on the road, and so made himself
the pioneer of the automobile in America. Twelve years later Moses G.
Farmer exhibited at various places in New England an electric-driven
locomotive, and in 1851 Charles Grafton Page drove an electric car,
on the tracks of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, from Washington to
Bladensburg, at the rate of nineteen miles an hour. But the cost
of batteries was too great and the use of the electric motor in
transportation not yet practicable.

The great principle of the dynamo, or electric generator, was discovered
by Faraday and Henry but the process of its development into an agency
of practical power consumed many years; and without the dynamo for the
generation of power the electric motor had to stand still and there
could be no practicable application of electricity to transportation,
or manufacturing, or lighting. So it was that, except for the telegraph,
whose story is told in another chapter, there was little more American
achievement in electricity until after the Civil War.

The arc light as a practical illuminating device came in 1878. It was
introduced by Charles F. Brush, a young Ohio engineer and graduate of
the University of Michigan. Others before him had attacked the problem
of electric lighting, but lack of suitable carbons stood in the way of
their success. Brush overcame the chief difficulties and made several
lamps to burn in series from one dynamo. The first Brush lights used for
street illumination were erected in Cleveland, Ohio, and soon the use of
arc lights became general. Other inventors improved the apparatus, but
still there were drawbacks. For outdoor lighting and for large halls
they served the purpose, but they could not be used in small rooms.
Besides, they were in series, that is, the current passed through every
lamp in turn, and an accident to one threw the whole series out of
action. The whole problem of indoor lighting was to be solved by one of
America's most famous inventors.

The antecedents of Thomas Alva Edison in America may be traced back
to the time when Franklin was beginning his career as a printer in
Philadelphia. The first American Edisons appear to have come from
Holland about 1730 and settled on the Passaic River in New Jersey.
Edison's grandfather, John Edison, was a Loyalist in the Revolution who
found refuge in Nova Scotia and subsequently moved to Upper Canada. His
son, Samuel Edison, thought he saw a moral in the old man's exile. His