Electricity in Locomotion An Account of Its Mechanism, Its Achievements, and Its Prospects

Electric tramways have reached a period of middle age in which they are more concerned about their internal economy than the prospect of enterprise in new directions. Such devel...

The use of the accumulator or storage battery in electric traction affords a very good example of how a means of propulsion may fail in one set of circumstances and contrive to...

The revenue of a tramway is built up of pennies; and a minute increase in the average earnings per passenger will therefore have a large effect on the total receipts. For instan...

A railway journal once committed itself to the statement that horse traction was superior to electric traction on roads because the horse possessed the 'vital principle' of ener...

When electric railways were first considered, the natural tendency of engineers was to follow the existing model and merely substitute electric locomotives for steam locomotives...

Popular objections to the overhead system are not, of course, quite dead. Every tramway proposal in districts where the trolley has not already penetrated is still opposed on th...

Like many other industries, electric traction has had its history brightened and made picturesque by curiosities of invention. Locomotion has, in fact, been a favourite field fo...

Roughly speaking, the arrangements for generating electricity, distributing it, and utilising it on the car, remain the same in conduit tramways and surface-contact tramways as...

It has sometimes been remarked, by unfriendly critics, that tramways are an apology for bad roads. That is to say, if road surfaces were perfect, there would be no need to lay r...

At one end of the chain, electricity plays an important part in supplying power to drive the car. At the other end, electrical apparatus is introduced merely as a form of transm...

On tramways, automobiles, and 'third-rail' lines, the electric current used belongs to the type described as 'continuous' or 'direct,' because the flow is always in the same dir...

A rough idea has already been given of the elementary mechanism of electric traction--the combination of generating station, of cars fitted with electric motors, and of a slidin...

The story of electric traction really begins in the laboratory of Faraday. He was the first to produce mechanical rotation by electrical means; and, although he had no practical...

Nothing irritates an electrical engineer more readily than the repetition of the phrase, 'Electricity is in its infancy.' The words have been used by countless mayors and alderm...

One of the greatest of unknown men of genius was the inventor of the wheel. Probably--as in the case of most inventions--he shares the credit with others who prepared the way fo...

Before going on to discuss the 'accumulator' or 'storage battery' system of electric traction, reference should be made to an invention which holds the germ of great economies i...