retroelectro
and controllable, whether one passenger or twenty, and at the time they were not.
A new era for transportation
1884 – Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company In March of the following year, 1884, Sprague was awarded patent number 295,454. With the patent, unusual confidence, and unreasonable determination, the 27-year-old man left a promising career working for the ‘Wizard of Menlo Park’ to strike out on his own. From 1884 to 1890, Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company, sometimes called SERM, focused on building a full- scale electric railway system. While developing his designs and ideas, he worked with other streetcar companies performing repairs and retrofits. This gave him plenty of opportunities to learn the industry quickly, whereas Edison would have kept him engineering power transmission lines. Up to 1888, there had been no less than seventy-four attempts to create a practical electric railway system. [4] Even Edison attempted an electric streetcar with a mile-long track and a car that could go forty miles an hour [3]. The field of ‘electric traction’ was growing at a rapid pace.
1882 - The Crystal Palace Exposition The Crystal Palace Electrical Exposition in London was the largest of its kind. Young Sprague quickly advocated for making himself a judge at the event. He was placed on the judging panel for gas engines, dynamo-electric generators, and electric lamps,
where he first met Edward H. Johnson and Thomas Edison. While aboard the USS Lancaster in France, Frank J Sprague wrote a report about the Crystal Palace Electrical Exposition for the Secretary of the Navy. In this report, he recounts many things he saw as a judge and an observer.’’ Historians tend to agree that this
experience in London shaped the path of his innovation. Without orders on the USS Lancaster, one can wonder if the history of electric transportation would be the same.
1883 – Working for Edison While at the 1882 Crystal Palace Electrical Exhibition, he impressed Thomas Edison and his business partner Edward H. Johnson. So much so that when he resigned his commission with the Navy, he readily found a position at Edison’s Menlo Park in New Jersey. He was placed on the team building power transmission lines in towns and cities. While there, he developed new techniques for building transmission lines. Soon, he found that he could build anything he had in mind. He found a local machine shop and started prototyping the designs that had been stored in his notebooks for many years. While working on this, he came to the realization that he could never rise to the level of Thomas Edison’s glory and wealth while he was working for him. He saw the fame and wealth that came along with being a genius inventor and businessman, and he wanted it. Around this time, in May 1883, he filed for his first patent for the Electro-Dynamic Motor. This motor was novel in that it could keep a constant speed, no matter the load. This was key because a streetcar needs to be predictable
Sprague wanted to be a heroic and famous inventor who got the newspaper's front page, but he knew he could never do that in Edison’s shadow.
“Frank Sprague also attended the 1876 Centennial Exhibition, where Alexander Graham Bell unveiled his invention ‘The Telephone’."
Report on the Exhibits at the Crystal Palace Electrical Exhibition
Sprague stands behind Thomas Edison, Philadelphia 1915
The Crystal Palace of Hyde Park, London
we get technical
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