Jasper County Democrat, Volume 9, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 May 1906 — SELECTIONS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SELECTION S

STREET CAR’S BIRTHDAY. First Successful Horae Car Lins Opened Fifty Yearn A(O. Successful street railroading in this country is actually only fifty years old. Although there were many experimental horse car lines in the early jiart of the nineteenth century, including the famous ’'John Mason,” an omnibus which ran on stray rails fn New York city, the first street car line to have a continuous record of operation down to the present day was opened between Boston and Cambridge in the spring of 185<1. It has developed from a little single track line, over which four or five ears made half hourly trips between Bowdoln square and Harvard square, to the present unified system the Boston Elevated Hallway company, with a network of 450 miles of track, over which 250,000,000 revenue passengers travel each year. At the outset it was regarded as rather a doubtful venture, for it was thought by many that the public would prefer to continue riding in the omnibuses which for many years had furnished a means of conveyance between the New England capital and Its suburbs. The half century, beginning in 18511, thanks to the efforts of such electrical experimenters us Thomas Davenport, Professor Moses G. Farmer, Professor C. G. Pago, Thomas Hall, Henry Plnkus, Stephen B. Field, Thomas A. Edison, Leo Daft, Charles J. Van Depoele, John C. Henry, Professor Sydney 11. Short, Dr. Wellington Adams and many others, has witnessed the creation of American street railway properties, with a trackage of about 25,000 miles and carrying a total of more than 5,000,1)00,000 passengers every year, besides giving employment to more than twice as many men as are employed in the regular standing army of the United States. The first commercially successful electric railway was operated in 1888 by Frank J. Sprague at Richmond, Va., and the new motive power was first put into ojcratlon in a large city system in Boston In the year following. The name ‘‘trolley” is said to have originated among the employees of a little experimental line in Kansas City run by John C. Henry. The new type of car was early dubbed by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes “the broomstick train,” a name which is often humorously applied to It,