Trolley Thursday 9/2/21 - Frank J. Sprague, Father of the Streetcar

Welcome to another brand new month of trolley-posting here at Twice-Weekly Trolley History! For the month of September, we have no real theme this time, but we hope the variety can keep you riders and readers interested!

The electric motor. The trolley pole. Air brakes. We all seem to take these things for granted when we stand back and examine what a streetcar is. After all, hindsight breeds common sense: it makes sense to us to have a stick reaching up and gathering electricity, which feeds a traction motor attached directly to an axle to move the car. But how did these elements come together in the first place? Why did this process work and not a rolling troller on a wire? And who, above all, profited from these patents? Well, dear riders, we have the answer to those queries on today's Trolley Tuesday and his name is Frank J. Sprague, inventor.

   

The Father of the Streetcar

Frank J. Sprague in his younger years.
(New York Public Library)

US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MA, in the 1860s.
Docked are the USS Constitution and USS Santee.
(Public Domain)

Frank Julian Sprague was born on July 25, 1857, in Milford, Connecticut, to David Cummings Sprague and Frances Julia King Sprague. His mother, a schoolteacher, passed when he was ten years old but her influence still permeated the young Frank's mind as he excelled in mathematics. After he graduated high school, he traveled to Springfield, Massachusetts, to take an entrance exam for the illustrious West Point Military Academy. However, by some clerical error on behalf of the test administrators, he had not only taken the entrance exam for the United States Naval Academy, but he ended up passing with the highest score! Quite the mix-up, eh? After securing a $4,000 loan for school (or about $92,921 in 2020), Sprague attended the US Naval Academy and graduated seventh of thirty-six of his class in 1878.

One of Frank J Sprague's drawings on sailboat parts and electrical equipment circa 1878-1880.
(New York Public Library)

A contemporary dynamo from the Heisler Company, 1880s.
(Public Domain)

After graduation, Sprague was now a commissioned ensign in the United States Navy, serving on the USS Richmond and the USS Minnesota. His interest in electrical applications began in 1881, when while on shore leave in Newport, Rhode Island, he invented an "inverted" dynamo that (at least by my understanding) was able to reverse its own polarity and travel in two directions. When he transferred to the USS Lancaster, stationed in Europe, Sprague was given free reign to install an electric call-bell system on the ship, the first for the Navy. Such was his proficiency at electrical applications that he was able to seek leave in 1881 to attend the International Exposition of Electricity in Paris and the 1882 Crystal Palace Exhibition in England, where he served on a jury of awards for gas engines, dynamos, and lamps.

The Edison Company's exhibit at the 1882 Crystal Palace Exhibition.
(Rutgers University Library)

Frank J. Sprague (rear, middle) appears in a photo with
Thomas Edison (front, center) and Samuel Insull (front, left).
(Library of Congress)

Success finally came for the young inventor in 1883, when American inventor Edward H. Johnson convinced Sprague to resign his naval commission and work instead for Thomas Edison in Menlo Park, New Jersey. With a starting salary of $2,500 (or $70,398 in 2020), the pay seemed handsome, but working under Edison proved to be a boring and taxing affair. Sprague was interested in developing his inverted dynamo into an electric motor, but Edison (for one reason or another) found motor development "boring" and assigned the inventor to oversee central power station construction instead. Before Sprague left in 1884, he was able to break through Edison's stubborn head by convincing him to run mathematical simulations instead of wasting money on trial-and-error experiments, eliminating the need for tinkering. It's anyone's guess why Edison did not have hired goons kill Sprague after this enlightening discovery, as Edison was famously known for doing. 

Maybe we just needed to scare him with space scorpions so he couldn't
monopolize every invention he came across... It's just a thought.
(BBC Productions)

Electric Motorama

Frank J. Sprague's original March 9, 1886 patent for an "Electro Dynamic Motor".
(US Patent Office)

Sprague's patent DC motor mounted on a streetcar axle.
(The Cable Car Guy)

With his salary from Edison able to support his new business venture, Sprague founded the "Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company" as a development and (later) sales company to furnish electric motors for streetcars and elevators. Over the next two years, his work on electric motors flourished until, by March 9, 1886, he was able to patent a "constant-speed, non-sparking motor with fixed brushes", or what we might know today as a "traction motor". The motor itself was a blocky affair that used two tightly-wound coil posts connected to a semi-circle of electromagnets around the motor axle. It is unknown how Sprague ended up working with streetcars, but his invention of a practical electric motor meant that the time of the horsecar and the cable car was coming to an end. Around this same time, Sprague also patented a method of regenerative braking where the magnetic fields inside the motor were electrically inverted to bring the motor to a stop, something that made itself useful in both trains and elevators.

Frank J. Sprague with a working model of his electric elevator, 1890s.
(Time Magazine)

De-Poling the Trolley Pole

The first electric streetcar in Los Angeles, the "Los Angeles Electric Railway Company",
was the most well-known user of the Daft Overhead System, which can be seen above
the tiny motor car at right.
(Water and Power Archives)

Another early subscriber of the "Daft" system was the 
Electric Rapid Transit Company of San Diego, 1889.
(San Diego History Center)

Now that Sprague had invented a practical traction motor, there was the issue of power collection. At the time, collecting power from an electric wire was rather unheard of, and many cities looking to convert their systems from horsecars or cables to electricity were met with fierce opponents who stated the overhead wires would make their city look awful (but eye of the beholder, after all). An overhead electrical pickup system did exist by 1887 under the "Daft Overhead System", and it was first applied on electric railways in San Diego and Los Angeles. This system used a wheeled trolley dragged along by the car underneath and supported by two wires, and had the unfortunate luck of constantly falling off the wire or getting snagged, risking passengers below to electric shock. Intending to find a way to complete his traction motor patent as a package deal, Sprague looked elsewhere for inspiration.

Charles Depoele's patent for an "overhead contact device",
what we know now as a "trolley pole".
(Public Domain)

Charles Joseph Van Depoele.
(Public Domain)

His search eventually led him to discover the work of Charles Depoele (1846-1892), a Belgian inventor who dabbled in the same electrical interests as Sprague since 1874. His own patent for a trolley pole was first exhibited at the 1885 Toronto Industrial Exposition and featured a separate motorcar with his own patented pole design. It was mounted high up and was moved up and down by a rope with two springs to provide tension. In a word, it looked incredibly convoluted. Sprague took Depoele's patent and, rather than steal it like his former employer, improved the design. He incorporated a tensioned spring that kept the pole up against the wire and combined the base and hinge into a single unit that curved with the track. Sprague also dispensed with Depoele's use of a separate electric motor to run an axle on a chain, as his own compact electric motor did just about the same job, but smaller.

One of Depoele's streetcar installations in Minneapolis, 1883.
(Electric Traction for Railway Trains, 1911)

Streetcars Take Over America

An electrified RPUR car tackles the steep downhill grade
between Franklin and Grace Streets, 1888.
(Library of Virginia)

Sprague continued to experiment with his electric motors and trolley poles well into the 1880s, seeking a motor and braking system that was rugged enough to deal with the rigors of daily rail travel while also being less maintenance-intensive than other systems. By early 1888, his first practical installation came in the form of the Richmond Union Passenger Railway (RUPR) in Richmond, Virginia. The railway had long-suffered many transportation obstacles, including 10% grades around the city's hills, and Sprague's new trolley system was just what the city needed. On February 2, 1888, the first modern electric streetcar in America took the rails running on 450V DC that moved two 7.5 horsepower motors under the car. 

A West End Street Railway car in 1897.
(State Transportation Library of Massachusetts)

The application was so successful that, on September 7, 1888, the Boston City Council in Massachusetts approved their plan to electrify Boston's streetcar network under the West End Street Railway. That story can be found elsewhere, but it proved that Sprague's invention had staying power in the United States. By the end of 1889, over 110 electric railways were being freshly built or recently converted from horse and cable all over the United States and this major success enabled Sprague to accept a buy-out from Edison (who at this point was a manufacturing contractor for him) of his electric railway equipment and shift his focus to elevator development. However, his interest in streetcars never really left him, and by the mid-1890s, he returned to railroading.

Multiple Unit Madness

The Frank J. Sprague Electric Company in 1898.
(New York Public Library)

Beginning in 1892, Sprague founded and operated another company, the Sprague Electric Elevator Company, with inventor Charles R. Pratt. Together, the two developed the "Sprague-Pratt Electric Elevator", which flew in the face of contemporary elevators by using electricity instead of hydraulic or steam elevators. The first successful application of this was in the Postal Telegraph Building in Lower Manhattan, New York City, in 1894 and Sprague, satisfied with his work, sold the company to Otis Elevator in 1895. From his work on elevators, specifically of "floor control" where an operator could pick a floor and the elevator would go to it, regardless of any calls after, led him to develop his last great electric railway invention: multiple unit control.

The South Side "L" in 1892, prior to Sprague's MU testing.
(Chicagology)

Before this development, railroads big and small depended on locomotive-hauled services or single streetcars to operate and those streetcars could only carry so many trailers. Elevated systems in the Midwest and Northeast were heavily dependent on steam-powered trains that citizens complained were too loud and too filthy to keep working in the city, and something had to be done. With his elevator controls, Sprague figured out that the same relays that operated the floor call system could also be applied to his streetcar controllers and traction motors, using relays energized by trainline wires. In 1895, he quickly got to work cobbling together a demonstration system to use on his newest customer, Chicago's South Side Elevated Railroad.

Frank J. Sprague's first test car on the South Side "L" on December 11, 1897.
(Insulator Reference Site)

A giant test train on the South Side "L", making up 10 cars,
cruises over the city in 1898.
(IEEE PES Magazine)

Sprague's work in Chicago involved him turning the system from steam-powered to electric, and this opportunity allowed him to use the South Side L as a guinea pig. Former steam-powered coaches now had third-rail shoes bolted to their trucks and traction motors slung under their frames, with the motorman gaining a small shack on both ends of the car to drive it. Sprague had also upgraded 120 of the South Side L's 180 cars with electric heaters along with their other electric appliances. When first tested by the end of 1895, the multiple-unit system he developed was labelled an "unqualified success" in local rags. As other elevated systems upgraded themselves to electricity, Sprague gained plenty more customers as they clamored to use his multiple unit system. He later sold this and his electric motor patents to the Westinghouse Company by the turn of the century.

We'll Always Have Paris

Frank J. Sprague with Elihu Thomson, when both worked for General Electric.
(Edison Tech Center)

A Sprague-Thomson subway car working a 2007 heritage train
for the Regie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP).
(Joseph Pretel)

Sprague's work was also able to take him all over the world, with both electric motor installations and metro enhancements taking up much of his business. In October 1901, he proposed a major expansion to the London Underground in an Engineering Magazine missive titled "The Rapid Transit Problem in London". The now-scarce booklet outlined the problem with using steam locomotives underground and the rapid efficiencies from using electrical power instead. Sprague also worked in improving the Paris Metro by introducing a new class of steel subway cars that blended his motor control method with the complexity of the then-popular Thomson Multiple Stock, leading to the Sprague-Thomson cars used between 1908 and 1983. More on both of these next year when we cover international streetcars.

A Shocking Legacy

Frank J. Sprague (right) with wife Harriet (center)
and children Robert (left), Althea (center), and Julian (right)
(John L. Sprague)

You'd think, with all of these inventions and application contracts being installed left and right, that Frank J. Sprague remained alone and busy all his life. Well, you would be half-right. Sprague married twice, first to Mary Keatinge and then to Harriet Chapman Jones. Altogether, he had three sons and a daughter. His son, Robert, wrote in 1935: 

All through his life and up to his last day, Frank Sprague had a prodigious capacity for work… And once having made up his mind on a new invention or a new line of work, he was tireless and always striving for improvement. He had a brilliantly alert mind and was impatient of any half-way compromise. His interest in his work never ceased; only a few hours before the end, he asked to have a newly designed model of his latest invention brought to his bedside.

Frank J. Sprague's headstone at Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia.
(Find a Grave)

Frank J. Sprague passed away on October 25, 1934 and was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. Harriet Sprague joined him in 1969, after her death. His patents, papers, and other studies were donated to the New York Public Library (which is available to read in their "Rare Books" collection) and the Chapin Library at Williams College in Williamstown, MA. In 1959, Harriet Sprague also donated funds for the Sprague Station building at the Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven, Connecticut, a station and exhibit hall that displays most of Sprague's inventions. In 1999, the museum welcomed grandsons John L. and Peter Sprague as they started up an original electric motor invented by Frank J. in 1884 to open up "Frank J. Sprague: Inventor, Scientist, Engineer", a new permanent exhibit in the building named after him.

The Shore Line Trolley Museum's "Frank J. Sprague" exhibit.
(Shore Line Trolley Museum)

In 2012, the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Washington, Pennsylvania, named their since-departed shop cat "Frank the Trolley Cat" in honor of the "Father of Electric Traction". So long as there's a streetcar or LRV out in the world still running on electric motors and pantographs, they have Frank J. Sprague to thank to keep them rolling.

Frank the Trolley Car facilitates a sting movement of Pittsburgh PCC 1711
at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum. Just back it up a little more!
(Pennsylvania Trolley Museum)

   

Thank you for reading today's Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. My resources today included "The Early Years of Electric Traction" from the Journal of Transport History by Michael Robbins, "The Time of the Trolley" by William D. Middleton, "California's Electric Railways" by Harre W. Demoro, "The Forgotten Hero of the American Subway" by Doug Most, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' biography of Frank J. Sprague, the Shore Line Trolley Museum, and the photo credits listed in each caption. The trolley gifs in our posts are made by myself and can be found under “Motorman Reymond’s Railroad Gif Carhouse”. On Tuesday, we look at an often-forgotten piece of streetcar sideshows in the form of the mighty Trolley Park! For now, you can follow myself or my editor on Twitter, buy a shirt or sticker from our Redbubble stand, or purchase my editor's self-developed board game! It's like Ticket to Ride, but cooler! (and you get to support him through it!) Until next time, ride safe!