Leo Daft

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Leo Daft
Locomotive Ampère by Leo Daft, 1883

Leo Daft (* 1843 ; † 1922 ) was a university professor from England and a pioneer in the field of electric drives for rail vehicles .

Daft built the Ampère near Newark (New Jersey) , one of the first operational electric locomotives . The tests took place on November 24, 1883 on the narrow-gauge Saratoga, Mount McGregor and Lake George Railroad in the US state of New York. It pulled an ordinary railroad car weighing ten tons and carrying 68 passengers plus five people on the locomotive itself at about 13 km / h over an incline of 1:57. The supply of electrical energy was carried out via a power rail between the running rails. At the end of the journey, however, the vehicle is said to have derailed and broke.

Even before the widely known opening of the tram system in Richmond based on the Frank Julian Sprague system , Daft ran one of the first electric trams in commercial operation on the Hampden branch of the Baltimore Union Passenger Railway on August 10, 1885 . A third rail was used for power supply , which was only replaced at the intersections by an overhead line made of bare copper wire, against which a pantograph pressed itself from below. The operating voltage was 125 volts. For this operation, Daft built three tram locomotives named Morse , Faraday and Ohm .

Other electric locomotives from Daft were the nine-ton Benjamin Franklin for New York Elevated , which could pull a train of eight cars at 40 km / h, as well as the Volta and the Pacinotti .

Overall, however, these vehicles were unsuccessful, so Daft concentrated on building cable trams. He built a cableway with the Second Street Cable Railway in Los Angeles , which operated from 1885 to 1889.

literature

  • Joseph J. Cunningham: forgotten pioneer - leo daft and the excelsior power company. In: IEEE power & energy, Vol. 16, No. 4, July / August 2018, pp. 108-120.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gustave Fischer: Electric Traction . June 12, 1890, p. 78 ( escholarship.usyd.edu.au ( memento of March 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive )). Electric Traction ( Memento of the original from March 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / escholarship.usyd.edu.au
  2. ^ A b c Ralf Roman Rossberg : History of the Railway. Sigloch Edition, Künzelsau 1999, ISBN 3-89393-174-0 , p. 264.
  3. ↑ Dr. Baron v. Röll: Electric Railways . In: Encyclopedia of Railways . Second, completely revised edition. tape 4 . Berlin / Vienna 1913, p. 207–288 ( Electric Railways [accessed March 28, 2012]).
  4. ^ Joe Thompson: Los Angeles Cable Railway / Pacific Cable Railway. In: The Cable Car Home Page. Retrieved March 28, 2012 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Daft, Leo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American inventor
DATE OF BIRTH 1843
DATE OF DEATH 1922