AIR AS MOTIVE POWER.
Air has of course not been overlooked, and it has the advantage of possessing the quality of perfect and inexhaustible elasticity according to pressure; its greatest disadvantage is that it must be “stored” and runs down steadily by use like a compressed metallic spring, hence requiring compressing stations. At intervals in this century, plans and drawings for vehicles to be run by air have been presented by successive inventors, and a system of tram-car service thus propelled has been tried experimentally in France. An air-driven tricycle has also been built in Chicago. What will be made out of this particular motor we must wait to see.
ELECTRICITY AS POWER.
Electricity comes next in the list, and is now limited for production of current to three forms—the power station, supplying current by a trolley and motor; the primary battery, carried on the vehicle; the storage battery, also carried on the vehicle. The first may be impossible commercially, but it is not at all so mechanically. Given the lines and some workable device for insuring that the carriage shall not be too often “off its trolley,” together with provision for some minor difficulties which need not be pronounced impossible (since in an inventive and pushing Republic the impossible is the thing which becomes possible), and the thing is done. Leave this method to the future, meanwhile noting that a trolley automobile is already reported from Nevada as having been built. The primary battery, to be taken along, seems out of the practicable list in the present state of electrical development.
THE COLUMBIA ELECTRIC PHAETON.
The third form, that of the storage battery, is now most prominently put forward, at least in this part of the United States, by the Pope Co., which is now prepared to fill orders for the [Columbia electric phaeton], after several years of experiment, which has included the gas motor as well. At a casual glance this vehicle is an elegantly finished phaeton with box, body and folding hood, fitted with bicycle wheels but without the pole. The wheels are thirty-two inch front and thirty-six inch rear, with stout spokes and hubs, and the tires are Hartford single-tube pneumatic, with walls a little over a half inch thick. They have a mechanical fastening to the rim in addition to the constriction by air pressure, in order to guard against being rolled off on a curve. The tires require hard inflation (at about 150 pounds pressure), which can be done only with the special pump supplied. The temporary repair as made on bicycles is hardly necessary, for the tires are made very difficult to puncture, the objections to such a tire on bicycles not applying here, and the quality of resistance to puncture makes the tire so firm that the carriage will run temporarily on the tires deflated.
The entire supporting frame or truck is of fifty-point (not 50 per cent.) carbon tubing. The sides and front are doubled, rigidly braced and brazed; the rear of the frame is single and from this hangs supports for the axle bearings, the gears and the motor. Three compound flat springs transversely fastened to the truck support the entire upper body, which is not elsewhere supported. The body-supporting springs, placed equi-distant along the frame, are pivotally suspended at each end from the under side of the side tubes. Ball bearings are placed wherever any practical gain can be found thereby; the motor armatures and various pivots, with those of the steering gear, as well as all the axles and spindles, are fitted thus. The front axle, carrying the steering wheels, is pivoted so as to allow running over obstacles, as shown in the cut, representing the regular factory tests, and every vehicle is put to thorough [tests and inspections] before being passed as ready.
The motor works on the rear axle, which is divided so as to be double driving on the usual plan with bevel-gears. The motor is driven by a storage battery, consisting of forty-four chloride cells in four sets of eleven each, fitted in two sliding wood boxes; the cells are sealed against spilling and the whole is carried in the body, access to them being had by doors at the back. The run from one charging is from thirty to thirty-five miles, at the rate of twelve and one-quarter miles an hour, although excessively heavy work or an injudicious management may exhaust somewhat sooner; it was found, however, by prolonged investigation, that the average daily run of bicycles falls well within this figure. Recharging may be done in the owner’s private stable, the proper connection having been once made once for all from the nearest electric-light station, and in case of a private-power plant the cost of running need not exceed half a cent per mile for current; otherwise recharging is done at any station where there is a 110-volt direct current, and this need not exceed 50 cents for each full charge. The connections which have to be manipulated are made of different sizes, so that misplacing is impossible. A small meter is placed in sight of the driver, which shows approximately the power remaining in the batteries; this having run down and the proper connections having been made, the charging process begins and the meter starts to run backward to “full” again; no attention is required, for as soon as the “full” point is reached the battery automatically switches itself out of circuit.
