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1881 – Inauguration of the first electric streetcar in the world
Schedule of the first electric streetcar, 1881
At the 1879 Berlin Trade Fair, Werner von Siemens had presented the first electric locomotive in the world. This was so successful that Siemens & Halske received inquiries about the investment and operating costs of electric railways from all over the world. Over the next two years, the pioneering electrical company tried to get concessions for elevated electrical railways in Berlin’s Friedrichstraße and Leipziger Straße in order to demonstrate the operation and suitability for everyday use of electrically powered vehicles. However, the Berlin city administration had so many reservations about the building and operation of such systems that it refused the concession, and Siemens had to transfer its project to the suburb of Lichterfelde south of Berlin. Here much of the track that had been used in the 1870s for transporting material during the building of the military institute was still in place. Werner von Siemens was able to acquire this and reconstruct it for his purpose. He also benefited from being able to use the original rails of this track, which were set into and level with the road surface as required for a streetcar.
Siemens & Halske also converted three horse-drawn streetcar carriages. The two-axle cars with 16 seats each carried just under 50 persons. Each car had a direct current motor with an output of 10 PS which obtained its traction current (180 volts) by sliding contact with the iron-rimmed wooden disc wheels. The power was transmitted by steel cables and the cars reached a speed of around 20 kilometers per hour. At the beginning they were supplied with power via the two rails rather than an overhead line; the power came from a plant with a steam engine and a generator situated next to the station.
On May 12, 1881 everything was finally ready: The “little electric streetcar in Lichterfelde [was] officially tested and accepted;” regular service commenced on May 16. Werner von Siemens proudly reported the success and advertising effect of the project in a number of letters to his brothers in England and Russia. He thus wrote to William Siemens on May 23: “It is remarkable what effect a ride on the Lichterfelde streetcar has on people. Everyone from the Minister of Labor [Maybach] to the simple railway builder is convinced that electric transportation has a great future!” Two days beforehand, on the occasion of an excursion to Lichtenfelde by the Berlin Verein für Eisenbahnkunde (Association of Railway Engineers), Werner von Siemens had been officially thanked for the success of his tireless efforts “to overcome the difficulties posed by the project […] thereby creating a work which has made German science famous and is something he can be proud of!”
At the first International Electricity Exhibition, which was held in Paris in August of the same year, Siemens & Halske presented an electric streetcar. The trip in the 50-passenger car from the Place de la Concorde to the Palais de l’ Industrie in the exhibition grounds was very popular with the people of Paris and played a major part in “making the Parisians familiar with” the name of Siemens – as Werner von Siemens wrote in a letter to his brother Carl in Russia.
Over the next decade, however, Siemens built and put into operation only a very limited number of electric streetcars. It was not until the Siemens engineer Walter Reichel had solved an important constructional problem with the development of the bow collector in 1889 that the electrical operation of rail vehicles came into its own
May 2011 – Sabine Dittler