Technology Changes

Technology Changes. Last week, we looked at the beginning, the growth and the financial success of horsecar lines. But there also were problems. Horses were expensive, both to purchase and to feed, and many were needed. A team of horses could perform the heavy work of pulling a car for only a few hours per day, and horses only lasted in this work for 3 – 4 years. Also, horses were susceptible to diseases, to the extent that entire cities could become immobilized.

Alternatives were tried. A few cities substituted small steam locomotives, usually enclosed in a housing in an attempt at disguise. Nevertheless, they were noisy and dirty and, worst of all, they often scared other horses in the horse-drawn world of the day – the disguise didn’t fool the horses! Also, cable cars, such as still run in San Francisco, were adopted in other cities. Although horribly expensive to build and to maintain, they were more economical than horse cars on heavily trafficked routes, even when no hills were involved. As we discussed some months back, Cleveland had two such cable lines, running east from downtown along Superior and Payne.

But an entirely new technology was on the horizon. Understanding of electricity had developed to the point that, by the 1880’s, several moderately successful attempts had been made to use this new force for public transportation, and the first of these attempts took place on Cleveland. Clevelander Charles Brush had developed a successful generator for arc lighting, and on 27 July 1884 two other Clevelanders, patent attorney Edward Bentley and engineer Walter Knight, using a small Brush generator installed as motor on a horse car, opened their electric streetcar line on 1.5 miles of the East Cleveland Street Railway’s Central Ave line.

Pictures show 1) Cable car, Superior & e 3rd, 1890’s and 2) Cleveland’s Bently-Knight installation.