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Speaking of Electric Vehicles - Circa 1909
I have a copy of a letter from the Edison Battery Storage Company located in East Orange, NJ to the Kregel Windmill Co. [image] of Nebraska City expressing an interest in using wind-electrics on the farm to charge the "improved Edison" batteries and thus run an electric car. Or maybe it was the letter from Edison's lab itself. I'll have to check later in my files. At any rate . . .
Things that might have been . . . may still come to pass.
Jay Leno's Garage - 1909 Baker Electric - Video
"100 years old and still runs great!" Designed with a nod to women drivers. Thomas Edison had a Baker. [Baker Image 1] [Baker Image 2] [Edison and the Bailey Electric]
The Baker Motor Vehicle wikipedia entry. "Founder Walter C. Baker's Torpedo land speed record racer was the first car to have seat belts. The car was capable of over 75 miles per hour."
Addendum: I forgot that there's another recent reference to the letters I found 25 years ago in the pile of early wind-electric correspondence that the Art and Louise Kregel very kindly lent to a kid they hardly knew. This was from a recent book called "Internal Combustion" by Edwin Black. In this book, Black notes that there was a serious electric car project being developed by Henry Ford and Thomas A. Edison back in the early 20th Century. You can read a section of it courtesy of Google Books. The section on windmills starts on page 137. Using the "Search in this book" option on the lower right hand side of the page to find "windmill" also will work.
Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil And Derailed the Alternatives by Edwin Black - Google Book Search
"For years, Edison had entertained the concept of a shared residential windmill that would provide electrical power to a group of houses. Drawings in his office depicted a small central windmill spinning as a hub and supplying kilowatts to between four and six dwellings. Eleven months before the September 15, 1912, New York Times announcement, Edison dispatched letters to leading windmill manufacturers seeking a prototype that could provide not just muscular power but also reliably turn a dynamo to generate electricity to recharge storage batteries."
Things that might have been . . . may still come to pass.
Jay Leno's Garage - 1909 Baker Electric - Video
"100 years old and still runs great!" Designed with a nod to women drivers. Thomas Edison had a Baker. [Baker Image 1] [Baker Image 2] [Edison and the Bailey Electric]
The Baker Motor Vehicle wikipedia entry. "Founder Walter C. Baker's Torpedo land speed record racer was the first car to have seat belts. The car was capable of over 75 miles per hour."
Addendum: I forgot that there's another recent reference to the letters I found 25 years ago in the pile of early wind-electric correspondence that the Art and Louise Kregel very kindly lent to a kid they hardly knew. This was from a recent book called "Internal Combustion" by Edwin Black. In this book, Black notes that there was a serious electric car project being developed by Henry Ford and Thomas A. Edison back in the early 20th Century. You can read a section of it courtesy of Google Books. The section on windmills starts on page 137. Using the "Search in this book" option on the lower right hand side of the page to find "windmill" also will work.
Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil And Derailed the Alternatives by Edwin Black - Google Book Search
"For years, Edison had entertained the concept of a shared residential windmill that would provide electrical power to a group of houses. Drawings in his office depicted a small central windmill spinning as a hub and supplying kilowatts to between four and six dwellings. Eleven months before the September 15, 1912, New York Times announcement, Edison dispatched letters to leading windmill manufacturers seeking a prototype that could provide not just muscular power but also reliably turn a dynamo to generate electricity to recharge storage batteries."
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enjoy your night. =)
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I forgot something in this post. The back story for the letter that I discovered some 25 years ago in a pile of old windmill information that the Kregel's let me. Edison, windmills and electric cars that were not to be.
It starts on page 137 of this Google Book reference of "Internal Combustion". It's all laid out there.
http://tinyurl.com/3cb5kx
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