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Post by Avatar on Oct 16, 2023 1:29:28 GMT
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Post by Avatar on Oct 16, 2023 2:33:53 GMT
Okay... The year is 1876, 100 years since the founding of the American republic. The Davenport family has been connected with the electric motor for a considerable part of that history.It is a what-if situation to consider what would happen if that demonstrator had been scaled up before Siemens ever developed his carriages in Berlin in the 1880s. The missing pieces to the first American electric trolley would be a dynamo (Charles Brush) and a suitable steam engine. The steam engine would be simple. The dynamo-motor would not be so simple, because of some problems with materials science. Just from a real history perspective, the brushes and the commutator required a development of the appropriate wear-resistant, copper or carbon brushes and contacts and this was not achieved in the United States until 1885. Prior to then, it was the mercury dip contact bath or soft iron contactors and that did not work too well. Sparking, fires and burned insulation was the usual result. So we have to solve those problems before the Boston electric tram car can chug up Beacon Hill.
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Post by Avatar on Oct 16, 2023 2:39:41 GMT
Letter: 47 1st Ave, Boston, Mass 12 January 1876
Mister Charles Francis Brush, Esq. 1350 Euclid Avenue, Suite 1000, Cleveland, Ohio
Dear Mister Charles Brush.
We have just received your model of the electric current generator you made for us this past week and put it through the tests we discussed in our past letter to you. We find it does not meet our current specifications and needs.
To wit: -the “dynamo” is excessively heavy at nearly 1,500 pounds and underpowered at 25 horsepower of rated work. We were promised an overall weight of approximately 1,000 pounds and 40 horsepower to install in our 4,000 pound carriage. During our tests we found the work output measured as 0.006 hp/lb.
-as we have a requirement to move that 4,000 pound carriage up an incline of 10 degrees, the above result is not satisfactory. We require a device that can generate approximately 0.01 hp/lb as work. As we also use the customer’s insistent metric units of measurement, that tested work output was 10.27 W/kg. The required minimum output of 16.44 W/kg was not attained and the carriage stalled at 1/3 of its planned 4 mile or 6.44 kilometers up the incline run. Henceforth to avoid confusion as to the stated requirements, we will use the customer's requested units of measurement to that requirement.
After consultation with my colleagues, Mister B. Fiske of New York and Mister J. Howell of Virginia, we collectively have reached the following conclusions and make these recommendations to assist you in your next attempt to meet the requirements:
1. The mounting is excessively large and made of a conductive metal that produces the danger or a ground-short at the armature contacts. While iron is cheap and the wood insulator blocks serve to make the dynamo function at the base mount; we did notice that it caught fire around the silk insulation wrap when it shorted out. Perhaps aluminum or steel would be a better housing and perhaps India rubber would make better shock mounts as well as wrap insulator? 2. We agree that the soft iron brushes and contactor plates vibrated excessively during armature rotation and that the sparking which resulted probably caused the fire. 3. We recommend that lightening the armature and stator hoop with a different stiffer and lighter metal might be advantageous, and perhaps using copper wire wrap in the stator “might” save a few additional hundred pounds. 4. We recommend that if you cannot find a suitable copper/nickel alloy metal to make the brushes and commutator contacts from a supplier in the United States, then perhaps, Sheffield, in England can supply the needed materials?
We await your next application and expect that you will have a sample dynamo for us to test in March of this year.
Sincerely: Irene Goss Davenport; DME BNY
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Post by Avatar on Oct 16, 2023 2:40:19 GMT
Diary entry: C. Brush dated 22 January 1876. The windmill powered dynamo I sent to “that woman” as the electric motivator for her tram car; she rejected. Ordinarily I would write her off as just another disappointed customer; but she had the effrontery to send me a complete package of complaints and suggestions, attached to her rejection letter, and then demanded that I fulfill the contract with another example of a dynamo modified to her specifications. Naturally, I replied to her letter, with one of my own, that if she knew how I should build the dynamo better than I did, then maybe she should build it herself. That, in hindsight, was a mistake; for today I received as a visitor, a Mister Robert Fraye, solicitor, currently in the employ of Mister William Henry Vanderbilt. Yes, THAT Vanderbilt. Mister Fraye was most courteous and properly formal when he handed me the legal injunction that forbade me from engaging in any other business or manufacture until I had fulfilled my contract with “that woman”. I have examined my options and I have concluded several things: a. I must discharge my lawyer and replace him. b. I must contact Antonio Pacinotti, my colleague, for further insight on how to wrap the stator as “that woman” suggested. He has been somewhat successful in his work and with luck, I should obtain his results without patent issues between us. c. I must investigate a local source of copper conductive materials suitable for contactors, obtain the services of a gunmaker to forge the steel hoops and armature horns here in Cleveland. Perhaps the Eagle Ironworks of Cincinnati, Ohio? d. I must find out more about “that woman” for she apparently has powerful friends. To add salt to the wounds, Mister Fraye has been kind enough to offer me the options of accomplishing a through c, at my own expense, or face bankruptcy and criminal charges of fraud. However, if I deliver a suitable dynamo in the time specified, Mister Vanderbilt will defray my costs and ensure I will profit from the results of success. What I do not understand; is why is he interested? But as I am caught between the lawyers and the poor house I really have no choice in the issue. If I am to have a suitable dynamo ready by March of this year, I had best get cracking!
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Post by Avatar on Oct 16, 2023 2:47:23 GMT
Diary entry: C. Brush dated 1 February 1876. I am doomed..
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Post by Avatar on Oct 16, 2023 2:52:10 GMT
Miles GreenwoodIndustrial innovator Miles Greenwood was born on March 19, 1807, in Jersey City, New Jersey. In 1817, he moved with his father to Ohio, settling near Cincinnati. In 1832, Greenwood established the Eagle Ironworks on the banks of the Miami and Erie Canal near Cincinnati. The foundry quickly became the largest in the Midwest. Greenwood spent the remainder of his life involved in the iron business. He also was very civic minded and served on the Cincinnati City Council. During the American Civil War, Greenwood only allowed the Eagle Ironworks to produce items for the Northern war effort. At the war's outbreak, Eagle Ironworks manufactured one dozen iron anchors for pontoon bridges at the request of General John C. Fremont. Greenwood's firm manufactured the anchors in just twenty-four hours. Over the course of the war, Greenwood developed machinery that could manufacture three thousand smoothbore muskets per day. He also built turrets for ironclad ships when no other iron foundry would attempt the work. Greenwood's contributions to the Northern war effort greatly assisted the Union. The Eagle Ironworks' contributions also prompted Southern sympathizers to set fire to the foundry on three different occasions. Combined damages amounted to 100,000 dollars, but Greenwood never ceased production. One of Greenwood's more important innovations was helping to develop and manufacture the first practical steam fire engine in history. On March 2, 1852, three Cincinnati residents, Abel Shawk, Alexander Bonner Latta, and Greenwood, began construction of the fire engine. Shawk was a locksmith, and Latta was a locomotive builder. The Eagle Ironworks manufactured the engine. Earlier inventors had manufactured steam-powered fire engines, but the Cincinnati version proved to be much more practical. The steam engine could begin pumping water out of a water source in ten minutes. Earlier engines took much longer. A principal reason for Greenwood's involvement with this product was a fire that destroyed the Eagle Ironworks in 1852. Greenwood hoped that this new fire engine would better protect his business. After the three men demonstrated their finished engine to the Cincinnati City Council, the city agreed to buy an engine. The fire engine was presented to the Cincinnati Fire Department on January 1, 1853, and made Cincinnati the first city in the world to use steam fire engines. This first engine was named "Uncle Joe Ross" after a city council member. In 1854, Cincinnati residents raised enough funds to allow the fire department to purchase a second steam fire engine. This engine was known as "Citizen's Gift." The steam fire engine changed firefighting in Cincinnati. Pleased with the engine, local government leaders decided to form a professional fire department rather than relying on volunteers. On April 1, 1853, Cincinnati created the first professional and fully-paid fire department in the United States. Greenwood, co-inventor of the steam fire engine, served as the department's first chief. The company struggled financially after the Civil War. Shortly after the conflict, the Eagle Ironworks ceased operations, although several firms continue to use the name today. Greenwood died on November 6, 1885, in Cincinnati. I think Chuck thinks Stinky is optimistic at 500 pounds and 100 horsepower. Maybe twice the weight and half the horsepower? That four pole dynamo is not as easy to make as a steam powered fire engine!
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Post by Avatar on Oct 16, 2023 2:54:26 GMT
Diary entry: C. Brush dated 5 April 1876. Received two messages about the dynamo. The letter from "that woman" confirmed what I suspected about the dynamo Stinky sent her. I wished he had held up a day, so I could have looked at it. It was overweight by the amount that I feared it would be. I know Stinky thought that he was helping me out by shipping it off as soon as he made it, but that good deed has backfired at us both. From what else that Miles told me about the contraption, when I visited him this past Monday, and what "that woman" wrote about it in her letter, I began to smell a rotten fish in Boston. I sent Antonio Pacinotti a telegram about it and today I have his reply. I see a trip to Boston in my immediate future.
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Post by Avatar on Oct 16, 2023 3:02:10 GMT
Letter: 47 1st Ave, Boston, Mass 1 April 1876 Mister Bradley Fiske, MEE63 Flushing Ave, Brooklyn, New York Dear Brad; I wish to compliment your workshop on the duplication of the steam engine. I thought both the plans and the actual engine had been lost. As you know, Mister J. Ericsson has been a bit difficult as to supplying drawings for it, to us, ever since Thomas Rowland's workshop burned down in that insurance arson last year and his, Ericsson's, papers were lost to the fire. I guess his memory is not what it was. That you could find and duplicate the achievement based on the recovery of the USS Patapsco wreck is quite remarkable. I would be remiss to note that at 100,000 pounds, the engine will not fit the tram carriage at all, but as you know the revised plan is to convey power to the tramcar by overhead suspended wires and pulley runners to that tramcar for the immediate future, The sheer weight of the steam engine is not at issue for us as this is a proof of concept. We can work on that problem to get it down to the required size once we have proofed all components. The present issue is getting that engine from New York to Boston to operate as the primary rotator for the dynamo, which means I am thinking of using a boat as the powerhouse and supply and as the means to move the engine from where you are to where I am. Let me know what you think of the idea? We can pass it on to our other friend, Vanderbilt, and maybe he can arrange to have it built. Your partner in all things connivery: Irene Goss Davenport; DME BNY
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Post by Avatar on Oct 16, 2023 19:39:39 GMT
More than one way to skin that cat.Out in the wild by 1823.A Gramme Ring was out in the wild in 1871. Wiring schematic for a simplified bipolar field Gramme ring single-phase to direct current rotary converter. (In actual use, the converter is drum-wound and uses a multipolar field.).Items Irene Goss Davenport currently considers in this timeline.a. She knows about the rotary converter that Gramme developed in 1871 and for some silly reason did not patent. b. Charles Brush has been building windmills and well pumps since 1867. c. Miles Greenwood demonstrated that he could buiild rotating gun turrets for the Union Navy during the War of the Rebellion and that he could in this timeline make a direct current Brush-type generator. d. The Solenoid has been out there since 1823 since André-Marie Ampère created it as a laboratory curiosity. e. The Ericsson USS Monitor style steam engine is a vibrating beam steam BOXER engine in layout. f. The tramcar needs a flat-engine. g. In this timeline, Irene Goss Davenport, has patented a commutator assembly. One step to a rotary inverter. (^^^) And now we have William Henry Vanderbilt very busy. He has contracted for a ship, to be built by these clowns. It is to use an Ericsson engine, built by Cramp and Sons and that is to be hooked up to an electric dynamo / motor final drive to be provided by the Eagle Iron Works of Cincinatti, Ohio. Bit of real history...about the Cramps: **Actually the Americans beat this feat with a light house guardship #70 off San Francisco that alerted the San Francisco Port Authority that the troopship SS Sherman returning from the Filipino American War was entering the harbor navigation protection zone. Marconi was installing his "contraption" anywhere and anywhen he was allowed. The SS St Paul, used in the Spanish American War as an auxilliary armed merchant cruiser did not make her voyage to the UK until August when she was released from war service.
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Post by Avatar on Oct 16, 2023 19:52:23 GMT
The following records are of minutes taken of a meeting between Mister Charles Francis Brush and Miss Irene Goss Davenport taken this date of April 14, 1876. Lawyer present for Mister Brush, being Mister John W. Allen, attorney licensed for law in the State of Ohio.^1 Lawyer present for Miss Davenport, being Mister George Boyer Vashon, attorney licensed for law In the State of New York, and within the District of Columbia.
The stenographer of record, being Mister Ashton Moore Whitely, as notary, licensed justice of the peace for the county of Suffolk^3 in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Time being 2 PM of the 14th Day of the Month of April in the Year of Our Lord 1876 and One Hundred years since the Founding of the United States:
Davenport: Good afternoon Mister Brush.
Brush: Good afternoon Miss Davenport. You surprise me. You appear to be quite young to handle a matter of this import.
Vashon: I would take objection to the…
Allen: I think Mister Brush means to compliment Miss Davenport on her…
Whitely: Should we not restrict ourselves to the particulars of this meeting?
Brush: Quite so. My apologies, Miss Davenport.
Davenport: Accepted and agreed. Now what do you want with me, Mister Brush?
Allen: I think this brief covers the main question of import.
At this moment, Miss Davenport, and her attorney Mister Vashon retire to the next room to read the document and confer in privacy. They return approximately at 2.20 PM.
Davenport: Your brief is spurious. I do not see why I should have to explain to you what I intend to do with the dynamo I contracted you to build for me.
Brush: I have the right…
Vashon: … to be paid for the contracted service, once successfully concluded…
Allen: …provided that such service and product is not put to nefarious or illegal use…
Whitely: That is enough! Lawyers leave the room. Miss Davenport and Mister Brush stay.
Allen and Vashon: We protest.
Whitely: Get out.
At this moment a sergeant was summoned and the lawyers were escorted out of the room and the three principles: Mister Whitely, Miss Davenport and Mister Brush remained to settle matters. The time was 2.25 PM
Whitely: Let me see the brief.
At this moment Mister Whitely (self) read the Allen brief on behalf of Mister Brush. By 2.40 PM the brief was read and understood as to its content and import. Neither Miss Davenport nor Mister Brush spoke as they glared at each other.
Whitely: Mister Vashon is correct. The brief is spurious. All that you require, Mister Brush, is the written assurance that you will be paid upon the successful completion of the contract you have with Miss Davenport. You have that already. Whatever she intends with the dynamo is none of your business.
Brush: Can I at least have a written assurance that its use will be legitimate and legal?
Davenport and Whitely: No.
Davenport: As I wrote you, the dynamo was to be used to move a tramcar up a ten degree incline of 4 miles length. I gave you work and weight specifications sufficient to meet the contract, which you as yet to fulfill.
Brush: Greenwood will have a two hundred kilogram dynamo with a seventy five kilowatt output ready for you in two weeks, Miss Davenport. That is as light as we can make it; provided you can tell me how you intend to generate a magnetic field in the stator.
Whitely: What?
Davenport: A motor generator of four hundred and forty pounds and one hundred horsepower, Mister Whitely. As for your question, Mister Brush, if you followed my commutator design you would “know” how I intend to generate a magnetic field in the bell. I do not need to explain secondary excitation to you do I?
Brush: Well, I’ll be an expletive deleted!
Davenport: We both agree on that one.
^1 John W. Allen A Connecticut native and graduate of Harvard, John W. Allen came to Cleveland to study law in 1825. He served as president of the village of Cleveland's board of trustees prior to the city's incorporation. He was briefly an Ohio senator and then a U.S. congressman before serving one year as Cleveland's mayor. He later switched from the Whig Party to the Republican Party and was appointed Cleveland postmaster by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1870.
^2 George Boyer Vashon, A Pennsylvania native, he was the first black graduate of Oberlin College, He decided to become a lawyer in Pennsylvania. After studying law in the offices of a prominent Pennsylvania lawyer, in 1847, he applied for admission to the bar of Allegheny County. His application was rejected on the grounds that Pennsylvania state law limited bar admission to white men only. Vashon left Pennsylvania to become the first black man admitted to the New York State Bar in 1848, and then reapplied for admission in Allegheny County in 1867 after the American Civil War. A Common Pleas Court panel again denied his application. Vashon would go on to become the third black lawyer admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1868 and, in 1869, the first admitted to practice in the District of Columbia. He was posthumously admitted to the Allegheny County Bar in 2010.
^3 As a matter of historical record, the County of Suffolk no longer exists. It is an administrative district, which is surprisingly similar in principle and function to a Russian Oblast. Massachusetts abolished the county system in 1999 as a form of bureaucratic inefficiency that added a step / layer between the citizen and her state government. District representatives now form the “governor’s advisory council” instead.
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Post by Avatar on Oct 16, 2023 19:54:58 GMT
Letter: 119 Vanderbilt Park Rd, Hyde Park, New York 25 April 1876
Miss Irene Goss Davenport DME 47 1st Ave, Boston, Mass BNY
Dear Miss Davenport:
With reference to the following inquiries and actions: a. The Eagle Iron Works of Cincinnati, Ohio is now in our possession and is forthwith transferred to your direct supervision without the super-numeracy of Mister Charles Francis Brush as the previous go-between agent. Send Mister Miles Greenwood, manager, the telegraphed requests and he will act upon your instructions directly. b. The firm of William Cramp and Sons; Shipbuilders of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; has been contracted to deliver one ship equipped with a steam engine, locally modified with a Brush dynamo, to act as the generator station base to your location, no later than 15 June 1876. The ship selected is the SS Pennsylvania of 3000 short tons displacement. She has an existent double compound steam engine rated at 3,000 indicated shaft horsepower and should be able to subordinate a potential 1000 horsepower Brush dynamo as requested. Will this item be satisfactory for your experiments and can your people fit the ship out with the dynamo, or should we have Cramp and Sons attempt the modification? c. Inquiry as to the procurement of one dozen (12) windmill powered generators from Mister Charles Francis Brush has hit a slight snag, so to speak. (Refer to a. for an explanation.) d. Mister Vanderbilt is most interested in whether you can make the target date for the public demonstration of 4 July 1876?
Best regards: For William Henry Vanderbilt: Mister Robert Fraye, LLD.
Letter: 47 1st Ave, Boston, Mass 27 April 1876
Mister Robert Fraye, LLD. 119 Vanderbilt Park Rd, Hyde Park, New York
Dear Mister Fraye;
In order points, I suggest the following responses. a. The Eagle Iron Works of Cincinnati, Ohio can manufacture the required electric boxer engines for our tramcar. The question is rather whether Mister Vanderbilt’s railroad can deliver them to me in time to install? b. I would prefer that William Cramp and Sons build the dynamo into the SS Pennsylvania. It seems that if they built the ship and her engines, then with a little assist from us, they can install a Davenport generator set (Patented). I see no reason to bother poor Mister Charles Brush with another deadline or physical requirements for a 1,000 horsepower (HP) dynamo that he would certainly fail to meet, do you? He will have enough trouble with c. as it is. c. The dozen (12) windmill generator sets of 100 horsepower (HP) each are my plan B in case the SS Pennsylvania does not make it to the Boston Navy Yard in time. I suggest that appropriate incentives be applied to Mister Charles Brush for their manufacture and delivery by no later than 25 June to my present location. I have a suitable open patch of windy glen to install them and wire them up along with enough workers to have all in place by 1 July IF Mister Vanderbilt can have them transported. d. I will meet my deadline, provided Mister Vanderbilt meets his.
Cordially:
Irene Goss Davenport; DME BNY
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Post by Avatar on Oct 16, 2023 19:55:44 GMT
Step 1. Make solenoids and magnets. Step 2. Get a steam engine equipped object with sufficient room to install a Davenport generator. Step 3a. The Gramme Wheel. This will be stacked as part of the Davenport generator. Step 3b. Build a Davenport generator to install in the SS Pennsylvania as a direct drive interruptor off the steam engine power takeoff. Notice the multiple Gramme rings? Called armature stack you can get incredible power out of such assemblages as Siemens will demonstrate in 1885. Westinghouse will be on to it by 1890.Step 4. Build a Brush electric motor and steal his idea and patent it. Step 5? By this time you can see where Irene Goss Davenport is headed? It turns out that for large scale applications at this time Antonio Pacinotti was quite right, at least as far as Cramp and Sons was concerned. They will have to use magnets... Meanwhile Charles Francis Brush has a surprise of his own; He has learned a thing or two from Miss Davenport. Next up? Will it all come together in time?
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Post by Avatar on Oct 16, 2023 20:13:16 GMT
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Post by Avatar on Oct 16, 2023 20:25:33 GMT
Letter: 47 1st Ave, Boston, Mass BNY 14 August 1876
Mister Bradley Allen Fiske 63 Flushing Ave, Brooklyn, New York
Sir:
You have caught me on a very busy Monday with your letter. The series of questions in it are most perplexing as you are the second person to pester me with them. Pressed as I am for time and with the needs of my chief client and benefactor in mind, and I do not mean you, I answer your questions.
1. How long will it take to electrify a train route from Boston to Chicago? First of all, why? The goal, for now, is to electrify a train route from Boston to Washington via way of New York first. We expand and branch out from that beginning event, as logic, means and monies become available. 2. Second to the Chicago issue is a technical physical electrical problem. That chief problem now to the railroad electrification plan, you propose, is a simple one. There is a significant voltage drop over distance with direct current motors, and there is a further serious impedance problem of wire current resistance. We can solve this problem with an inverter, I developed to generate alternating current (patented), but then we have the further problem of that long distance current alternating current generation requires rather startling high voltages, while the electric locomotives must be locally equipped with motors that are rated for far lower voltages since otherwise they would “melt”. We have as yet no native design for alternating current step-up and step-down induction coils as invented by Pavel Yablochkov to solve that bottleneck. You should remember him? He is the one who invented those carbon arc lights you raved about to me this past July. If he answers my telegram and then gives us license, we can electrify further apart from our generator stations and I can design suitable wire -fed current down feed traction engines for distances farther apart than Boston and Albany. I suppose we could steal his designs, but then what would our patent protections be worth? No, we must get his permission to use his “transformer” designs, hopefully before someone naïve or incredibly stupid like Mister Brush communicates to him the reason we want them. 3. As to electrified steam ships as you saw on the SS Pennsylvania. The problem with a compound propulsion system is what engineers call work throughput or overall work transfer efficiency from the initial heat engine to the final mechanical effort, which is the turn of the screw. A steam ship with direct drive from an Ericsson oscillator arm boxer engine or a standard double expansion engine as we had on the SS Pennsylvania, will have an overall work throughput efficiency of thirty percent to the screws. The best new British triple expansion engines will probably give a work throughput of about thirty three to thirty five percent. If you install an electric motor generator set between the steam engine power take-off and the screw, you add a step in the work throughput that robs you of at least eight and more likely ten percent. The only reason to use steam electric propulsion is to eliminate the delay involved in clutching and throwing a steam engine into reverse and also that an electric motor generator can be constant loaded and also draw demanded off a constant operation at set mechanical load steam engine. 4. Subdividing steam electric generator sets to supply final electric current to a set of electric motors? I had not considered that method applied to ships, but we plan to do that for the electrified railroad traction engines, so why not for ships? The switching and buss logics would not be too dissimilar. 5. How am I to design an electric motor for such an underwater boat? I cannot as yet design one until I know the purpose and what will turn the generator to produce the current.
Irene Goss Davenport; DME BNY
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Post by Avatar on Oct 16, 2023 20:27:11 GMT
The following item is secret minutes of a private meeting between Irene Goss Davenport and Winfield Scott Schley kept by George Boyer Vashon, lawyer acting on behalf of Miss Irene Goss Davenport this 18 August of 1876. Members present for this meeting are Mister Ashton Moore Whitely, as notary and witness and neutral, licensed justice of the peace for the county of Suffolk in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; Miss Irene Goss Davenport, Doctor of Mechanical Engineering, ostensibly present as representative and project manager in the employ of Mister William Vanderbilt, Esquire; and Mister Winfield Scott Schley, agent of Mister George Robeson. Subject for discussion is the eighteen eighty five plan proposed by Mister William Vanderbilt, Esquire. Davenport: Why is the secretary of the navy interested in our electrification plan for the New York Central Railroad? Schley: What plan? Davenport: This plan. At this moment Miss Davenport unrolls a chart of the New York Central Railroad network and places the unrolled chart on the table, holding the chart in place with assorted ship models at the corners. Mister Schley looks at the chart. Schley: You have new routes that run into Pennsylvania and Ohio and Michigan and West Virginia. Why? Whitely: Holy Mother of… Davenport: You look shocked. Schley: I thought I was here to investigate the tramcar line pilot project demonstration from the Charles River wharf to Beacon Hill. I, er the navy, was interested in the possibility of electrical means as a tool to improve our nautical material condition. Davenport: No wonder the Grant administration has the reputation it has. Fools. Schley: I am not a fool. Whitely: Miss Davenport, this time I must admonish you. This is not the way to conduct… Davenport and Schley: Be quiet. Schley: As I said, Miss Davenport, I am not a fool. Mister Robeson must have had a reason to send me in to this meeting without preparation. I presume it was so you could inform me about this plan, about which he knows nothing. So, enlighten me. Vashon (self): I should warn you, sir, that if this plan becomes general knowledge, that there are many interests in the country who would oppose its implementation. Mister Schley looks at the chart again. Schley: I see by annotation that you propose at least fifty generator stations and power houses, Miss Davenport. I assume the intended traction engines that will take the place of steam locomotives will be rather large and obvious as well as the wire lines you propose to install on the railroad right of way? This will not be secret at all. Plus; who will pay for it? Davenport: The original intent was to create an electrified rail corridor from Boston to Washington as a demonstration project, the “pilot” as you called it; Mister Schley. The tramline, here in Boston, is a mere model demonstration for the pilot project. Schley: I think I see. You wanted something small enough that would not arouse suspicion in tests until you could implement any successes you had. Davenport: Precisely. Schley: But then it occurred to you, Miss Davenport, or to Mister Vanderbilt, that in order to attain some advantage in the market, that you would have to immediately build out to the maximum that you could afford and seize the opportunity to monopolize the advantage for as long as you can? Vashon (self): We have as yet to address the question of why the navy is interested in the electrification plan for the New York Central Railroad. Davenport: Yes, why is the navy interested? Schley: That I do know. We put up seed money out of our ship construction budget, through Mister Vanderbilt to fund your project. It was not to exceed fifty thousand dollars. I am told that it has increased to a half million dollars. As our total department budget this past year was eighteen million and some eight hundred thousand dollars, I am to legally justify the money spent before Mister Robeson has to explain the embezzlement to Congress, and or recover the monies. Davenport and Vashon: Ooof! Davenport: That is a big problem. We have the money invested in the pilot rail-line along with another one millions of dollars from private investors. With luck we will have the rail-line up and the Boston to Washington Corridor complete within two years and afterward the whole of the New York Central electrified within eight years. Schley: That is ridiculous. It will cost you at least two hundred million dollars to build out this network. That will make the Crédit Mobilier Disaster look like a sound business practice. Vashon (self): Go back to Mister Robeson and tell him to hide the accounts for a year. He will have his money repaid… Davenport: … and I will have my electrified railroads and we will not tell the press about all of those Theseus ships the navy secretary contracted with his “friends” to build with other navy funds. Schley: One last question: why are you doing this, and why risk it all this way? Davenport: I am a woman in a man's world. I cannot just do as I wish to achieve my goals. Schley: What goals? Davenport: To make the world more equal for one. Schley: I see. So this is your way to change the world in which you think you live? Davenport: It will be.
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