e was
any great amount of faith then discernible; and for some years the
pioneers had great difficulty, especially in this country, in raising
money for their early modest experiments. Of the general conditions at
this moment Frank J. Sprague says in an article in the Century Magazine
of July, 1905, on the creation of the new art: "Edison was perhaps
nearer the verge of great electric-railway possibilities than any other
American. In the face of much adverse criticism he had developed the
essentials of the low-internal-resistance dynamo with high-resistance
field, and many of the essential features of multiple-arc distribution,
and in 1880 he built a small road at his laboratory at Menlo Park."

On May 13th of the year named this interesting road went into operation
as the result of hard and hurried work of preparation during the spring
months. The first track was about a third of a mile in length, starting
from the shops, following a country road, passing around a hill at the
rear and curving home, in the general form of the letter "U." The rails
were very light. Charles T. Hughes, who went with Edison in 1879,
and was in charge of much of the work, states that they were "second"
street-car rails, insulated with tar canvas paper and things of that
sort--"asphalt." They were spiked down on ordinary sleepers laid upon
the natural grade, and the gauge was about three feet six inches. At one
point the grade dropped some sixty feet in a distance of three hundred,
and the curves were of recklessly short radius. The dynamos supplying
current to the road were originally two of the standard size "Z"
machines then being made at the laboratory, popularly known throughout
the Edison ranks as "Longwaisted Mary Anns," and the circuits from these
were carried out to the rails by underground conductors. They were not
large--about twelve horse-power each--generating seventy-five amperes
of current at one hundred and ten volts, so that not quite twenty-five
horse-power of electrical energy was available for propulsion.

The locomotive built while the roadbed was getting ready was a
four-wheeled iron truck, an ordinary flat dump-car about six feet long
and four feet wide, upon which was mounted a "Z" dynamo used as a motor,
so that it had a capacity of about twelve horsepower. This machine was
laid on its side, with the armature end coming out at the front of the
locomotive, and the motive power was applied to the driving-axle by a
cumb