Part 22

The advent of the telephone in 1876 seemed to stimulate invention in the electric field to a remarkable degree. Its immediate commercial success probably acted also to inspire confidence in other proposed electric enterprises. Greater attention than ever before began to be given to the problem of electric lighting. An electric arc lamp, probably the only one in regular use, had been installed at Dungeness Light-house in 1862, after a long set of trials and tests. It was fed by a Holmes magneto-electric machine of the old type, very large and cumbrous for the work. Numerous changes and improvements had before 1878 been made in arc lamps by Serrin, Duboscq, and many others. But the display of electric light during the Paris Exposition of 1878 was the first memorable use of the electric light on a large scale. The splendid illumination of the Avenue de l’Opéra was a grand object-lesson. The source of light was the “electric candle” of Paul Jablochkoff, a Russian engineer. It was a strikingly original and simple arc lamp. Instead of placing the two carbons point to point, as had been done in nearly all previous lamps, he placed them side by side, with a strip of baked kaolin between them. The candle so formed was supported in a suitable holder, whereby, at the lower end, the two parallel carbons were connected with the circuit terminals. By a suitable device the arc was started at the top and burned down. The electric candle seemed to solve the problem of allowing complicated mechanism for feeding the carbons to be discarded; but it survived only a short time. Owing to unforeseen difficulties it was gradually abandoned, after having served a great purpose in directing the attention of the world to the possibilities of the electric arc in lighting.

Inventors in America were not idle. By the close of 1878, Brush, of Cleveland, had brought out his series system of arc lights, including special dynamos, lamps, etc., and by the middle of 1879 had in operation machines each capable of maintaining sixteen arc lamps on one wire. This was, indeed, a great achievement for that time. Weston, of Newark, had also in operation circuits of arc lamps, and the Thomson-Houston system had just started in commercial work with eight arc lamps in series from a single dynamo. Maxim and Fuller, in New York, were working arc lamps from their machines, and capital was being rapidly invested in new enterprises for electric lighting. Some of the great electric manufacturing concerns of to-day had their beginning at that time. Central lighting stations began to be established in cities, and the use of arc lights in street illumination and in stores grew rapidly. More perfect forms of arc lamps were invented, better generating dynamos and regulating apparatus brought out. Factories for arc-light carbon making were built. The first special electrical exhibition was held in Paris in 1881. In the early 80’s, also, the business of arc lighting had become firmly established, and soon the bulk of the work was done under two of the leading systems. These were afterwards brought together under one control, thus securing in the apparatus manufactured a combination of the good features of both. Until about 1892 nearly all the arc lamps in use were worked under the series system, in which the lights are connected one after another on a circuit and traversed by the same current. This current has a standard value, or is a constant current. Sometimes as many as a hundred lamps were on one wire. As the mains for the supply of incandescent lamps at constant pressure, or potential, were extended, attention was more strongly turned to the possibility of working arc lights therefrom.

Within a few years of the close of the century this placing of arc lamps in branches from the same mains which supply incandescent lamps became common, and the enclosure of the arc in a partially air-tight globe, a procedure advocated by Staite, in 1847, was revived by Howard, Marks, and others for saving carbons and attention to the lamp. The enclosed arc lamp was also found to be especially adapted to use in branches of the incandescent lamp circuits, which had in cities become greatly extended. The increasing employment of alternating currents in the distribution of electric energy has led also to the use of alternating current arc lamps, and special current-regulating apparatus is now being applied on a large scale to extended circuits of these lamps. It can be seen from these facts that the art is still rapidly progressing and the field ever widening. A little over twenty years ago practically no arc lamps were used. At the close of the century, they were numbered by hundreds of thousands. The annual consumption of carbons in this country has reached two hundred millions.

Almost simultaneously with the beginning of the commercial work of arc lighting, Edison, in a successful effort to provide a small electric lamp for general distribution in place of gas, brought to public notice his carbon filament incandescent lamp.

A considerable amount of progress had previously been made by various workers in attempting to reduce the volume of light in each lamp and increase the number of lights for a given power expended. Forms of incandescent arc lamps, or semi-incandescent lamps, were tried on a considerable scale abroad, but none have survived. So, also, many attempts to produce a lamp giving light by pure incandescence of solid conductors proved for the most part abortive. Edison himself worked for nearly two years on a lamp based upon the old idea of incandescent platinum strips or wires, but without success. The announcement of this lamp caused a heavy drop in gas shares, long before the problem was really solved by a masterly stroke in his carbon filament lamp. Curiously, the nearest approach to the carbon filament lamp had been made in 1845, by Starr, an American, who described in a British patent specification a lamp in which electric current passed through a thin strip of carbon kept it heated while surrounded by a glass bulb in which a vacuum was maintained. Starr had exhibited his lamps to Faraday, in England, and was preparing to construct dynamos to furnish electric current for them in place of batteries, but sudden death put an end to his labors. The specification describing his lamp is perhaps the earliest description of an incandescent lamp of any promise, and the subsequently recorded ideas of inventors up to the work of Edison seem now to be almost in the nature of retrograde movements. None of them were successful commercially. Starr, who was only twenty-five years of age, is reported to have died of overwork and worry in his efforts to perfect his invention. His ideas were evidently far in advance of his time.

The Edison lamp differed from those which preceded it in the extremely small section of the carbon strip rendered hot by the current, and in the perfection of the vacuum in which it was mounted. The filament was first made of carbonized paper, and afterwards of bamboo carbon. The modern incandescent lamp has for years past been provided with a filament made by a chemical process. The carbon formed is exceedingly homogeneous and of uniform electric resistance. Edison first exhibited his lamp in his laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey, in December, 1879; but before it could be properly utilized an enormous amount of work had to be done. His task was not merely the improvement of an art already existing; it was the creation of a new art. Special dynamo machines had to be invented and constructed for working the lamps; switches were needed for connecting and disconnecting lamps and groups of lamps; meters for measuring the consumption of electric energy were wanted; safety fuses and cut-offs had to be provided; electroliers or fixtures to support the lamp were required; and, lastly, a complete system of underground mains with appurtenances was a requisite for city plants.

Even the steam-engines for driving the dynamos had to be remodelled and improved for electric work, and ten years of electric lighting development did more towards the refinement and perfection of steam-engines than fifty years preceding. Steadiness of lights meant the preservation of steady speed in the driving machinery. The Pearl Street station in New York City was the first installation for the supply of current for incandescent lighting in a city district. The constant pressure dynamos were gradually improved and enlarged. The details of all parts of the system were made more perfect, and in the hands of Edison and others the incandescent lamps, originally of high cost, were much cheapened and the quality of the production was greatly improved. Lamps originally cost one dollar each. The best lamps that are made can be had at present for about one-fifth that price. Millions of incandescent lamps are annually manufactured. Great lighting stations furnish the current for the working of these lamps, some stations containing machinery aggregating many thousands of horse-power capacity. Not only do these stations furnish electric energy for the working of arc lamps and incandescent lamps, but, in addition, for innumerable motors ranging in size from the small desk fan of one-tenth horse-power up to those of hundreds of horse-power. The larger sizes replace steam or hydraulic power for elevators, and many are used in shops and factories for driving machinery such as printing-presses, machinery tools, and the like.

In spite of the fact that it was well known that a good dynamo when reversed could be made a source of power, few electric motors were in use until a considerable time after the establishment of the first lighting stations. Even in 1884, at the Philadelphia Electrical Exhibition, only a few electric motors were shown. Not until 1886 or thereafter did the “motor load” of an electric station begin to be a factor in its business success. The motors supplied are an advantageous adjunct, inasmuch as they provide a day load, increasing the output of the station at a time when the lighting load is small and when the machinery in consequence would, without them, have remained idle. The growth of the application of electric motors in the closing years of the century has been phenomenal, even leaving out of consideration their use in electric railways.

Twenty years ago an electric motor was a curiosity; fifty years ago crude examples run by batteries were only to be occasionally found in cabinets of scientific apparatus. Machinery Hall, at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, typified the mill of the past, never again to be reproduced, with its huge engine and lines of heavy shafting and belts conveying power to the different 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 machinery. The wilderness of belts and pulleys which used to characterize a factory is gradually being cleared away, and electric distribution of power substituted. Moreover, the lighting of the modern mill or factory is done from the same electric plant which distributes power.

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 barely a dozen years. It is true that a few tentative experiments in electric traction were made some time in advance of 1888, notably by Siemens, in Berlin, in 1879 and 1880, 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 farther back we find efforts such as that of Farmer, in 1847, to propel railway cars by electric motors driven by currents from batteries carried on the cars. These efforts were, of course, doomed to failure, for economical reasons. Electric energy from primary batteries was too costly, and if it had been cheaper, the types of electric motor used yielded so small a return of power for the electric energy spent in driving them that commercial success was out of the question. These early efforts were, however, instructive, and may now be regarded as highly suggestive of later work. Traction by the use of storage batteries 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 automobile, many of which have been put into service within a year 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. Moreover, the electric carriage is of all automobile carriages the most easily controlled, most ready; it emits no smell or hot gases and is nearly noiseless.

About 1850, Hall, a well-known instrument maker of Boston, catalogued 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 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 insulated third rail. Siemens & Halske, of Berlin, used a special form of overhead supply in 1881, and during the electrical exhibition in Paris in that year, a street tramway line was run by them. Later, Edison experimented with a third-rail-supply line at Menlo Park; and at Portrush, in Ireland, an actual railway was put in operation by Siemens & Halske, using the third-rail system. This was about 1883. The power of the Portrush railway was that of a water-wheel driving the generating dynamo.

The modern overhead trolley, or under-running trolley, as it is called, seems to have been first invented by Van Depoele, and used by him in practical electric railway work about 1886 and thereafter. The universality of this invention for overhead supply marks the device as a really important advance in the art of electric traction. Van Depoele was also a pioneer in the use of an underground conduit, which he employed successfully in Toronto in 1884. The names of Edward M. Bentley and Walter H. Knight stand out prominently in connection with the first use of an underground conduit, tried under their plans in August, 1884, at Cleveland, on the tracks of the horse-railway company.

We have barely outlined the history of the electric-motor railway up to the beginning of a period of wonderful development, resulting in the almost complete replacement by electric traction of horse traction or tramway lines, all within an interval of scarcely more than ten years.

The year 1888 may be said to mark the beginning of this work, and in that year the Sprague Company, with Frank J. Sprague at its head, put into operation the electric line at Richmond, Virginia, using the under-running trolley. Mr. Sprague had been associated with Edison in early traction work, and was well known in connection with electric-motor work in general. The Richmond line was the first large undertaking. It had about thirteen miles of track, numerous curves, and grades of from three to ten per cent. The enterprise was one of great hardihood, and but for ample financial backing and determination to spare no effort or expenditure conducive to success, must certainly have failed. The motors were too small for the work, and there had not been found any proper substitute for the metal commutator brushes on the motors—a source of endless trouble and of an enormous expense for repairs. Nevertheless, the Richmond installation, kept in operation as it was in spite of all difficulties, served as an object-lesson, and had the effect of convincing Mr. Henry M. Whitney and the directors of the West End Street Railway, of Boston, of the feasibility of equipping the entire railway system of Boston electrically. Meanwhile the merging of the Van Depoele and Bentley-Knight interests into the Thomson-Houston Electric Light Company brought a new factor into the field, the Sprague interests being likewise merged with the Edison General Electric Company.

The West End Company, with two hundred miles of track in and around Boston, began to equip its lines in 1888 with the Thomson-Houston plant. The success of this great undertaking left no doubt of the future of electric traction. The difficulties which had seriously threatened future success were gradually removed.

The electric railway progress was so great in the United States that about January 1, 1891, there were more than two hundred and forty lines in operation. About thirty thousand horses and mules were replaced by electric power in the single year of 1891. In 1892 the Thomson-Houston interests and those of the Edison General Electric Company were merged in the General Electric Company, an event of unusual importance, as it brought together the two great competitors in electric traction at that date. Other electric manufacturers, chief among which was the Westinghouse Company, also entered the field and became prominent factors in railway extension. In a few years horse traction in the United States on tramway lines virtually disappeared. Many cable lines were converted to electric lines, and projects such as the Boston Subway began to be planned. Not the least of the advantages of electric traction is the higher speed attainable with safety. The comfort and cleanliness of the cars, lighted brilliantly at night, and heated in winter by the same source of energy which is used to propel them, are important factors.

All these things, together with the great extension of the lines into suburban and country districts, and the interconnection of the lines of one district with those of another, cannot fail to have a decidedly beneficial effect upon the life, habits, and health of the people. While the United States and Canada have been and still are the theatre of the enormous advance in electric traction, as in other electric work, many electric car lines have in recent years been established in Great Britain and on the continent of Europe. Countries like Japan, Australia, South Africa, and South America have also in operation many electric trolley lines, and the work is rapidly extending. Most of this work, even in Europe, has been carried out either by importation of equipment from America, or by apparatus manufactured there, but following American practice closely. The bulk of the work has been done with the overhead wire and under-running trolley, but there are notable instances of the use of electric conductors in underground slotted conduits, chief of which are the great systems of street railway in New York City.

In Chicago the application of motor-cars in trains upon the elevated railway followed directly upon the practical demonstration at the World’s Fair of the capabilities of third-rail electric traction on the Intramural Elevated Railway, and the system is rapidly extending so as to include all elevated city roads. A few years will doubtless see the great change accomplished.

The motor-car, or car propelled by its own motors, has also been introduced upon standard steam roads to a limited extent as a supplement to steam traction. The earliest of these installations are the one at Nantasket, Massachusetts, and that between Hartford and New Britain, in Connecticut. A number of special high-speed lines, using similar plans, have gone into operation in recent years. The problem of constructing electric motors of sufficient robustness for heavy work and controlling them effectively was not an easy one, and the difficulties were increased greatly because of the placing of the motors under the car body, exposed to wet, to dust and dirt of road. The advantage of the motor-car, or motor-car train, is that the traction or hold upon the track increases with the increase of the weight or load carried. It is thus able to be accelerated rapidly after a stop, and also climb steep grades without slipping its wheels. Nevertheless, there are circumstances which favor the employment of a locomotive at the head of a train, as in steam practice. This is the case in lines where a train of coal or ore cars is drawn by electric mining locomotives. Many such plants are in operation, and, at the same time the electric power is used to drive fans for ventilating, pumps for drainage, electric hoists, etc., besides being used for lighting the mines. The trains in the tunnels of the Metropolitan Underground Railway of London have for many years been operated by steam locomotives with the inevitable escape of steam, foul, suffocating gases, and more or less soot.

A number of years ago the tunnel of the City and South London Railway was put into successful operation with electric locomotives drawing the trains of cars, and the nuisance caused by steam avoided. This work recalls the early efforts of Field, of Daft, and Bentley and Knight in providing an electric locomotive for replacing the steam plant of the elevated roads in New York City. Well-conceived as many of these plans were, electric traction had not reached a sufficient development, and the efforts were abandoned after several more or less successful trials. It is now seen that the motor-car train may advantageously replace the locomotive-drawn train in such instances as these elevated railways.

The three largest and most powerful electric locomotives ever put into service are those which are employed to take trains through the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad tunnel at Baltimore. They have been in service about seven or eight years, and are fully equal in power to the large steam locomotives used on steam roads. Frequently trains of cars, including the steam locomotive itself, are drawn through the tunnel by these huge electric engines, the fires on the steam machines being for the time checked so as to prevent fouling the air of the tunnel. There was opened, in London, in 1900, a new railway called the Central Underground, equipped with twenty-six electric locomotives for drawing its trains. The electric and power equipment, which embodied in itself the latest results of American practice, was also manufactured in America to suit the needs of the road. Other similar railways are in contemplation in London and in other cities of Europe. As on the elevated roads in New York City, the replacement of underground steam traction, where it exists, by electric traction is evidently only a question of a few years.