up a spiral stairway, they entered directly into the steam-generating room, and Paul experienced still another novel sensation. Some moments passed before he was able to collect his faculties and intelligently observe what was going on about him. He then saw that, on the side opposite the main wall, was a cavernous horizontal recess, walled with white fire-brick, and within this recess a perfect network of pipes. This pipe cavern extended all around the outer inclosure, while the wall above the brickwork, and also the roof of the great crescent extension, were composed entirely of glass, the height being the same as that of the main structure, namely, two hundred feet, with width about the same. Paul next noticed that the main wall was entirely covered by mirrors, all so adjusted in frames that they were made to catch and reflect the sun's rays directly into the cavern below and upon the pipes, which he now understood were intended to answer the place of boilers; the movements were automatic, turning with the sun, and all that were now exposed cast their quota of rays full into the boiler recess. The effect of the flood of light which, at first glance, seemed to radiate from the boilers to the mirrors, was dazzling beyond description, and it was difficult for Paul to conceive that the blazing interior of the boiler receptacles was not really a bed of live coals. Marco explained how the morning sun illuminated one half of the mirrors, how the noon sun illuminated both halves, and how the present afternoon sun again expended itself on one half.

"It is much easier than you might at first suppose," said Marco, "to thus generate steam from the sun's rays, the heat being directly applied to a much larger heating surface than could be reached by fire."

"Yes; but the degree of heat thus accumulated is what I most marvel at."

"That is merely a matter of mathematics. We have only to catch and convert into power the solar heat falling upon an area ten feet square, - that is, one hundred square feet, - and we secure energy equal to the force of five or six horses. The power placed within our reach by the sun's rays and the winds is, you see, exhaustless, and equal to every need of man in the way of motive and mechanical force. But I should add that both these sources of power, limitless as they are, would be of little practical use to us without the medium of compressed air through which we make the application. In your day, you had little conception of what a wonderful agent of usefulness you held dormant in compressed air. It is always ready for work, and it waits our pleasure though unused for years. When needed, we have only to turn a valve, and this willing servant instantly answers our summons. With equal facility it turns the delicate little rotaries for the lightest task, or the immense engines employed in our factories and forging works. It is ready for the jeweler's blowpipe, or for the blast furnace. It cools and purifies the chamber of the invalid, or blows the organ, or dries vaults and cellars. In innumerable ways, it is now an indispensable helper."

"I can understand that," said Paul; "and I can also understand one important advantage it possesses as compared with steam. With steampower the fire needs constant attention as well as the boiler. Moreover, to be effectual, - to say nothing about being economical, - it must be operated constantly during working hours. It must oftentimes, therefore, be in active service for long periods, and at considerable expense for fuel and care, when there is no work for it to do. I can understand that, with compressed air, supplied by a system of pipes, there is no call for constant attention, but it is always on duty when needed, and can be shut off the moment it has filled that need."

"Moreover," continued Marco, "a further saving is made in our large workshops by having each machine, to which power is applied, driven by its own independent air-wheel. In fact, nearly every machine nowadays is made with its power-wheel as an integral part of the mechanism, thus saving both first cost and wear and tear of shafting, pulleys, and belting, and also the waste of power required in constantly driving them."

"That's an improvement, certainly," responded Paul. "So you connect each machine directly with the supply pipe, do you?"

"Exactly."

"An improvement, unquestionably! I know that by my own experience."

Leaving the boiler-room, and descending by stairs to the engine-room below, they again passed the long row of engines and so out of the building, whereupon they re-entered the electric carriage, and were whisked down the hillside avenue.

Nice to see bike paths in the fourty-ninth century... Mount Energy... awesome.
:)
 
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomson-Houston_Electric_Company
Thomson-Houston Electric Company

The Thomson-Houston Electric Company was a manufacturing company which was one of the precursors of the General Electric Company.

The Thomson-Houston Electric Company was formed in 1883 in the United States when a group of Lynn, Massachusetts investors led by Charles A. Coffin bought out Elihu Thomson and Edwin Houston's American Electric Company from their New Britain, Connecticut investors. At that time the company moved its operations to a new building on Western Ave. in Lynn, Massachusetts, because many of the investors were shoe manufacturers from Lynn.

Charles A. Coffin led the company and organized its finances, marketing and sales operations. Elwin W. Rice organized the manufacturing facilities, and Elihu Thomson ran the Model Room which was a precursor to the industrial research lab. With their leadership the company grew into an enterprise of $10 million in sales and 4000 employee by 1892.

In 1884 Thomson-Houston International Company was organized to promote international sales.

In 1889 Thomson-Houston bought out the Brush Company (founded by Charles F. Brush) which resolved the arc lamp and dynamo patent disputes between them.

Thomson-Houston later merged with the Edison General Electric Company of Schenectady, New York, to form the General Electric Company in 1892, with plants in Lynn and Schenectady, both of which remain to this day as the two original GE factories.

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Early (earliest?) US patent for carbon brushes:
United States Patent Office.

CHARLES J. VAN DEPOELE, OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.

CARBON CONTACT OR COMMUTATOR-BRUSH.

Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 390,921, dated October 9, 1888.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, Charles J. Van Depoele, a citizen of the United States, residing at Chicago, in the county of Cook and Slate of Illinois, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Carbon Contacts or Commutator Brushes, of which the following is a specification, reference being had therein to the accompanying drawings.

The present invention relates to improvements in commutator brushes or contacts for use with dynamo-electric generators end electro dynamic motors.

In the operation of electric motors it is desirable for various reasons to use a thick brush or contact held by suitable mechanism in position tangential to the surface of the commutator - that is, projected endwise against it. In these positions the brushes may be moved around the commutator to any desired position without in the least affecting their mechanical relationship thereto, and it has been usual to use thick bunches of thin copper laminates secured together at their outer ends for this purpose; but I find in practice that the leaves of brushes so constructed will get into the interstices or separations between the sections of the commutator, by the rotation of which the leaves of which the brush is composed will be gradually bent outward and away from each other, and so in a short time rendered useless. This difficulty I have overcome by substituting for the copper contact brushes heretofore used brushes or contacts of carbon or other non homogeneous substance, which, being porous, will in a short time take up a quantity of copper - dust and form a smooth wearing-face that is extremely durable.
 
The Electric Tramway

One of the most interesting sights in connection with the Exhibition at Paris is the electrical tramway; it is a practical evidence of the great future in store for electricity as a motive power. From an article in La Nature we give some of the leading features of this recent application of electricity. In the case of a tramway the question is a complicated one, for the rails cannot be isolated, and they therefore cannot be used as conductors. How then, in these conditions, is the motor of the carriage connected with the fixed generator placed in the Exhibition at the Palais de l'Industrie? This is the problem which MM. Boistel and Sappey, the engineers of Messrs. Siemens, have completely solved, after several fruitless attempts, which almost always precede successes of this kind. In the preliminary experiments made at the workshop in the Rue Picot, they made use, as conductors, of a brass tube electrically connected with the carriage by a transverser, the function of which we shall explain; the wheels and rails will serve as the return wire. This system worked well at the workshop. In practice a special difficulty was encountered. The dirt sticking to the rails and felloes of the wheels formed a sort of crust so insulating as to prevent adequate communication with the earth. The increase of resistance produced by this interposition of finely conducting bodies was often sufficient to arrest the vehicle. The remedy was happily beside the evil, and a second conductor was established parallel with the first, in communication with the second pole of the generator, on which runs a second traverser, identical with the former. These two cars follow on their respective tubes the movements of the vehicle, and ensure a good and constant communication between the electrical generator and the motor. Fig. I represents the carriage and the station at the Place de la Concorde.

Nature_1881Nov3Fig1.jpg

At the height of the knife-board are seen the two conducting tubes supported at certain distances by posts, and in the intervals by iron wires, like the floor of a suspension bridge. The carriage is exactly the same as the ordinary tramway car. The motor is placed underneath the feet of the inside passengers; it is a Siemens dynamo-electric machine, with horizontal inductors similar to that which produces the current in the Palais del'Industrie. The distance traversed is about 500 metres, and is accomplished in one minute. The work expended reaches 8 horse-power in the curved part; on a level straight run it does not exceed 3 1/2 horsepower. The transmission of motion to the wheels is effected by means of a fall-chain. By a happy coincidence, which belongs to the very nature of the electric motor, the static effort is maximum when the motor is in repose. This renders the starting very easy, and no difficulty is met with from this point of view. To regulate the speed, resistances are introduced into the general circuit, which reduces the intensity of the current, and consequently the work of the motor; this operation is very simply effected by means of a lever placed at each end of the carriage. For stopping, the current is broken, and at the same time an ordinary brake is applied.

As to the mode of communication of the conductors with the carriage, we have said that it is effected by means of two identical traversers; it will suffice to describe one of them. Fig. 2 represents in detail one of these traversers.

Nature_1881Nov3Fig2.jpg

It is composed of a rectangular frame, bearing in its centre a wheel, of which the groove R is semi-cylindrical, and is applied against the exterior part of the conductor C, formed of a brass tube 22 millimetres in diameter and slit on its lower part along all its length to a breadth of about 1 millimetre. In this tube slides a cylindrical core of 12 centimetres in length, on which are fixed, at its extremities, two vertical shafts, A, B, which support the wheel or roller. Two springs supported on these vertical shafts press the wheel against the tube, and maintain an elastic contact between the tube and the wheel. The carriage may then be moved; the wheel runs against the tube, the core glides in the interior, without the communication ceasing to be, if not perfect, at least quite sufficient for the purpose. Only at times a few sparks are seen at the moment when the carriage passes the coupling of the tubes; these sparks are due to small instantaneous ruptures of the current which do not affect the regular working of the system. The experiment shows that the wear and tear scarcely affects the tube, and bears almost entirely on the core placed in the tube; but nothing is easier than to replace a core. The current reaches the machine by the copper conductor F. The traction of the carriage is effected by the cords D or D', according to the direction.

The electric railway of the Palais de l'Industrie presents the first practical solution of an electric traction in the case of a tramway. Of course it is easy to see how this application of electricity is capable of the greatest development, and that by modification of details the principle might be applied to railways.
 
MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS
1881

The Lichterfeld Electric-Railway.
By Dr. Werner Siemens.

Vide Minutes of Proceedings Inst. C.E, vol.lx., p.503.
(Glaser's Annalen fur Gewerbe und Bauwesen, No.96, p.495.)

The Author, after detailing the difficulties encountered in obtaining a site for the experimental railway which Messrs. Siemens and Halske proposed to construct, more in the interests of science than as a speculation, went on to say that at length the owners of the light railway, lately used for the transport of building material for the military college at Great Lichterfeld, consented to hand over the works, &c., for the use of the company. Messrs. Siemens and Halske, after complying with the requirements of government, at once proceeded to modify the existing permanent way, so as to render it suitable to their purpose, without making any elaborate attempts at securing perfect insulation. Both rails were used as conductors; this necessitated the insulation of the framework of the carriage and the wheels. This line of course is not to be taken as a type or model for an electric railway. The researches on the subject of electro-dynamic force before 1876 were of a scientific rather than of a practical character, but since then the useful application of this power has been steadily developed, first in the production of the electric light, and now as an electro-motor.

The electro-magnectic machines used at Lichterfeld, though differing both in size and construction, were each capable of producing currents of considerable volume and intensity.

Moreover, when the electric carriage was driven, either by horse or steam-power, at a sufficient speed, it produced a current sufficiently powerful, not only to set the stationary engines in motion, but also to perform work. This peculiarity is interesting in more ways than one, for thus it is seen that the carriage which is driven by the action of the primary current, is at the same time itself capable of developing a secondary current in opposition to the primary one, whose useful effect is therefore reduced. This circumstance might be looked upon as the chief impediment to the application of this description of motive power.

The extent to which this secondary current is set up by the electro-magnet on the carriage, as well as its strength, depends entirely upon the speed at which the carriage travels, so that if the force of the primary current is such as greatly to accelerate the motion of the carriage this counter current is developed and reacts on the primary current, so as to reduce its effect and vice versa, the speed is thus always regulated automatically.

The experience obtained on the Lichterfeld railway fully confirms this. For, on a level road, the carriage left to itself travels at a greater speed in proportion to the decrease of the tractive current, until the difference between the primary and the secondary currents becomes a constant quantity, when the speed of the carriage also becomes uniform.

On a rising grade again its speed slackens in proportion to the increase in the strength of the primary current, until the secondary current has become inappreciable, when, as before, a uniform rate is maintained.

Finally, on a falling grade, if it be such as to cause the carriage to travel at a speed considerably greater than that due to the effect of the primary current, the secondary current becomes intensified, and begins to act as a brake, since the carriage comes into play as a machine producing an electro-dynamic current, which is opposed to that developed by the stationary engine. From this reaction the intimate relation between all the parts of the connections in the system is apparent, as is also the necessity for them all being duly proportioned one to another.

In fact there exist certain relations between the fine wire of the machine and the conductors on the line, which make it necessary that the resistance offered by the latter to the passage of the current should be greater than that in the electro-dynamic machine itself.

Given the resistance of the coils of the machine, the line conductors must be designed so as to offer a proportionate amount of resistance, and vice versa.

The loss of power is therefore quite independent of the distance from its source, provided the conductivity of the line is sufficiently increased, and the total resistance does not exceed the theoretically defined limit. This may be accomplished in various ways, viz., by subsidiary conductors, increasing resistance of coils, &c.

Whether it is practicable to work several carriages simultaneously on the same line is a question that can be answered unhesitatingly in tho affirmative. It is simply a matter of duly proportioning the external to the internal resistance of the engine.

The connections at the joints of the rails were secured electrically by means of elastic strips of metal soldered at the foot of each rail. The noteworthy features of the electric carriage are (1) an electrical arrangement for reversing, (2) one for controlling the speed, and (3) another for preventing any sudden interruption of the current which is injurious to the engine. The carriage on this line regularly met each train that arrived at the Anhalt railway station. It travelled at the rate of 20 kilometres per hour, as laid down by government, though capable of travelling, with a full load (total weight, 4,800 kilogrammes) at the rate of from 35 to 40 kilometres per hour.

This railway, 2.45 kilometres in length, was opened for traffic on the 16th May, and has since performed its work regularly. Messrs. Siemens and Halske are at present preparing to introduce a similar system on the existing horse-tramway between Charlottenburg and the Spandau Bock, with the difference, however, that the cars are to be drawn by a small engine travelling overhead on an elevated cable line.

W.A.B.
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Lichterfeld_Electric-Railway_1881.jpg
 
Found on ES!:
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=35721
From here:
http://www.rug.nl/museum/collecties/wsn/natuurkunde
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6KxzcXFZNI
[youtube]m6KxzcXFZNI[/youtube]

YT caption:
First electric car.
The original from 1835 resides in the University Museum Groningen. Replica built and filmed by Anton Stoelwinder Gorredijk

AWESOME Anton!

Nice writeup from the University of Groningen here:
http://www.rug.nl/museum/geschiedenis/hoogleraren/stratingh?lang=en
Sibrandus Stratingh (1785-1841)

Professor of Chemistry and Technology

bannerStratingh_300.jpg


Sibrandus Stratingh was born in 1785 in the village of Adorp, where his father was a preacher. He grew up with his uncle, who was a pharmacist in Groningen and went to Latin school there.

He was only 14 when he went to the Academy in Groningen. He took classes in the expectation that he would become a pharmacist like his uncle. He showed an interest in other sciences like chemistry and physics and took classes in them.

In 1801 he founded the ‘Society for the stimulation of natural sciences in Groningen’ with his friend Theodorus van Swinderen. In 1824 he was made professor of general, applied and pharmaceutical chemistry.

stoommachine.jpg

Article on Stratingh's steam vehicle by ir. W. Kooijmans, drawing by N. Scholten

Stratingh carried out valuable work in the field of motion during his professorship. He experimented with a steam-driven vehicle, which he had designed himself, on the streets of Groningen.The Provincial Groninger Courant reported the following, 25 March 1834:

In the early hours of this morning, 22 March, the first test journey was made by messrs Stratingh and Becker on their steam vehicle, which made a journey through the city’s undulating and curving streets with a positive result. The designers were so happy with the test that they feel that some small improvements will enable the vehicle to not only travel over new stone and rock roads, but also the bumpier cobbled streets, without problem[…]

Even King Willem I wanted to be kept fully informed of Stratingh’s experiment. Stratingh sent him regular reports on his results and when Willem I spent two days on a royal visit to Groningen in 1837 he spent some time at Stratingh’s lab, behind his house on the Ossemarkt 5.

karretjeStratingh.jpg


Stratingh worked not just with steam vehicles, but also with electromagnetism. Using the physical principles developed by the Brit Michael Faraday, Stratingh and his instrument maker Becker constructed an electric cart which can be seen as the forerunner of the electric car. Stratingh was unable to continue his research into electromagnetic vehicles, as he died on 15 February 1841. The University had lost an important and learned figure who was well known both nationally and internationally.

Last modified:
February 02, 2011 09:30
 
If a paragraph in Wednesday's Times is not based on some misapprehension or miscalculation, we are on the eve of a total revolution in light vehicular locomotion. It is said that "a new form of electrical generator and motor has been invented by Mr. J. Vaughan-Sherrin, by means of which the propulsion of boats, tricycles, and Bath chairs is effected without accumulators." Hitherto the weight of the accumulators has practically prevented the construction of a spider-wheeled electric carriage which would put the whole world in the enviable position of the cyclist who can go further and faster than a horse, and yet has no bill for oats or shoeing. There is, it is said, an entire absence of danger to those working the machine, and no chance of even a shock being received. If some circumstance, now unforeseen, does not rob the invention of its practical usefulness, the discovery will prove a very important one. Oddly enough, it will be necessary to obtain legislation before the new vehicles can legally come into use on the roads, - unless, indeed, they are content to move at a foot's pace, and to be preceded by a man with a red flag. Technically, we believe they would be regarded as traction-engines, and so subject to a special Act of Parliament. It is, however, hardly necessary to say that the law would not be enforced in this particular instance, unless, indeed, any attempt were made to obtain excessive speed.

Haha... Yah, the writer for the Times got it wrong. The editors from the journal "The Electrical Engineer" had visited Vaughan-Sherrin at the same time and gave a far better report:
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=8099&start=331

Technically true, Vaughan-Sherrin wasn't using " heavy accumulators" (rechargeable lead-acid) but was promoting carbon-zinc primary batteries instead, probably hoping to do business selling replacement zinc plates plus his "secret sauce" electrolyte (probably just zinc chloride and ammonium chloride.)
:roll:
 
Lock said:
Harold Lloyd shows us how it's done in 1928...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkqz3lpUBp0

This vid made my day. Thanks, Lock.

You could make about 100 awesome coffee table books w/ pictures/text you dig up. Where do you find it?
 
GCinDC said:
This vid made my day. Thanks, Lock.
:) `Welcome Gary. Yah, Harold's still funny after all these years...

You could make about 100 awesome coffee table books w/ pictures/text you dig up. Where do you find it?

Hehe... Other folks have been adding stuff too which is fun. Google searches are OK, but not perfect. Google relies on character recognition software and the quality of the source document and quality of the scan can be pretty miserable, so lots of "typo's" that a google search won't find, but the doc turns up in a search for other words.

Then the whole thing about bicycle and electric technologies evolving fast in the late 1800's-early 1900's. Lots of different words used such as a tricycle referred to as a "triple", early "bikes" still referred to as "velocipedes" or simply as "wheels", plus words varying by country ("trams" versus "trollies"), and this is just for English-language searches. Some of the museums and national libraries have terrific stuff online, but only limited key word indexing, so the "problem" can be too much stuff. Just means "wading". Lots of hits EVerywhere in the late 1800's to "electric bicycle" that turn out to be "electric bicycle light" or "electric bicycle race" (night-time bike racing under arc lights.)

Google translate doesn't know anything about obscure words and phrases in French, German etc for bicycle and electric tech in the late 1800's...

Then ya got yer just plain serendipity that seems to kick in sometimes too...

And in theory too, EVery day more new "content" gets added to the web, with some of it being "old" new stuff as well...

Guess I just have an odd idea about what constitutes "entertainment" :lol:

Lock
 
View attachment 2

Frank_Leslies_Popular_Monthly_1880AugustFig253.jpg

RECENT PROGRESS IN SCIENCE.

An Electric Railway. - The idea of superseding the steam locomotive by an electric engine is at least twenty years old; but it was never practically realized until last year, when Dr. Werner Siemens, the famous German electrician, actually built and operated on electric tramway at the recent Industrial Exhibition in Berlin. During the course of the Summer 100,000 persons were conveyed by this line, at a speed of from three to four metres per second; and this conclusive success has so far emboldened the inventor, that he is now engaged in organizing a scheme for introducing the system on a public scale into the streets and squares of the German capital. The principle of the electric railway is the transmission of power to a distance by means of electricity. To carry out this principle, two dynamo-electric machines are employed. One of these is stationed at some point where there is a convenient source of mechanical power to drive it - say a steam or gas engine, or a fall of water - and the electric current generated in it by its rotation is led by means of metallic conductors to the second machine, which is mounted on a car upon the rails in front of the train. The current, on being passed through this auxiliary machine, communicates a rotary motion to its movable part or armature, and this motion is in turn communicated to the wheels of the car, the result being that the car travels along the line and draws the train after it. The conductors which Dr. Siemens employed were the rails themselves; a central one being provided to take the current from the stationary machine to the moving one, and the outer rails being utilized in completing the circuit back to the stationary machine again. On page 253 is a general view of the electric tramway at the Berlin Exhibition and below is a diagram of the internal construction of the electric locomotive.

View attachment 1

Here, N is the central rail, from which the current is let into the revolving bobbin of the machine by means of a brush of copper wires, T, which constantly sweeps against the rail; and the rotation of the bobbin, B, is communicated to the driving-wheels of the car by means of a gearing. The returning current passes from these wheels to the external rails, and by them back to the stationary machine. The machines employed are of the ordinary continuous current Siemens type. Another application of this ingenious system which is proposed by Dr. Siemens, is the formation of an "electric post, for the purpose of conveying mail-bags with great velocity to distances far exceeding the existing tubular pneumatic post. The railway would take the form of a long plate-iron box or tube, supported upon iron pillars. Light glass or wooden sleepers to carry the rails would be laid in the bottom of this, and fastened down. On those rails would run small four-wheeled carriages, each having an axle taking tho form of a rotating bobbin in a small dynamo-electric machine attached to the front part of the carriage. The hinder part of the carriage would be fitted up to hold the mails and other parcels transported; and by means of stationary machines every twenty miles or so, a post could be sent off every ten minutes.

Another pic of the Siemens & Halske 1879 machine:
Siemens&Halske_1879.jpg
 
The Builder
An illustrated Weekly Magazine
for the Architect, Engineer, Archaeologist, Constructor, Sanitary Reformer, and Art-Lover
May 19, 1883

FOREIGN NOTES.

THE VIENNA CITY RAILWAY.
It is announced from Vienna that the English contractor for the Vienna city railway has given notice of his having raised the required first instalment of the capital for its construction, and it is accordingly expected that the first portion of the line will very shortly be commenced. The railway is to run above ground on viaducts, and will be very expensive. The cost has been estimated at about 370,000l. per mile, which is considerably larger than that of the Berlin city railway, which coBt about 240,000l. per mile to build. It is, however, just possible that the Vienna authorities may, at the last moment, take up a rival scheme, which will cause a considerable modification in these plans. Dr. Werner Siemens, who has already carried out several small electric railways at Berlin and elsewhere, has laid before the municipal authorities a project for a comprehensive network of electric lines for the Austrian capital. He proposes to make them of narrow gauge, and partly underground and partly above ground. In tunnels beneath the streets or on viaducts above them, Dr. Siemens proposes to run a constant succession of electric carriages, the electric current to move them being supplied from a series of central stations. The old part of Vienna,- the city, in the narrower sense, - lies high, and here Dr. Siemens proposes to carry the line from one side to the other through tunnels. In the other portions of the city he would erect viaducts. Dr. Siemens does not propose his scheme as one intended altogether to supplant that for which Mr. Fogerty has obtained the concession. He offers it rather as a supplement or improvement for adoption in the most thickly-inhabited parts of the city, and he wishes the Fogerty scheme to be carried out in the outer ring of suburbs. Dr. Siemens also proposes that some of the tramways, particularly those which run to the most distant and least populous suburbs where a steam railway would not pay, should be supplanted by electric railways, as these are more rapid and in other ways preferable to trams. Dr. Siemens claims for his electric railway that it is the only system by the help of which it is possible to pay the shareholders and to maintain a constant succession of conveyances starting at very short intervals. This latter arrangement is absolutely required in the middle of a large city, where long trains starting at long intervals would be of little service as compared with short trains or single carriages running at the most frequent possible, intervals.

With regard to the cost of the undertaking, Dr. Siemens states that as against the steam railway scheme, costing 370,000l. per mile, his electric lines in the middle of the city would not require an outlay of more than 45,000l. per mile to construct.

Incredible drop in costs to install Dr.Siemens electric tramways...

In spite of this, Vienna went ahead installing steam railroads and steam-powered tramways, and Siemens only got to install a short demo system in the suburbs in October 1883 that ran for 2.8 miles from Mödling to Hinterbrühl:


550V. Originally 8.8kW but quickly upgraded to 18.4kW...

Per Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mödling_and_Hinterbrühl_Tram
In 1903, the line was modernized and the bipolar overhead line was replaced by an unipolar wire. The new pantographs were lyra-shaped. Since 1912, the revenues had exceeded the expenses.

In 1927 a bus service was installed in the valley. The competition became dangerous for both. In 1923, the Austrian Ministry for Trade and Traffic decided that the tramline had to be closed down. The last tram on the line ran on March 31, 1932.

Nice fan site (German-language) about the history of transportation in and around Mödling here:
http://www.dr-peter-standenat.at/museum/thematik.html

Apparently there is a transport museum in Mödling that has one of the original cars.
 
ELECTRICITY FOR STREET RAILWAYS.

Among the special committees appointed at a convention of the American Street Railway Association, was one which was to report on "Electricity as a Motor for Railroad Transportation." The facts elicited, although not wholly new to our readers, show that attention is being generally directed to the subject. The report as given herewith is from the American Railroad Journal:

The Committee on Electricity as a Motor for Railroad Transportation is not prepared to make a report from personal inspection; but from the information received from different sources, they feel justified in reporting the possibilities of the new system to be very flattering. The experiments made in different places demonstrate beyond question its safety and practicability; and it will not be long before the question of economy will be fully determined by the experiments at Cleveland. In this country and in Europe, there are now several electric railroads in successful operation. The Litchterfelde road, in Berlin, has been for 4 years a financial success, and the results of the experiments at Coney Island, Menlo Park, and by Messrs. Daft and Edison, at the Mechanics' Fair building at Boston, Mass., have thus far been very satisfactory and encouraging. I herewith submit for your consideration the enclosed communication of Mr. W. H. Knight, of the Brush Electric Company, of Cleveland, Ohio, giving the result of the Cleveland experiment in detail. This letter, coming as it does, direct from the operator of the street railroad at Cleveland, in response to a request from this committee soliciting such information as would be valuable and interesting to the convention, is really the sum and substance of this report, and contains all the reliable information before this committee.

As chairman of the committee I confess that I have not given to the investigation of this question as much of my attention as its importance demanded; but the unusual pressure of official duties during the last 6 months has occupied all my time.

Ed. C. Peters, Chairman.


BRUSH ELECTRIC COMPANY, CLEVELAND, O.,
October 8, 1884.

E.C.Peters, Esq., Chairman Committee on Electricity as a Motive Power of the American Street Railway Association.

Dear Sir, - Your favor of the 30th ult. is at hand, and contents noted.

The electric railway which we are now operating here is about one mile in length, and at present only one car is run on it. The second car will soon be completed, and the line will then be extended across the railway tracks to a distance of about one and a-half miles. This section, with its 2 cars will be operated all winter without intermission, to demonstrate the "rough and ready" character of the motor, after which the system will be extended over the 20 miles of tramway owned by the East Cleveland company. Last winter we operated a trial railway, built in the yard of these works; and as it stood the tests of all kinds of weather, we have no doubt in our own minds as to its efficiency the year round. Briefly the system may be described as follows:

Midway between the rails a conduit 8 inches deep is laid flush with the pavement, in the manner of a cable road. Two iron rails serving as conductors are supported within this conduit, and through a slot five-eighths of an inch wide in the top of the conduit, a plow depends from the car, and by means of 2 brushes makes contact with the conductors. Through this plow the current is conveyed to the motor, which is situated between the wheels under the car, and is tightly boxed up to prevent access of dust, etc. The motor weighs half a ton, and the car is an ordinary 2-horse box car, weighing, exclusive of motor, 2 tons. The motor is geared to the axles of the car by friction gear and link-belts. The movement is controlled by levers at either end of the car, these levers operating the commutator brushes on the motor to start, stop, or reverse the motor, or to make it go at any speed desired. It has been run at a speed of 15 miles an hour.

The dynamo supplying the current is located about a mile from the line, and is run by the engine used by the company for grinding corn. It is connected to the conduit by an over-head line of No. 8 wire. In practice, no over-head line will be used, and a greater economy may be anticipated. The power is sufficient to run 2 cars, as the engine and dynamo after being started in the morning, runs all day without attention. Only one man is employed to do the firing, and the expense of power, including fireman, coal and oil is about 4 dollars per day. With a larger plant, larger and more economical engines, boilers and dynamos would be used, and a much greater economy obtained.

The conduit will cost from five to seven thousand dollars a mile when made of steel, and it ought to last a lifetime. To equip an ordinary 2-horse car will cost in the neighborhood of $1,500, and the power at the central station for each such car will be in the neighborhood of $1,200. Each car will pull another car of the same size. The steepest grade we have experimented with is 500 feet to the mile, and no difficulty was found in overcoming it. The conduit is kept free from dirt, snow, etc., by a brush depending from the car through the slot. Catch-basins are placed at intervals varying from 50 to 100 feet, and where possible a sewer connection is made. The system is similar to a cable road in that it requires a conduit and a central power station; but it differs in every other respect.

It may be operated on single tracks as well as on double tracks; and branches may run out from the main road in every conceivable manner. Any speed may be assumed at the will of the operator without wear of machinery. Ordinary car-drivers can operate it after live minutes' instruction. Stoppages can be made quickly by reversing the motor. Running off the track does not injure the machinery, and a flexible connection on every car enables the motor to run the car back on to the track when the lever is reversed. A much smaller conduit can be used than with cables, and there is no machinery along the line. The conductors cost but $200 a mile, and the wear of the brushes upon them seems to be nil.

We use a high tension current because our investigations have showed us that when distances greater than 1 or 2 miles are to be overcome, no other current will give the necessary economy. The conductors are, however, inaccessible, and no danger is anticipated. We are ready to equip any road not exceeding 25 miles in length.

Hoping I have touched upon the main points of interest,

I am, very trulv yours,
W. H. Knight.



From the book Cleveland: a concise history, 1796-1996
By Carol Poh Miller, Robert Anthony Wheeler
1997
The electric streetcar made its debut in Cleveland on 26 July 1884, and, following a brief experiment with cable cars in the late 1880s, all but two lines in Cleveland were electrified by 1894. In 1893, competing electric lines were unified into two companies: the Cleveland City Railway Company (embracing the Superior, St.Clair, Woodland, and West Side lines) and the Cleveland Electric Railway Company (embracing the Broadway, Newburgh, East Cleveland, and South Side lines). These were known, respectively, as the "Little Consolidated" and the "Big Consolidated." With the opening of Ohio's first intercity traction line in 1895, connecting Cleveland and Akron, Public Square became the hub of an extensive network of lines. Within a decade, half a dozen electric "interurbans," as they were called, carried passengers and freight between the cities of northern Ohio, providing cheap and efficient transportation and further opening outlying areas to development.

Cleveland Rocks! (I feel a song coming on...)
[youtube]MmSW-OM8h8c[/youtube]

Nice bit of NA streetcar history preserved in Toronto, seen here:
http://transit.toronto.on.ca/streetcar/4502.shtml
The effects of the automobile were being felt by the public transit companies as early as the 1930s. Already, the Interurbans were largely abandoned, and ridership was down across the board. Wishing to reverse this trend, the presidents of various transportation companies across the United States (such as Omaha, New York, etc) formed a committee to examine the problem and find a solution. The solution they came up with was a modern, lightweight, inexpensive streetcar design that would be available to transportation agencies across North America. The new streetcar would be fast, comfortable and attractive and would entice customers back to transit. The name of this new vehicle was the Presidents Conference Committee Car (PCC). Design work began in the mid 1930s, and the first production PCCs began operation in 1936 in Pittsburgh, Brooklyn and Boston.

The car was an unqualified success. Sleek and elegant, it took the public by storm and it became THE standard streetcar for cities across North America. Nowhere was this more true, however, than in the city of Toronto. Toronto embraced the PCC in 1938, and by the 1950s, it boasted the largest PCC fleet in the world.

and here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Transit_System
Seventy-five Cleveland Transit System PCC streetcars were sold in 1952 to Toronto to be used by the Toronto Transit Commission. The last of the Cleveland models operated for 30 years in Toronto until 1982.

In fact the Toronto system also bought these same used PCC cars from Cincinnati, Birmingham and Kansas City, and still runs two of the Cincinnati cars for the tourists:


Most daze when I have to travel around my town I still get to ride modern versions of these old electric streetcars. 600VDC, Yeah Baby! 8)

Lock

EDIT: Nice forum thread here, "The Great American Streetcar Scandal"
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread506005/pg1
 
Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_F._Brush
Charles Francis Brush (March 17, 1849 – June 15, 1929) was a U.S. inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist.

Biography
Born in Euclid Township, Ohio, Brush was raised on a farm about 10 miles from downtown Cleveland. He had a great interest in science, particularly with Humphry Davy's experiments with the arc light; he tinkered with and built simple electrical devices such as a static electricity machine at age 12, experimenting in a workshop on his parents farm. Brush attended Central High School in Cleveland where he built his first arc light, and graduated there with honors in 1867. He received his college education from the University of Michigan, where he studied mining engineering (there were no majors—as there are today—in electrical engineering). At Michigan, Brush was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Omicron chapter).

In 1876 he secured the backing of the Wetting Supply Company in Cleveland to design his "dynamo" (an electrical generator) for powering arc lights. Brush began with the dynamo design of Zénobe Gramme but his final design was a marked divergence, retaining the ring armature idea that originated with Antonio Pacinotti. Brush remarked on his motivation for improving the generator in his U.S. Patent 189,997: "The best forms of magneto-electric apparatus at present before the public are unnecessarily bulky, heavy, and expensive, and are more or less wasteful of mechanical power." After comparing it to the Gramme dynamo and other European entrants, the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia judged Brush's dynamo superior due to its simpler design and maintainability after completing tests in 1878.

Brush produced additional patents refining the design of his arc lights in the coming years and sold systems to several cities for public lighting, and even equipped Philadelphia's Wanamaker's Grand Depot with a system. His lights were easier to maintain, had automatic functions and burned twice as long as Yablochkov candles. His generators were reliable and automatically increased voltage with greater load while keeping current constant. By 1881, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Montreal, Buffalo, San Francisco, Cleveland and other cities had Brush arc light systems, producing public light well into the 20th century.

In 1884, Brush built a mansion on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland that showcased many of his inventions. There he raised his family and lived the remainder of his life. The basement housed Brush's private laboratory. In 1888, he powered the mansion with the world's first automatically operated wind turbine generator which charged the home's 12 batteries. It was the first home in Cleveland to have electricity. Over its 20 year life, the turbine never failed to keep the home continuously powered. In 1926, Brush pioneered the first piezo-electric featherweight stylus.
Charles_Brush_mansion_1884.jpg

Wind_turbine_1888_Charles_Brush.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wind_turbine_1888_Charles_Brush.jpg
Charles F. Brush's 60 foot, 80,000 pound turbine that supplied 12kW of power to 350 incandescent lights, 2 arc lights, and a number of motors at his home for 20 years. It today is believed to be the first automatically operating wind turbine for electricity generation and was built in the winter of 1887 - 1888 in his back yard. Its rotor was 17 meters in diameter. The large rectangular shape to the left of the rotor is the vane, used to move the blades into the wind. The dynamo turned 50 times for every revolution of the blades and charged a dozen batteries each with 34 cells.

From his home on Euclid Avenue, he must have felt the rumble of electric streetcars EVery day...
Euclid_Avenue_streetcar.jpg

Charles rocked!
 
Jasper Wood's short film "Streetcar" is a poetic documentary of life in a big American city centered on the experience of riding its streetcars. The film is 15 minutes long and was shot in Cleveland, Ohio, largely in and around West 25th Street, Public Square, and the Central Market area (East 4th Street and Bolivar Road) during the summer of 1953, just before the ending of streetcar service in the city of Cleveland. Jasper Wood was assisted in the production of the film by Harry Schulke, Nick Hlobeczy, Tony Denison, Vlad Maleckar and Ed Feil. Jasper's son Denis (then nine years old) made the final title in the film, which depicts a man running after a streetcar. The film was shown at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 1955 or 1956.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO4c2B5UJus
[youtube]tO4c2B5UJus[/youtube]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07r6tQ34-78
[youtube]07r6tQ34-78[/youtube]
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_Line_(Lower_Manhattan_surface)
On May 8, 1884, Jacob Sharp, the owner of the Broadway and Seventh Avenue Railroad, incorporated the Broadway Surface Railroad to run along Broadway from Union Square south to the Bowling Green. It opened in 1885, and was leased to the Broadway and Seventh Avenue Railroad. A cable was installed on May 1, 1893, and the Lexington Avenue Line and Broadway and Columbus Avenue Line were also operated by cable as branches. The Broadway Line was electrified with conduit in May 1901.

Underground conduit... hence no overhead wires:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsrdkySRSCY
[youtube]IsrdkySRSCY[/youtube]
The film shows a view which appears to be looking north on Broadway at the intersection of Wall Street, in front of Trinity Church. The sidewalk along Broadway is crowded with people, and the traffic in both streets is very heavy. A horse-drawn streetcar passes in front of the camera [Frame: 2814], with a sign giving its destination as the "Courtland and Fulton Street Ferry."

Amusing to see the horse-drawn trolley mixed in with the electrics...

Apparently where the Broadway cars curved around Union Square was known as "Dead Mans Curve":
Broadway_unionsquarecurve.jpg
 
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