THE CONQUEST OF TIME AND SPACE 



invention demonstrated the validity of his contention, 

 now universally accepted, that motors should be placed 

 under each car instead of being used on locomotives. 



STORAGE-BATTERY SYSTEMS 



From the earliest attempts at solving the question of 

 electric traction, efforts were made to produce some 

 form of storage battery whereby the cars might be made 

 independent of a distant generating plant. The ad- 

 vantages of a self-contained vehicle are so obvious that 

 it is not surprising to find the inventors persistent in 

 their attempts at producing practical cars of this type. 

 Such battery cars would not require the dangerous, 

 expensive, and cumbrous system of overhead wires, or 

 the more sightly but also more expensive system of 

 conduits. With such a system of cars the elaborate 

 mains and feeders for bringing the current to the track 

 from the power-house, and for efiFecting the return 

 circuit, could be dispensed with. Moreover, the in- 

 dependent action of such cars over a system where the 

 power is furnished from a single source, where the stop- 

 page of the current stops every car along the line, is 

 inestimable. 



Between the years 1880 and 1883 many storage- 

 battery cars were built and put in service both in Euro- 

 pean and American cities. Probably the most import- 

 ant one of these lines was that which was built by the 

 Belgian, Mr. E. Julien, in New York city, in 1887-8. 

 On the Fourth Avenue road something like a dozen 

 storage-battery cars were put in operation for a con- 



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