The Baltimore & Ohio railroad (B&O) was the first railroad to electrify part of its tracks, doing so in 1895 (Lecture Notes, 2/19/14). The electric locomotive was faster and cheaper than the steam locomotive, and produced no smoke (Lecture Notes, 2/19/14). This opened up the gates for electric locomotives to replace steam engines on their own tracks. Still, only a few American railroads electrified their lines between 1900 and 1950. Many American railroads failed to electrify their railroads due to the high initial cost and economic conditions, the lack of standardized electrical systems used for the railways, and corporate resistance (Bezilla, 42-47). Electric traction had numerous advantages over steam railroads. One major advantage was electric locomotive’s ability to pull heavier loads than steam locomotives (Bezilla, 30-31). One statement from electrical manufacturers’ stated that an electric locomotive could pull from five times its own weight on a 2% grade, whereas a steam locomotive on the same grade could only pull two times its own weight (Bezilla, 31). In addition to this, the electric motors could sustain higher currents for a short time in order to increase horsepower dramatically; steam engines had no analogous feature (Bezilla, 31). These factors combined allowed for electric locomotives to accelerate more rapidly, even while pulling more weight, than steam locomotives (Bezilla, 31). The electric motor also had less moving parts and thus needed less maintenance than complex steam engines (Bezilla, 31). For example, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s electric locomotives in 1940 were typically running 90% of the time, but the steam locomotives that the electric ones replaced had only ran 69% of the time (Bezilla, 32). The... ... middle of paper ... ... as “cheap electrification” because it had many of the advantages of traditional electrification, but the initial cost was dramatically cheaper(Lecture Notes, 2/19/14). The story of railway electrification showed that just because a particular technology is better than an existing one, does not necessarily mean that it will win out in the end. The success of the “better” technology largely depends on what people want at the time, the magnitude of change required to adopt the “better” technology, and people’s willingness to accept that degree of change. Works Cited Bezilla, Michael. “Steam Railroad Electrification in America, 1920-1950: The Unrealized Potential.” Perry, John. “Railways.” 2/19/14. Stradling, David and Tarr, Joel. “Environmental Activism, Locomotive Smoke, and the Corporate Response: The Case of the Pennsylvania Railroad and Chicago Smoke Control.”
To urban middle-class Americans of the late 19th century, nothing symbolized the progress of the American civilization quite as much as the railroad. Not only had the great surge in railroad construction after the Civil War helped to create a modern market economy, but the iron horse itself seemed to embody the energy, force, and technology of the new order. In fact, the fanning out of railroads from urban centers was an integral part of the modernizing process, tying the natural and human resources of rural areas to the industrializing core.
In order to detail the rise of railroads throughout this era of technological boom, it is important to understand the Industrial Revolution, which was the start of this success; it paved the way for major changes in the modern society we live in today. This is the period between the 18th and 19th centuries when major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportatio...
Railroads first appeared around the 1830’s, and helped the ideas of Manifest Destiny and Westward expansion; however, these were weak and didn’t connect as far as people needed, thus causing them to be forced to take more dangerous routes. On January 17th, 1848, a proposal was sent to Congress by Asa Whitney to approve and provide federal funding...
Throughout the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, the United States economy changed dramatically as the country transformed from a rural agricultural nation to an urban industrial gian, becoming the leading manufacturing country in the world. The vast expansion of the railroads in the late 1800s’ changed the early American economy by tying the country together into one national market. The railroads provided tremendous economic growth because it provided a massive market for transporting goods such as steel, lumber, and oil. Although the first railroads were extremely successful, the attempt to finance new railroads originally failed. Perhaps the greatest physical feat late 19th century America was the creation of the transcontinental railroad. The Central Pacific Company, starting in San Francisco, and the new competitor, Union Pacific, starting in Omaha. The two companies slaved away crossing mountains, digging tunnels, and laying track the entire way. Both railroads met at Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869, and drove one last golden spike into the completed railway. Of course the expansion of railroads wasn’t the only change being made. Another change in the economy was immigration.
There is no refuting that the railroad companies transformed business operations and encouraged industrial expansion. The raw materials required for construction of the transcontinental railroad directly resulted in the expansion of the steel, lumber and stone industries. (Gillon p.652) The railroad stimulated growth in manufacturing and agriculture providing an efficient manner to ship raw materials and products throughout the country. Which in turn, increased consumerism and introduced t...
There was one bright spot for trolley operations during the Depression; an entirely new and truly modern streetcar. The “PCC” in this car's name comes from the name of a design committee formed in 1929 as the Presidents' Conference Committee and renamed the Electric Railway Presidents' Conference Committee (ERPCC) in 1931. The ERPCC’s goal was to design a new and modern type of streetcar that would better meet the needs of the street railways and their customers. The committee prepared a detailed research program, conducted extensive University level research, built and tested components and made necessary modifications. In the end the ERPCC produced a set of specifications for a complete vehicle of a set design built with standardized parts.
"Railroads were the first big business, the first magnet for the great financial markets, and the first industry to develop a large-scale management bureaucracy. The railroads opened the western half of the nation to economic development, connected raw materials to factories and retailers, and in so doing created an interconnected national market. At the same time the railroads were themselves gigantic consumers of iron, steel, lumber, and other capital goods". (Tindall, Shi)
Transportation improved from the market revolution through many new inventions, railroads, steamboats, and canals. Pressure for improvements in transportation came at least as much from cities eager to buy as from farmers seeking to sell. The first railroad built was in 1792, it started a spread throughout the states. Cumberland which began to be built in 1811 and finished in 1852, known to be called the national road stretched over five hundred miles from Cumberland to Illinois. By 1821, there were four thousand miles of turnpike in the United States. Turnpikes were not economical to ship bulky goods by land across long distance across America, so another invention came about. Robert Fulton created steam boats in 1807; he named his first one ‘Clermont.’ These steam boats allowed quick travel upriver against the currents, they were also faster and cheaper. The steamboats became a huge innovation with the time travel of five miles per hour. It also stimulated agricultural economy of west by providing better access to markets at lower cost. While steamboats were conquering the western rivers, canals were being constructed in the northeastern states. The firs...
Changing the messaging of their argument to racial discrimination moved the focus from the polluting facility to the people who would be victimized by its presence. This communication method is further explored in the case of The Ancient Forest Rescue (AFR), a group of concerned, mostly white, young activists fighting against a mining operation in the heart of the San Luis Valley, a mostly Latino populated region. The AFR was against a toxic mining operation that would cause tremendous amounts of soil erosion, which would nearly destroy that area’s watershed. These activists were well intentioned, but local residents had to make them aware of the historical and cultural context of discriminatory environmentalism (Westra and Lawson 2001). The Chicano community needed a safe space for themselves in order to communicate about the cultural significance in preserving their land.
Shortly after the Kohlsaat race, Thomas Edison said he believed gasoline, not electricity, would provide the dominant power source for the automobile of the future. "As it looks at the present," he s...
To this day I still remember the first time I saw an electric car. I remember coming home to my mother and telling her that I saw a car that runs on no gas. My mom, being the classic uneducated woman looks at me and said “what movie did you get that from”, I laughed as I searched it on my phone, and showed her the different models of electric cars. Soon after my mother was telling everybody how she would love to have the new sleek, trendy modern electric car “The Tesla”. Ever since the day I laid my eyes on that car, I sincerely found my fascination with electric cars. Electric cars are truly the best cars ever created! To begin with, electrical cars don’t need gas to operate. Furthermore, Electrical cars are safer, they don’t
The problem of this study was to research the development and impacts of the electric vehicle. At the turn of the 19th Century when automobiles were new, electric vehicles outnumbered gasoline-powered vehicles. The problem for the electric car was that electric battery technology did not improve nearly as fast as gasoline technology and by 1910 the interest in the development of the electric vehicle had all but ceased (Sedgwick 1996). Electric vehicles made a surge back onto the national scene because of the oil crisis of the late seventies and the early eighties, but nterest soon dropped however, because the crisis was soon solved. Today the current surge of interest in electric vehicles replacing the internal combustion engine, or ICE, is due strictly to one concern, air quality. The world’s population is booming and cars are polluting the world’s cities, dumping large amounts of carbon dioxide and other climate-altering greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and consuming vast quantities of petroleum (Sperling 1995). Now is the time for the solution, the electric car.
In the nineteenth century, the United States began its industrial revolution. American railroads needed to improve their brake systems in trains so they can make it more safe for passengers to ride and quicker for things to be transported. George Westinghouse Jr. created the air brake --- a significant technical innovation in the railroad industry of the late nineteenth century. Air brakes encouraged railroad managers to purchase the product in an instant. While the air brakes were up and running, it took time for most railroad companies to adopt this new technology. Steve Usselman’s “Air Brakes for Freight Trains: Technological Innovation in the American Railroad Industry, 1869-1900”, argued that Westinghouse’s air brakes were integrated that
In the early years, England and France were the first nations to experiment with electric vehicles with the United States showing some interest in about 1895. The general perception of the electric vehicle was that it had many advantages over gasoline powered cars. It was clean, silent, free from vibrations, thoroughly reliable, easy to start and control, and produced no dirt or odor. The disadvantages were short range and high initial cost. It was not as cheap to run as other forms of transportation and could average only about 18 miles per day, but this met the needs of much of the population in the larger cities. Electric vehicles outsold all other types of cars in the year 1899 and 1900. A wide variety of automobiles were built when designers experimented with different body styles and engine
the railroads, were run off mutate energy. All the low jobs were given to the