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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 for the freak inventor; and some of his efforts with electric cars have been as weird and as fatuous as the most remarkable of perpetual motion devices. One of these electrical monstrosities was, indeed, a kind of perpetual motion arrangement. It was invented about the year 1890 and consisted of a car equipped with accumulators which supplied power to a motor which drove a hydraulic pump, which in turn worked a dynamo supplying current to motors driving the axles of the car, and also to the accumulator for re-charging purposes. The inventor was so sure that he had got the better of the law of the conservation of energy that he provided his car with pointed ends, fitted with revolving fans to break down the air-pressure, in order that a speed of 125 miles per hour might be achieved. His name was Amen

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 direction. The other type of current is known as 'alternating,' as it flows backwards and forwards many times per second. There are several kinds of alternating current—single-phase, two-phase, three-phase, and polyphase—each produced from generators designed in a particular way. It is not possible to give any adequate account of these different kinds of alternating current without going rather deeply into the theory of electricity. The ultimate practical point is that in transmitting alternating currents the circuits increase in number with the phases. Thus, three-phase current requires three wires, two-phase current three or four wires, and single-phase current a single circuit like that of continuous current . Fig. 12. Photograph of a train on the electrif

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. In point of fact, however, the engineering method now adopted is an evolution from the tramway model, not from that of the typical railway. A certain advantage was, of course, to be gained by replacing steam locomotives by electric ones. The greater 'starting torque' of the electric locomotive enables it to get a train up to full speed more quickly; and the capacity of the electric motor for taking heavy overloads assists the electric train in surmounting heavy gradients. Some advantage was also gained by producing all the power at a central source, instead of having a large number of steam locomotives, which are really power stations on wheels. But the electric locomotive had still to be made heavy enough to get sufficient grip of the rails; it had to haul its own dead weight; and it h

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 development as they feel capable of making under present legislative conditions is only by proxy and tentatively, with the aid of the trolley omnibus. Electric railways, however, have still many worlds to conquer. They are now in much the same position as electric tramways held about the year 1896. That is to say, they have already given practical proof of their capabilities and enabled engineers to point out the directions along which they are certain to develop. In the railway world there is a growing conviction that the adoption of electric traction on all suburban and inter-urban railways must be simply a matter of time. For main line traffic the possibilities of using electricity are as yet only an article of faith among electrical engineers. Although the earliest experiments in electric traction

Between the petrol-driven vehicle and the electric automobile there is an interesting series of links provided by 'petrol-electric' systems. 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 transmission gear between the petrol engine and the driving axle. The reason for attempting the petrol-electric combination will be most readily understood by considering the latter arrangement first. The petrol engine is a high-speed engine, capable of working most satisfactorily when it runs at a uniform rate with a constant load. On the other hand, the speed of the driving axle of a car varies from a very much lower speed down to zero. It is therefore necessary, when driving a vehicle with a petrol engine, to arrange some forms of variable speed-reducing transmission gear between the engine and the driving axle. The problem is further complicated by the

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 succeed in another. Its history serves to remind us that the problem of cheap transport is really a group of problems, each one of which demands a particular solution. The accumulator is a device for storing electrical energy in the form of chemical energy. Its action depends upon the effect of currents of electricity on lead plates in a bath of sulphuric acid. The passage of the current through the battery produces chemical changes which enable the battery to give out current when required. As the battery may remain 'charged' for several days, and may be discharged slowly or quickly, it provides a means of 'storing' electrical energy. In practice, and under favourable conditions, the efficiency of the storage battery is about 80 per cent. That is to say, there is a loss of about 20