50 Mr. Edicard Hopl'iiison [Feb. 24, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 

 Friday, February 24, 1893. 



Sir Frederick Abel, K.C.B. D.C.L. D.Sc. F.R.S. Vice-President, 

 in the Chair. 



Edward Hopkinson, Esq. M.A. D.Sc. 



Electrical Railways. 



One of the most striking of the many new departures in the practical 

 application of electrical science, which made the Paris Exhibition of 

 1881 memorable, was a short tramway laid down under the direction 

 of the late Sir William Siemens, from the Palais de l'lndustrie to the 

 Place de la Concorde, upon which a tramcar worked by an electric 

 motor plied up and down with great regularity and success during 

 the period of the Exhibition. Yet few of those who saw in this 

 experiment the possibilities of a great future for a new mode of 

 traction would have ventured to predict that within ten years' time, 

 in the United States alone, over 5000 electric cars would be in opera- 

 tion, travelling 50,000,000 miles annually, and carrying 250,000,000 

 passengers, or that electrical traction would have solved the problem 

 of better communication in London and other large cities. Two 

 years before the Exhibition in Paris the late Dr. Werner Siemens had 

 exhibited at the Berlin Exhibition in 1879 an experimental electric 

 tramway on a much smaller scale, and his firm had put down in 1881 

 the first permanent electric railway in the short length of line at 

 Lichterfelde, near Berlin, which, I believe, is still at work. In the 

 same year Dr. William Siemens undertook to work the tramway, then 

 projected, between Portrush and Bushmills, in the North of Ireland, 

 over six miles in length, by electric power, making use of the water- 

 power of the Bush River for the purpose, an undertaking which I 

 had the advantage of carrying out under his direction. It is no part 

 of my object to-night to follow further the history of electric 

 traction, which is so recent that it is familiar to all ; but, in alluding 

 to these initial stages of its development, I have desired to recall 

 that it was the foresight and energy of Dr. Werner and Dr. William 

 Siemens, and their skill in applying scientific knowledge to the uses 

 of daily life, which gave the first impulse to the development of the 

 new electrical power. 



The problem of electric traction may be naturally considered 

 under three heads : — 



(1) The production of the electrical power. 



(2) Its distribution along the line. 



(3) The reconversion of electrical into mechanical power, in the 

 car motor or locomotive. 



