Team-Work in Research and Invention.
During 1904 the General Electric Company at Schenectady, New York, perfected for the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad an electric locomotive such as will be used for passenger service between New York and Croton. That locomotive, far outvying anything else that ever before moved on wheels, was created by a council of locomotive builders, electricians, engineers, and mechanics. Some of the plans which they adopted with success had failed in times past. Each motor was made part and parcel of the axle it turns, a directness of construction which had never before proved to be feasible. Usually an electric motor has many magnetic poles; the motors in this locomotive have each only two poles.
On much the same lines this Company is constantly experimenting with a view to cheapen and improve electric lighting. Every filament, every luminous rod or vapor, as newly devised, is tested and modified by as acute a band of investigators as exist in the world, with all the benefit of daily conference and mutual aid.