"Who Killed the Electric Car"

[freethefly 6]

Actualy the concept of an electric car is more than 100 years old. Elmer Sperry worked on the concept in the 1890's. I first heard of it when I worked for Sperry Rail Service and saw a picture at the main office in Danbury, Ct. of the electric car that Elmer drove. The man is responsible for much that shaped the world but never had I read anything of him in school (I am sure that Kallend is familiar with Elmer Sperry's work). He was, without doubt, the true wizard of electricity. Had Sperry been able to generate more interest, we would today be driving electric cars.

http://www.hagley.lib.de.us/1893.htm

Elmer Sperry moved to Cleveland because of a growing association with several financiers who had invested in his experimental electric street car. Many of these investors were also connected with the Thomson-Houston Company. In 1895 when the Thomson-Houston and the Edison Electric Company merged to form General Electric, G.E. acquired Sperry's street car patents, and he went to work for the new company as a consultant. These patents, like his earlier work with arc lighting systems, reflected Sperry's interest in automatic control systems which he believed could help solve some of the problems associated with power transmission and braking. However, once G.E. acquired his patents, Sperry appeared to lose interest in the electric street car as he turned his attention to what was then the nation's most exciting new industry, the automobile. Sperry's experiments in the 1890s with the electric automobile led him to work on perfecting an appropriate storage battery and this interest in turn drew him to the field of electrochemistry.

Series VI. Internal Combustion and Compound Diesel Engine Development Records

In the 1920s Elmer Sperry shifted his focus of interest once again. After his son's death he turned over the day-to-day operation of the Gyroscope Company to a cadre of professional managers and turned his attention to a technological problem that had first captured his imagination as a young man in Chicago--the compound diesel engine. Correspondence with Charles Kettering of General Motors shows that by 1919 Sperry was seeking to develop a diesel engine because he had concluded the world was exhausting its oil supplies and more efficient ways to use energy had to be found. Also he was convinced that flammable avaiation fuel had to be replaced by a safer form of energy. Elmer Sperry's files on the compound diesel engine and the electric transmission include a number of blueprints and patent diagrams describing his diesel engine and proposed electronic transmission. During the 1920s Sperry collaborated closely with H. C. Snow, an engineer with the Velie Motors Corporation of Moline, Illinois, and the collection includes a complete file of their letters. These records show that in spite of their efforts the diesel project was both a technological and financial failure. Sperry could not develop a working model nor could he raise the capital required to finance research and development in this area. For a while Ford Motor Company, Standard Oil, Baldwin Locomotive Works, and the Illinois Central Railroad expressed interest in Sperry's work, but when the research and development did not proceed as rapidly as expected, they quickly withdrew their support.

"...And once you're gone, you can't come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
Neil Young

[rhys 0]

This Elmer Sperry creature was and onto it cat huh!

A little bit like the guy in Ashburton. A small town in Canterbury(my home province), New Zealand that Claimed to fly a similar aircraft to the Wright brothers BEFORE they did. Even though he may not have been successful he had the Write Idea (no pun intended)he even invented a crude version of the helecopter with his 5th or so prototype of an aircraft.
the helecopter was too heavy but the principle was definately there!

Can't remember his name...

oh here he is

Richard William Pearse (3 December 1877 — 29 July 1953), a farmer and inventor who emigrated from Cornwall to New Zealand, experimented with flying machines in the early 20th century. Following such aviation pioneers as Clement Ader and Samuel Pierpont Langley, he reputedly flew a powered heavier-than-air machine on 31 March 1903, some nine months before the Wright brothers. The documentary evidence to support such a claim remains open to interpretation, however, and he did not match the Wrights' achievement of photographing flights. Pearse later claimed his experiments were made in 1904 and were unsuccessful.

Pearse started farming on 100 acres (400,000 m²) in 1898 at Waitohi in South Canterbury, but he never became a keen farmer, having much more interest in engineering. He had wanted to study engineering at an advanced level, but his family did not have the money, having already sent his older brother, Tom, to medical school. Richard resorted to inventing instead.


I think it is important that these type of people remain in the history books, I guess that is why the internet is a great unbias history book but needs to be interpreted properly.

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, then the world will see peace." - 'Jimi' Hendrix

[Samurai136 0]

I believe Pearse's flight was documented by Colin McKenzie, famous kiwi.

"Colin McKenzie, the first man to film movies with sound or in color. He documented the first man to ever fly (before the Wright Brothers, even!) and filmed a biblical epic on a massive set he built single handedly in the mountainous forests of New Zealand. "

"Buttons aren't toys." - Trillian
Ken

[rhys 0]

I'll Have to look that one up thanks

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, then the world will see peace." - 'Jimi' Hendrix

[ltdiver 3]

Enter the Chevy Volt.

And on its heels: Mitsubishi i MiEV.

In testing phase: MINI E! :^)

But would still love to have the Tesla Roadster!

(reviving an old thread, just to see how far we've come in just a few years. Yeah, crush the GM EV1 and see what that stirred up!
Guess what I just watched today: http://www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com/

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon