Frank Julian Sprague

The first city wide streetcar system was in Richmond, Virginia in 1888,  It was thought to be a miracle at the time that it was built, and its story is pretty spectacular!

Frank Julian Sprague graduated from Annapolis and began inventing things...he invented electrical improvements for the ships he served on, then he worked with Thomas Edison to develop a motor that had a constant speed.  He started his own company before the age of 30.

Along comes the Richmond Virginia Union Passenger Railroad who offered Sprague a contract.  Build us a streetcar system.  You have 90 days to build us 80 motors, equip 80 cars (more streetcars than were in use in the entire country at that time).  Oh, and lay 12 miles of track along Richmond's steep grades and sharp curves, and erect an overhead trolley along those 12 miles of track.  And oh, build and equip a central power plant as well. Remember you have 90 days to complete the contract.  No upfront money - you will only be paid the 110K IF we find your work "satisfactory".

Who would take that contract today??  Sprague completed his contract on time and in 1888 the Richmond streetcar system began operation.  The residents were amazed saying, "Sprague freed the mules!"  "No longer will mules adorn our city streets." 

Sprague went on to build a hundred other city streetcar systems, as well as design a "multiple-unit" control for improving the subway and the elevated, found new ways to apply the electric motor to the elevator and machine tools and improved printing presses, dentist drills and home appliances as well.
Quite a busy guy! 

And I bet you never heard of Frank Julian Sprague before!

Next time...Improvement to suburban life
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On August 15, 1969, the Woodstock Music Festival opens on a farm in White Lake in upstate New York.  Three days of the best of rock and roll music went into history as the largest peaceful music gathering in history.  (I was only 15 or I would have gone!)

Birth of the Streetcar

The suburbs were a by-product of the streetcar.  "Streetcar suburbs" expanded a city and their story is an interesting one...

Prior to streetcars the boundary of a city was the distance a man could walk in one hour from the city center.  Horses and carriages were an asset of the wealthy, not the ordinary city dweller.  The railroad traveled to the central station, mostly for moving goods, not for transporting people short distances.  The bus ran in the city proper only.  The streetcar put an end to the "walking city" as Boston had been in the 1850s, but Boston by 1900 had a suburb radius of 10 miles out thanks to the streetcar.

The streetcar began back in 1832 when John Stephenson designed a horse drawn bus on four wheels for the New York and Harlem railway.  For 30 years he was the leading manufacturer of anything like a streetcar until 1863 when Stephen Field (nephew to Cyrus Field of telegraph cable fame), along with Thomas Edison, unveiled at the Chicago Railway Exposition the first electric railway car.

There were major problems with this early electric railcar - there was no efficient way to get the electricity from the central location to the car without killing people! Live wires and underground conduits weren't working until a guy in Detroit solved the problem.  The "Detroit Edison", Charles Van Depoele invented the first efficient streetcar motor so that the overhead trolley system could actually work and be safe.

By the 1890s the trolley system was in common use...and cities were designing their own streetcar systems.  The first system was in Richmond, Virginia in 1888 and the story is quite spectacular.

Next time...Frank Julian Springer
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Today in Pioneer History:  On August 12, 1939, the Wizard of Oz movie premieres in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.  Based on a book by Frank Baum, the movie went on to be one of the best loved movies of all time, still shown today on television.  A part of my childhood, how about yours??