14 Chapter 2 An Electrical Industry Emerges The fact that battery technology was making major leaps and strides was only possible due to the expansion, growth and availability of electricity, and the electrical networks of the day. Without the “supply” of electricity, the “demand” for energy storage may not have emerged at all. We start looking at the World Fairs of the time because they provide a good representation of the speed of technological innovation and change in the world in general.
In the 16-year span between the 1876 “Centennial” World’s Fair in Philadelphia, where the only electrical technol- ogy shown was an early electric dynamo, and the 1892 Chicago World’s Fair that was powered and lit largely by electricity the amount of new and electrically powered technology that was introduced increased significantly. In 1892 Fair, the number of exhibits that focused on electric- ity or electrical technology grew nearly exponentially during this period and the electric vehicle grew from a pure demonstration to a production product during this same period.
During the 1878 World’s Fair in Paris, the first electric vehicles and electric bicycles began to make their appearance in the marketplaces. This World Fair also showcased other major electrical innovations such as Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, electric arc lighting, and even Thomas Edison’s phonograph (Gross & Snyder, 2005). And only four years later at the 1892 World’s Fair in Chicago, electricity and electrical powered equipment were being showcased in grand style. In fact, the international exhibits hall was powered entirely by Westinghouse’s alternating current (AC).
The Westinghouse exhibit displayed many new electrical technologies and innovation for the generation and transmission of electricity including an electrical switchboard, a polyphase generator, a step-up transformer, power lines for electrical transmission, a step-down transformer, both a commercial size induction and synchronous motor, and rotary direct current (DC) converters. The Westinghouse exhibit even went so far as to display exhibits of equipment designed by Nikola Tesla himself, including innovations such as a two-phase induction motor and the generators used to power the system.
While all of these may seem common place today, remember that this was the first time these had been seen for commercial use. As an interesting side, note General Electric, Tesla and Westinghouse’s main competitor had also bid on powering the international exhibit using Edison’s DC solution, but ended up submitting a higher cost bid and lost out to the lower priced Westinghouse quote (Barrett, 1894; Jonnes, 2004; Larsen, 2003; Seifer, 1996). Early Electric Vehicle Development Between the commercial introduction of the automobile in the late-1800s and the early 1910s, automobiles were powered by one of three different sources:
(1) ICEs that were powered by liquid fuel (gasoline); (2) steam engines powered by fire and heat; and (3) electric motors powered by electric batteries using chemical energy. In fact, by 1912, electric vehicles made up over one-third of all US vehicle sales (Kirsch, 2000). During this same period, Europe was