346 ELECTRICITY DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 



reproduced, with its liiige enj^ine.s and lines of heavy shafting and belts 

 convejdng power to the ditferent tools or machines in operation. The 

 modern mill or factory has its engines and dynamos located wherever 

 convenient, its electric lines and numerous motors connected thereto, 

 and each of them either driving comparatively short lines of shafting 

 or attached to drive single pieces of machiner3\ The wilderness of 

 belts and pulleys which used to characterize a factory is gradually being 

 cleared away and electric distribution of power substituted. More- 

 over, the lighting of the modern mill or factory is done from the same 

 electric plant which distril)iites ])oW'er. 



The electric motor has already partly revolutionized the distribution 

 of power for stationary machinery, but as applied to railways in place 

 of animal power the revolution is complete. The period which has 

 elapsed since the first introduction of electric railways is ])arely a dozen 

 3^ears. It is true that a few tentative experiments in electric traction 

 were made some time in advance of 18.S8, notably by Siemens, in Ber- 

 lin, in 1879 and 1S8U, by Stephen D. Field, by T. A. Edison at Menlo- 

 park, by J. C. Henry, by Charles A. Van Depoele, and others. If we 

 look further back, we tind efforts, such as that of Farmer in 1847, to 

 pi'opcl railway cars b}' electric motors driven by current from batteries 

 cariiod on the cars. These efforts were of course doomed to failure 

 for economical reasons. Klectric energy from primary batteries was 

 too costly, and if it had been cheaper the types of electric motor used 

 yi(4ded so small a return of power for the electric energy spent in 

 driving them that commercial success was out of the question. These 

 early cti'orts were, however, instructive, and may now be regarded as 

 hiuhly suggestive of later work. Traction by the use of storage bat- 

 teries carried on an electric car has been tried repeatedly, but appears 

 not to be able to compete with systems of direct supply from electric 

 lines. The plan survives, however, in the electric automobiles, many 

 of which have been put into service within a 3'^ear or two. The electric 

 automobile is not well fitted for country touring; it is best adapted to 

 cities, where facilities for charging and caring for the batteries can be 

 had. However, the electric carriage is of all automobile carriages the 

 most easily controlled, most ready; it emits no smell or hot gases and 

 is nearh' noiseless. 



About 1850 Hall, a well-known instrument maker of Boston, cata- 

 logued a small toy electric locomotive dragging a car upon rails which 

 were insulated and connected with a stationary battery of two Grove 

 cells. This arrangement was sold as a piece of a scientific apparatus, 

 and appears to be the first example of an electrically driven vehicle 

 connected by rolling contacts to an immovable energy source. Other 

 early experimenters, such as Siemens, Field, and Daft, subsequently to 

 Hall, used in actual railway work the supply by insulated tracks. 

 This was supplanted later by overhead insulated wires or by the insu- 



