The Cambridge Manuals of Science andLiterature
ELECTRICITY IN LOCOMOTION
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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ELECTRICITY IN
LOCOMOTION
AN ACCOUNT OF
ITS MECHANISM,
ITS ACHIEVEMENTS, AND
ITS PROSPECTS
BY
ADAM GOWANS WHYTE, B.Sc.
Editor of Electrical Industries
and Electrics
Cambridge:
at the University Press
1911
TO
EMILE GARCKE
With the exception of the coat of arms atthe foot, the design on the title page is areproduction of one used by the earliest knownCambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521.
PREFACE
In the following pages an attempt is made to givea clear picture of the part which electricity hastaken and will continue to take in the developmentof locomotion.
Some of the aspects of electric traction are highlytechnical; others are purely financial. It is impossibleto understand the achievements and possibilities ofelectricity in locomotion without a certain amountof discussion of both these points of view; but it isnot necessary to go deeply into either in order tocatch some of the enthusiasm which inspires theelectrical engineer in his efforts to extend electrictraction everywhere on road and rail. The hopes ofelectrical conquest extend, indeed, to locomotion onthe sea and in the air as well as on the land. At theroot of these hopes there lies a firm faith in thesuperior economies and flexibility of electricity asa mode of motion.
In the explanations which are given of electrictramways, electric railways, electric automobiles,electric propulsion on ships, and the other phasesof electric traction, nothing but the most elementaryknowledge of electricity is presupposed. A certainamount of technical description is unavoidable, butI have restricted it as far as possible to essentialmatters which throw light upon the meaning of thevarious systems of electric traction and explain theeconomic and physical reasons for their adoption.
Anyone who glances over the history of electrictraction will be struck by the absence of outstandingnames. There is no man who occupies the sameposition in the sphere