VI 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRIC RAILWAYS 



THE United States has been preeminent in the 

 development of street railways of all kinds, 

 from the earliest type of horse-car to the mod- 

 em city and interurban electric cars. Nevertheless, 

 very few of the great general underlying principles 

 upon which these numerous inventions are based have 

 been discovered upon this side of the Atlantic. Ameri- 

 can inventors have simply excelled in applying the 

 known general principles to practical mechanisms. 

 But although the American inventors have largely mo- 

 nopolized this field of progress, the names of many 

 Europeans also are connected with it. In several in- 

 stances these foreign inventors, as naturalized American 

 citizens, have done their work in America, being at- 

 tracted to this country by the exceptional opportunities 

 oflFered. 



In recent years the city of New York has not shown 

 conspicuous activity in adopting innovations and im- 

 provements on its street-railway lines. Nevertheless, 

 New York was the first city in the world to have a pas- 

 senger street railway. This, built in the early 2o*s, and 

 running along Fourth Avenue, had rails made of straps 

 of iron laid on stone ties. On this primitive line an 



[175] 



