EARLY SELF-CONTAINED SYSTEMS
In most of the earlier attempts to solve the problem of electrical propulsion the motor vehicles were constructed on a self-contained plan—that is, the power was generated on the locomotive itself, just as in the case of the steam locomotive. As early as 1835 Thomas Davenport, a blacksmith of Brandon, Vermont, constructed such a motor operated by cells, and built a small circular railway in Springfield, Massachusetts, on which he drove this electro-magnetic engine. This miniature railroad was of no practical importance, but it has the distinction of being the pioneer electric road.
Shortly after this, Prof. Moses G. Farmer, a distinguished American inventor and investigator, constructed an electro-magnetic locomotive, which drew a little car, and carried passengers, on a track a foot and a half wide. The locomotive used about fifty Grove cells, which developed a relatively small amount of energy at an enormous cost.
"In 1850–51," says Martin, "Mr. Thomas Hall, of Boston, exhibited a small working-motor on a track forty feet long, at the Mechanics' Charitable Fair in Boston, and while this was a mere toy, and used but a couple of cells of battery, it sufficed to illustrate the principles of a motor or locomotive with a single trial car. About this time (1847) an interesting demonstration was also made with a small working-model, one of the features of which has been most instrumental in the success of the modern electric methods, that of the utilization of the track as part of the return circuit for the current. Doctor Colton, once a famous dentist in New York City, and noted for his early application of laughing-gas in that work, was associated with Mr. Lilly in the construction and operation of a small model locomotive which ran around a circular track. The rails were insulated from each other, each connecting with one pole of the battery. The current from the battery was taken up by the wheels, whence it passed to the magnets, upon whose alternating attraction and repulsion motion depended; then it returned to the other rail, connected the other pole of the battery, and thus completed the circuit necessary for the flow of the current. In like manner in a great majority in use at present, the current passes from one power-house to circuits of one polarity, through the trolley pole to the motor or electro-magnetic propelling system, thence through the wheels to the track, which completes the circuit by being connected to the other pole or side of the dynamo at the power-house. The principles are obviously identical, but it took more than a quarter of a century to develop the proper method of application in all its details.
"The most serious and sustained attempt in the early period to operate a self-sustained vehicle or car—which would correspond with the storage-battery cars—was that due to Prof. C. C. Page, of the Smithsonian Institution. About 1850, Professor Page devoted considerable time to the development of electric engines or motors, in which the reciprocating action of a system of magnets and solenoids or armatures was applied by crank-shafts to driving a fly-wheel, to which rotary motion was thus imparted. This reciprocal motion, as in steam-engines, was one of the prevailing features of the early electric-motor work in this country and in Europe; but it was not long before its general inapplicability was realized, and it was abandoned for the simpler and more direct rotation of the armature before or between the poles of electro-magnets.
"On April 29, 1857, with an electric locomotive on which he had installed a large reciprocating motor developing over 16 horse-power, Professor Page made a trial trip along the track of the Washington and Baltimore Railroad, starting from Washington. In order to obtain current for energization, the motor was equipped with one hundred cells of Grove nitric-acid battery, each having as one element a platinum plate eleven inches square, dipped in the acid. Bladensburg, a distance of about five and one-quarter miles, was reached in thirty-nine minutes, and a maximum speed of nineteen miles an hour was attained; the entire trip to and from Bladensburg occupied one hour and fifty-eight minutes. But many disasters happened to the batteries. Some of the cells cracked wide open, and jolts due to inequalities of track threw the batteries out of working order. These experiments must have been extremely costly, and no little discouragement among people in general attended this failure; but Professor Page was not daunted, and for some years continued his work on electric motors, displaying great ingenuity, but not able, apparently, to give up the reciprocating principle."
The invention of the commercial dynamo, shortly after the middle of the nineteenth century, opened the era of practical electric-railway construction on both sides of the Atlantic. The German experimenters, Siemens and Halske, and later the American, Stephen D. Field, paved the way by numerous experiments and discoveries. It was not until about 1880, however, that the idea of using a third rail for transmitting the current was conceived. Hitherto, most of the inventors had attempted to use one rail as a receiving part of the circuit to the motor, the other rail completing the return part of the circuit. And it was several years after the idea of the third rail had germinated before the attempts to utilize one of the traction rails for conveying the current was abandoned.
THE EDISON ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE
In 1880, Mr. Thomas A. Edison, at Menlo Park, New Jersey, perfected a series of electric-railway motors and locomotives that were actually employed in hauling freight and passengers. The following year Mr. Edison made a contract with Mr. Henry Villard, which stipulated that the inventor was to construct an electric railway at least two miles and a half in length, which was to be equipped with two locomotives and three cars, one locomotive for freight and one for passengers, the passenger locomotive to have a capacity of sixty miles an hour. It was agreed that if the experiment with this railway proved successful Mr. Villard was to reimburse Mr. Edison for the actual outlay, and to install at least fifty miles of electric road in the wheat regions of the Northwest.