Triumphs and Wonders of the 19th Century: The True Mirror of a Phenomenal Era / A volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress

by James P. Boyd

In the arc lamp, the carbon pencils have to be renewed daily. In the incandescent lamp, the carbon filament, though very delicate, may last for quite a time, because incandescence takes place in the absence of oxygen. If the favor in which the electric light is held, and the great extent of its use, rested solely on the question of cheapness of production, such question would give rise to interesting debate. And, indeed, the debate would continue, if the question were the superior fitness of electric lighting for lighthouses and like service, where extreme brilliancy does not seem to penetrate a thick atmosphere as effectively as the more subdued glow of the oil lamp. But the debate ceases when the question is as to the beauty and efficiency of the electric light in the home, street, station, mine, on shipboard, and the thousand and one other places in which it has come to be deemed an essential equipment. In all such places the question of economy of production and use is subordinate to the higher question of utility and indispensability.

VII. ELECTRIC LOCOMOTION.

The dawn of the nineteenth century saw, as vehicles of locomotion, the saddled hackney, the clumsy wagon, the ostentatious stage-coach, the primitive dearborn, the lumbering carriage, the poetic “one-hoss shay.” The universal energy was the horse. A new energy came with the application of steam, and with it new vehicular locomotion,—easier, swifter, stronger, for the most part cheaper, rendering possible what was hitherto impossible as to time and distance.

This signal triumph of the century may not have been eclipsed by the introduction of subsequent locomotive changes, but it was to be supplemented by what, at the beginning, would have passed for the idle dream of a visionary. The horse-car came, had its brief day, and went out with all its inconveniences, cruelties, and horrors before, in part, the traction-car, and, in part, the rapidly revolutionizing energy of electricity.

ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE.

The first conception of a railway to be operated by electricity dates from about 1835, when Thomas Davenport, of Brandon, Vt., contrived and moved a small car by means of a current from voltaic cells placed within it. In 1851, Professor Page, of the Smithsonian Institution, ran a car propelled by electricity upon the steam railway between Washington and Baltimore, but though he obtained a high rate of speed, the cost of supplying the current by means of batteries—the only means then known—prohibited the commercial use of his method.

With the invention of the dynamo as an economic and powerful generator of electricity, and also the invention of the motor as a means of turning electrical energy to mechanical account, the way was open, both in the United States and Europe, for more active investigation of the question of electric-car propulsion. Between 1872 and 1887, different inventors, at home and abroad, placed in operation several experimental electric railways. Few of them proved practical, though each furnished a fund of valuable experience. An underground electric street railway was operated in Denver as early as 1885; but the one upon the trolley plan, which proved sufficiently successful to warrant its being called the first operated in the United States, was built in Richmond, Va., in 1888. It gave such impetus to electric railway construction that, in five years’ time, enormous capital was embarked, and the new means of propulsion was generally accepted as convenient, safe, and profitable.

The essential features of the electric railway are: (1.) The track of two rails, similar to the steam railway, (2.) The cars, lightly yet strongly built. (3.) The power-house, containing the dynamos which generate the electricity. (4.) The feed-wire, usually of stout copper, running the length of the tracks of the system, and supported on poles or laid in conduits. (5.) The trolley-wire over the centre of the track, supported by insulated cross-wires passing from poles on opposite sides of the tracks, and connected at proper intervals with the feed-wire. (6.) The trolley-pole of metal jointed to the top of the car, and fitted with a spring which presses the wheel on the end of the pole up against the trolley-wire with a force of about fifteen pounds, and which also serves to conduct the electricity down through the car to the motor. (7.) The motor, which is suspended from the car truck, and passes its power to the car axle by means of a spur gearing. The power requisite for an ordinary trolley-car is about fifteen horse-power. The speed of trolley-cars is regulated in cities to from five to seven miles per hour, but they may be run, under favorable conditions, at a speed equal to, or in excess of, that of the steam-car.

As a means of city transit, and of rapid, convenient, and economic intercourse between suburban localities and rural towns and villages, the electric traction system ranks as one of the greatest wonders of the century. The speed with which it found favor, the enormous capital it provoked to activity, the stimulus it gave to further study and invention, the surprising number of passengers carried, go to make one of the most interesting chapters in electric annals. The end of the century sees thousands of these electric roads in existence; a comparatively new industry involving over $100,000,000; a passenger traffic running into the billions of people; a prospect that the trolley will succeed the steam-car for all utilizable purposes within the gradually extending influence of cities and towns upon their rural surroundings.