Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-04-09
DEOPLE'S.
L ROSTRUM
Electric Railways Growth.

To,the Editor of the Evening Star;
Sir: One of the greatest and most
successful enterprises in this country is
the electric railway, and 1t has played
most important part in the de-
velopment of the industries of the
country in the past twenty-five years
The history of the electric car dates
back over seventy-five years, ire
spective of the assertions of some
electrical periodicals to the contrary.
The idea of propeling cars by means
of electric current, derived from
voltaic batteries. seems to have sug-
gested itself to the mind of Thomas
Davenport. of !, Vermont, in the year
1885. for he constructed a working
model of a ear. propelled by an cleo
trio motor of his own invention, in
that year. Sixteen years later 185l)
Professor Rage, of the Smithsonian
Institution, built an electric locomo-
tive which ran on track at the rate
of nineteen miles an hour, and in the
same year Professor Farmer con-
struoted an electrically propelled car
In the year 1879 stephen D. Field
protected some experiments in the
United States patent office, and in
1880 Edison undertook some expert
mental work
From the beginning of 1883 until
1888 many small electric railways
were put into operation under the
direction of Daft, Van Depoele,
Sprague and others. but they were
failures from the commercial point
of view, for the motors were un-
mechanical and inefficient. and it was
not until 1888. when Sprague made
the Richmond Va) road a success,
that the electric car proved itself
commercially successful.
The first public electric railway op-
Grated in this country was in the gall
lery of the Chicago railway EXPOSE
ton dSSS) on a track 1,500 feet long
and three feet gauge. The motor car
was capable of running at a speed OF
nine miles an hour and weighed about
three tons.
The electric street car of today
weighs about twenty-five tons, and
can make from twenty-five to thirty
miles an hour
The first standard gauge electric
locomotive operated in this country,
or anywhere else, was run on the
Mt Macgfegor and Lake Shore rail
way in the State of New York by
Leo Daft in 1888. The first public
electric street railway in the city OF
Providence. r. L., was operated in
1884, and in the same year the first
practical trolley road was built in the
suburbs of Kansas City, Mo. One
of the sensations of 1884, which prob
ably some people remember, was the
short electric line built on one of the
piers at Coney Island. In the fall of
1885 an electric railway was con-
structed at the New Orleans exposl-
ton, and experimental work was
going on in Baltimore. Minneapolis,
Montgomery, Ala; In fact there
were very few large cities in which
some system of electric railway had
not been projected On the Ninth
avenue elevated in the city of New
York Leo Daft operated an electric
! locomotive for several weeks in 1885,
and rebuilt same. and again operated
it in 1883, when it ran regularly for
eight months, hauling four car train
over the system. The first electric
car in Newark was operated by the
Daft system, experimentally, in 1889,
The Newark Rapid Transit railway,
now part of the Public Service rail-
way, started operating in 1890.
In 1889 there were in this country
| 5000 miles of street railways, and
! 1900 of the miles were operated with
horses, steam or cable, and only 100
by electricity. In 1912 there were
1900 miles of electric railway lines,
owned and operated by 1900 railways,
which employ over 100000 persons
and carry between ten and eleven
! billions of passengers in a year.
These railways own over 10000 cars,
have a capital investment of five bill
| lion dollars, and their gross annual
earnings are $500, 1000, 000
GEORGE ALLEN ROY.