SH Archive Ditch Tesla, buy Babcock Runabout: 1,244 miles on one battery in 1909

SH.org OP Username
KorbenDallas
SH.org OP Date
2018-04-01 03:42:26
SH.org Reaction Score
38
SH.org Reply Count
35
Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: jd755
Date: 2019-03-22 13:07:29
Reaction Score: 1
I have ridden in an electric milk float, pick up and bogie over the years and all of them had solid rubber tyres. The former where used at the dairy the sixteen year old me worked at and the latter were used in the shipyard.
 
Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: HulkSmash
Date: 2019-03-22 15:25:00
Reaction Score: 3
very cool information find KD! I had no idea this many electric cars existed in general, let alone 100 years ago! Really explains a lot about our history. Makes more sense regarding a reset. If there was that much knowledge about electricity, batteries, boy it makes me angry that it all was suppressed, destroyed, forgotten! Could you imagine what our world would be like today if transportation was kept electric since then? Wow, it would be very, very different, in so many ways. Grrrr.....feel like smashing!
 
Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: jd755
Date: 2019-03-22 15:57:39
Reaction Score: 3
Notes on the advertising truck above (160 acres for free, yes please!)
Electric motor on each wheel.
Solid rubber tyre and rim brakes with metal wheels.
Leaf springs on each axle.
Radiator or oil cooler just in front of the battery box.
Steel pressure vessel at rear of battery box.
Given its in Canada there must be some form of heating in use for the drivers cab which is hard too fathom.
Looks like its all wheel steer as well if those pairs of what look like pistons on the wheels are a guide, possibly hydraulic steering and if so there must be a hydraulic pump and motor to maintain pressure so could this motor be the source of the heat, not to mention the possibility of heat coming from the pressurised hydraulic fluid.

There are seven open throw knife switches behind the drivers head, with another set on the opposite side of the cap in between there are at least a pair of bigger knife switches and what look like two volt/amp meters above his head.

The chassis though isn't that 'immense' so my guess is the batteries are nickel iron batteries like these nickel iron battery information
not lead acid which were the batteries on the milk float and pick up. Looking back not sure about the bogey batteries as they predated the pick up by decades.

We really are being regressed into a technological dead end.
 
Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: KorbenDallas
Date: 2019-03-24 01:56:38
Reaction Score: 6
Here is an interesting 19th century electric combo.

electric_car.jpg

Hybrid Car
In 1889, a gasoline-electric hybrid rail-car was devised by one William H. Patton. Although not a car by our definition, it's still a very interesting concept. The same chap also adapted his design for use in a boat propulsion system the same year.
A little later in 1901, whilst working at the Lohner Coach Factory, one Ferdinand Porsche developed his Mixte. This was a four-wheel-drive hybrid version of the "System Lohner-Porsche" electrical carriage that was displayed at the Paris World Fair of the same year.
 
Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: whitewave
Date: 2019-03-25 16:00:14
Reaction Score: 7
I'd not heard/seen these hybrids so I looked up "Porsche Mixte" and found this unlikely story as the official narrative:

Despite Porsche having no formal engineering education, Jacob Lohner, at his Lohner-Werke, employed him to develop an electric powertrain for his coaches. The enormous Lohner required 1.8 tonnes of batteries consisting of a 44-cell 80-volt lead-acid battery, all housed in a spring-suspended battery container to protect the fragile cells. The four electric motors weighed a total of 1280 pounds, contributing to a total vehicle weight of over 4 tonnes on its Continental pneumatic tires. (Do those tires look like they're capable of holding 8000 pounds plus the weight of passengers?)

Porsche won the 1905 Potting Prize as Austria's most outstanding automotive engineer. In 1906, Porsche was snapped up by Daimler-Benz as chief designer. The Lohner-Porsche's design was studied by Boeing and NASA to create the Apollo program's Lunar Roving Vehicle. Many of its design principles were mirrored in the Rover's design. The series hybrid concept underpins many modern railway locomotives.

I often wonder what happened to all the formally educated, trained, skilled people during our mysterious time frame that all these rank amateurs were snapped up like gold to (re)create technology. You've got anti-science priests/monks creating architecture and technological devices as well as try-your-luck-and-move-to Vienna guys with no formal education inventing things that our current technology depends on.
 
Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: jd755
Date: 2019-03-25 18:19:55
Reaction Score: 5
New York City’s first electric taxicabs, 1902
taxi.jpg

And another delivery truck. From 1905
coke.jpg

1910s, Ambulance
amb.jpg
 
Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: Obertryn
Date: 2019-04-12 11:06:06
Reaction Score: 3
It's so bizarre looking at those things. Like someone took a horse carriage and slapped on an electric engine just for the hell of it. No real consideration for speed and maneuverability or energy consumption in relation to weight like when designing modern vehicles, which suggests that whoever designed them had no clue what they were doing, it just "worked".
 
Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: jd755
Date: 2019-04-12 11:43:51
Reaction Score: 7
That's the difficulty with applying today's methodology to the pictures of the past. Speed wasn't an issue, neither was energy consumption. Being 'modern' was clearly as important back then as it is today as these things existed along with horse and cart and petrol engined road transport along with steam and electric trains.
Electric power was the 'new god' of the day back then unlike today where it is taken for granted indeed could be argued by many alive today a necessity of life. The only reason speed, maneuverability, energy consumption appear to matter today is the constant manipulation downwards of the value of 'the currency' to make 'expense and cost' the current 'gods'.

Point is back when these things were running around batteries lasted longer and could do more than 'modern' batteries. The hardware was engineered, not designed, engineered to work and work for a very long time without breaking down unlike today's 'vehicles' which have built in obsolescence and stop working when the 'operating system' decides.

We really are being regressed into some kind of zombie reality for reasons I know not. Actually i feel it's because we remembering what we truly are.
 
Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: KorbenDallas
Date: 2019-06-12 21:42:11
Reaction Score: 3
Interesting stuff. Apparently the very first electric car was made in 1834 by Thomas Davenport. I wish we had an image of this car.
Edit: As it often happens, 1834 electric car was not the first one. sounds like this 1828 was, or may be was.
Jedlikelectriccar.jpg


 
Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: Nezumi
Date: 2019-09-16 23:25:55
Reaction Score: 2
I found this Catalog from this youtube video: Link. Quite interesting to see the different models.

Here are some images but check the full Catalog out.

illustrateddescr00newyrich_0124.jpg

illustrateddescr00newyrich_0123.jpg
 
Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: aero618
Date: 2019-10-16 18:17:02
Reaction Score: 3
Electricity wars of 1880's~ just a theory
Starting in the late 1880s, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla were embroiled in a battle now known as the War of the Currents-
Batteries produce dc electricity, and where the science of elctricity started. As the implemantation of electricity grew, dc was not best placed as it is not easilly converted to higher/lower voltages, and it requires larger cable sizing compared to an ac power equivelent because of current and heat generated~ early dc installations from local "city block" powergrids fed from local generators were notorious for catching fires- dc arcing at switches is notorious.
Edison had heavily invested in dc patents and Nikola Teslas was promoting ac electricity; they were litterally battling it out publically. Edison won at first and crushed Tesla support (we all know this), but later ac prooved the way to go.

Interestingly, this battle was fought in part across the 1890-1916 Exposes, with Edison gaining contracts through GE that they lost huge sums of money on: you can imagine the "lighting" or "illumination" at these Expos became a trial of one-up-manship~ The War of the Currents: AC vs. DC Power'

Once ac won the battle for local grid systems, battery vehicles would require "converters" to change ac to dc~ which then were rotary machines, so no more simple plug-in charging: larger users of dc started to install the rotary converters as ac took over~ History | IEEE Power & Energy Magazine ther could well be some still in use today

rotory converter 1890.jpg

sorry but couldn't resist this ~ still in use 2008, and now having a comeback (glass bottles when I was a kid though)

Dairy_Crest_Ex_Unigate_Wales_And_Edwards_Rangemaster_Milk_Float 2008.jpg
 
Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: EUAFU
Date: 2019-11-16 21:43:23
Reaction Score: 3
Well, it seems Mr. Elon Musk is actually a guy who can't make electric batteries the same or better than those of the nineteenth century, in fact theirs seem to be inferior, but he can deceive people that he can send cars into space.
And I found that the electric scooters that are in fashion here in Brazil (busting people's heads due to the holes and irregularities of the public sidewalks) already existed.

As they say, there is nothing new under the sun.

autoped1.jpgautoped2.jpgautoped3.jpgautoped4.jpg
 
Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: Japod
Date: 2019-11-16 23:16:19
Reaction Score: 3
The Oil industry coupled with car industry has been buying up and suppressing battery and car patents for over a century in an effort to maintain profits from petrolium products.
 
Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: luddite
Date: 2020-01-13 19:44:22
Reaction Score: 1
I want to buy one
 
Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: Banta
Date: 2020-05-02 21:50:40
Reaction Score: 1
With the same car Mr. Babcock has made the round trip from Buffalo to Rochester, a distance of seventy-five miles in a day.

Well, that's not accurate. One way to Rochester to Buffalo is about 75 miles:

NOTABLE-00030.jpg

So, if he made that round trip, he needed to charge up in Rochester or the battery lasted even longer than reported.

 
Pulling one out from the venerable archive and adding in these images.

Found in a twitter feed.

5.jpeg
4.jpeg
3.jpeg
2.jpeg
1.jpeg
 
Tips
Tips
Please respect our Posting Rules.
Back
Top