48
The telephone was Invented in 1876, and by
1896, 404,000 were in service. By 1905 the figure
had increased to 4,127,000 and by 1915 to 10,524,000.^
The first experimental electric streetcar line
was built in I879. By 1888 the first commercially
useful line was in operation in Richmond, Virginia, and
by 1902, 22,576 miles of track had been constructed.
By then only 1 percent of the streetcars in use
31
were still horse-drawn. A streetcar with two 15
horsepower motors, considered adequate in 1890, by
1900 was outmoded by 40 horsepower motors. The demands
for power by this industry alone were great.
The requirements of the industry are . enormous,
and the data in hand show that in the ten years
between I89O and 1900, the railway power plants
of the United States had installed, available
for traction purposes, about 1,000,000 horsepower
of dynamos to feed current to motor cars of a
capacity somewhat over 2,000,000 horsepower.
£iot all cars were used simultaneously, hence the
larger capacity of cars relative to generating
equipment^ (32)
By 1900 the electrical industry had developed
so rapidly and along so many avenues that the Census of
Manufactures of that year listed separately twenty-seven
^Historical Statistics, p. 480, Series R-l.
31
Harold R. Sharlin, "Applications of Electricity
in Technology in Western Civilization, ed. by Kranzberg
and Pursell, op. cit., p. 574.
32
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the
Census, Twelfth Census of the United States, Manufactures
Part XV (Washington, d! C. : Gnvernment^rintingOffice^
1902), pp. 164-65.