You may be asking, Why should I have heard of Frank Sprague? There's a good reason, really, which we'll get to after a largely cribbed but lively bio of Himself.
Anyway, Frank was a Connecticut boy who graduated from the United States naval Academy in 1878. He was interested in electricity a bit.
While serving in the navy, for example, he installed the first electric call-bell system on a U. S. Navy ship and invented a new type of dynamo. Okay, there were more types of dynamo still to be invented in those days than now, but there still weren't all that many people inventing them.
In 1883 he was persuaded to resign his commission and sign up with Thomas Edison. Frank introduced mathematical methods to Edison's operation, which until then had proceeded in its work by conducting trial-and-error experiments. Frank showed them how to use mathematics to select the experiments which would be most effective. He also fixed up Edison's system for distributing electricity from a central station.
The year after that – yup, he knocked those achievements off in his first year on the job – he decided he wanted to run his own company, so he resigned and set up Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company.
At the time, electric railways weren't all that profitable an item. The electric streetcar had already been invented, but could only run on single lines – that is, cars couldn't transfer from one line to another. But Frank apparently was confident in his ability to make something out of electric railways, which he did.
But first – he invented the first commercially practical electric motor, which was heavily promoted by Edison, and invented a system for returning electricity from electrical equipment to their main supply systems. Both of these developments are handy if you're interested in making money off electric railways, of course.
In 1888 Frank built the first streetcar network in Richmond, Virginia. People came, people saw, and people wanted to build their own. Electric railways meant people could get to work faster, which meant cities could be bigger, which meant businesses could be concentrated together more effectively. By the end of 1889 one hundred and ten cities around the world had completed or begun Frank-style streetcar systems.
In 1890 Edison, who built most of Frank's equipment, bought Frank out. Frank, you see, was now interested in elevators. He realized that increasing the capacity of elevators would increase the earnings of tall buildings. So he and Charles R. Pratt improved the electric elevator. They invented the automatic elevator, for example. The Sprague-Pratt Electric Elevator ran faster with bigger loads than the hydraulic elevators which were then the standard, so people started queuing up for them, too. Frank then sold his company to Otis Elevator.
For his next trick, Frank turned his attention back to electric railways, devising a system by which electric railway cars could be hooked up in a train and controlled simultaneously by a single motorman in the lead car. People wanted them, too. Trains without locomotives produce more revenue per unit of rolling stock, and run faster and accelerate quicker than trains with locomotives. Frank had invented the subway train.
So, before turning forty Frank had revolutionized urban life. Buildings could be built taller and produce more revenue, and the increased number of workers needed for business districts full of tall buildings could be accommodated in the larger cities which his streetcar and commuter train systems allowed people to build. Along with other pioneers of electrification, Frank invented modern life.
And Frank didn't stop, continuing to improve electric traction, both horizontal and vertical, for the rest of his life. And you'd probably never heard of him until you started reading this article.
Why is Frank an obscure figure today? An important reason is probably his penchant for selling his companies and inventions to other people. Those companies had no reason to promote the achievements of Frank J. Sprague. On the other hand, many of the other giants of the electricity business of Frank's day didn't sell their businesses, and they're no better known today than Frank. What people today think when they see SIEMENS on the side of a factory is probably better left unconsidered.
In the end, though, the reason is simply that we're incurious drones. We're trained by incurious drones to be incurious drones. And really, curiosity is a threat to the stability of society. If everybody was always asking questions about everything, Iraq would hardly ever get invaded and gun registries would never get set up. It's much better for people to abjure curiosity in favour of cheap thrills. Frank's contemporary Lizzie Borden is far better known today than he is, and according to her trial she never did anything. Frank's contemporaries Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth are better known today than he, because they excited people. They electrified crowds in ball parks, and Frank electrified society. We know what we'd rather watch. And who we'd rather honour.
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