The Electric Railway - 6

The Electric Railway - 6

 All this rough-and-ready dealing with grades and curves was not mere horse-play, but

had a serious purpose underlying it, every trip having its record as to some feature of

defect or improvement. One particular set of experiments relating to such work was made

on behalf of visitors from South America, and were doubtless the first tests of the kind

made for that continent, where now many fine electric street and interurban railway

systems are in operation. Mr. Edison himself supplies the following data: "During the

electric-railway experiments at Menlo Park, we had a short spur of track up one of the

steep gullies. The experiment came about in this way. Bogota, the capital of Columbia, is

reached on muleback--or was--from Honda on the headwaters of the Magdalena River.

There were parties who wanted to know if transportation over the mule route could not be

done by electricity. They said the grades were excessive, and it would cost too much to

do it with steam locomotives, even if they could climb the grades. I said: `Well, it can't be

much more than 45 per cent.; we will try that first. If it will do that it will do anything

else.' I started at 45 per cent. I got up an electric locomotive with a grip on the rail by

which it went up the 45 per cent. grade. Then they said the curves were very short. I put

the curves in. We started the locomotive with nobody on it, and got up to twenty miles an

hour, taking those curves of very short radius; but it was weeks before we could prevent

it from running off. We had to bank the tracks up to an angle of thirty degrees before we

could turn the curve and stay on. These Spanish parties were perfectly satisfied we could

put in an electric railway from Honda to Bogota successfully, and then they disappeared.

I have never seen them since. As usual, I paid for the experiment."

In the spring of 1883 the Electric Railway Company of America was incorporated in the

State of New York with a capital of $2,000,000 to develop the patents and inventions of

Edison and Stephen D. Field, to the latter of whom the practical work of active

development was confided, and in June of the same year an exhibit was made at the

Chicago Railway Exposition, which attracted attention throughout the country, and did

much to stimulate the growing interest in electric-railway work. With the aid of Messrs.

F. B. Rae, C. L. Healy, and C. O. Mailloux a track and locomotive were constructed for

the company by Mr. Field and put in service in the gallery of the main exhibition

building. The track curved sharply at either end on a radius of fifty-six feet, and the

length was about one-third of a mile. The locomotive named "The Judge," after Justice

Field, an uncle of Stephen D. Field, took current from a central rail between the two outer

rails, that were the return circuit, the contact being a rubbing wire brush on each side of

the "third rail," answering the same purpose as the contact shoe of later date. The

locomotive weighed three tons, was twelve feet long, five feet wide, and made a speed of

nine miles an hour with a trailer car for passengers. Starting on June 5th, when the

exhibition closed on June 23d this tiny but typical road had operated for over 118 hours,

had made over 446 miles, and had carried 26,805 passengers. After the exposition closed

the outfit was taken during the same year to the exposition at Louisville, Kentucky, where

it was also successful, carrying a large number of passengers. It deserves note that at

Chicago regular railway tickets were issued to paying passengers, the first ever employed

on American electric railways.

With this modest but brilliant demonstration, to which the illustrious names of Edison

and Field were attached, began the outburst of excitement over electric railways, very

much like the eras of speculation and exploitation that attended only a few years earlier

the introduction of the telephone and the electric light, but with such significant results

that the capitalization of electric roads in America is now over $4,000,000,000, or twice

as much as that of the other two arts combined. There was a tremendous rush into the

electric-railway field after 1883, and an outburst of inventive activity that has rarely, if

ever, been equalled. It is remarkable that, except Siemens, no European achieved fame in

this early work, while from America the ideas and appliances of Edison, Van Depoele,

Sprague, Field, Daft, and Short have been carried and adopted all over the world.

Mr. Edison was consulting electrician for the Electric Railway Company, but neither a

director nor an executive officer. Just what the trouble was as to the internal management

of the corporation it is hard to determine a quarter of a century later; but it was equipped

with all essential elements to dominate an art in which after its first efforts it remained

practically supine and useless, while other interests forged ahead and reaped both the

profit and the glory. Dissensions arose between the representatives of the Field and

Edison interests, and in April, 1890, the Railway Company assigned its rights to the

Edison patents to the Edison General Electric Company, recently formed by the

consolidation of all the branches of the Edison light, power, and manufacturing industry

under one management. The only patent rights remaining to the Railway Company were

those under three Field patents, one of which, with controlling claims, was put in suit

June, 1890, against the Jamaica & Brooklyn Road Company, a customer of the Edison

General Electric Company. This was, to say the least, a curious and anomalous situation.

Voluminous records were made by both parties to the suit, and in the spring of 1894 the

case was argued before the late Judge Townsend, who wrote a long opinion dismissing

the bill of complaint.[15] The student will find therein a very complete and careful study

of the early electric-railway art. After this decision was rendered, the Electric Railway

Company remained for several years in a moribund condition, and on the last day of 1896

its property was placed in the hands of a receiver. In February of 1897 the receiver sold

the three Field patents to their original owner, and he in turn sold them to the

Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company. The Railway Company then went

into voluntary dissolution, a sad example of failure to seize the opportunity at the

psychological moment, and on the part of the inventor to secure any adequate return for

years of effort and struggle in founding one of the great arts. Neither of these men was

squelched by such a calamitous result, but if there were not something of bitterness in

their feelings as they survey what has come of their work, they would not be human.