At the rotate of the final century, the automobile industry was motionless new and evolving rapidly. In 1898, there were concerning 50 carmakers in the United States. A decade later, that figure had risen fivefold. In 1901, the companies produced 7,000 vehicles. By 1910, manufacturing had reached 181,000.
For multiple decades, electric cars vied alongside those powered by steam and inner combustion, and nobody was certain which innovation would arrive out on top. Steam had the bequest of locomotive innovation rearward it but came alongside a hazard of fire. Steam-powered vehicles could additionally rotate into exceedingly hot, depending on the placement of the boiler and the steam piping. Both gasoline and electric cars faced logistical challenges: How far could you journey without refueling or charging? You could continually throw an additional can of gasoline in the rear of the car, but charging a power division engaged additional planning. The infrastructure for long-distance journey was not yet in place.
Before the innovation of the electric starter in 1911, gasoline-powered engines had to be started alongside a hand crank; formerly running, they were noisy and emitted noxious fumes. Fully electric vehicles, by contrast, were uncomplicated to start; you fair turned on the chief power division switch, frequently alongside a key, and there was no foul exhaust to agreement with.
Electric carmakers looking for a way to differentiate their products decided that these attributes made their vehicles ideal for women. (Electric cars were additionally marketed to doctors so that they could create home calls in the center of the night without waking the neighbors.) General Electric, which made car chargers according to mercury-arc rectifiers, was so captivated by the idea of women driving electric cars that the business created a series of advertisements featuring stylishly dressed women plugging in their cars and posing alongside their charging stations.
A young female named Fannie Goodnow was an first EV adopter. She owned a 1908 Bailey Victoria Phaeton, an open two-seater that really did appearance akin a horseless carriage, and she used a GE mercury-arc rectifier to accusation it.
Who Invented the Mercury-Arc Rectifier?
Electrical engineer Peter Cooper Hewitt is mostly credited alongside the innovation of the mercury-arc rectifier. During the archetypal decade of the 20th century, Hewitt received multiple U.S. patents for electric lamps and another equipment for transmitting and using electric currents. U.S. patents 968,896 and 1,163,706, granted to Percy H. Thomas, advanced Hewitt’s designs. Thomas was chief electrician for the Cooper Hewitt Electric Co., which Hewitt had cofounded alongside George Westinghouse to industry and market his lamps.
The mercury-arc rectifier functioned as a diode. In a car charger akin the one Fannie Goodnow used, it converted alternating current from the power grid into straightforward current needed to accusation the car’s battery. A small amount of liquid mercury contained in a pane pipe would vaporize and glow as power passed through it. Coupled alongside the carbon anodes, the vapor allowed current to stream in lone one direction. This component took concerning 12 hours to accusation a drained battery.
A Carriage Maker Pivots to Electric Cars
I couldn’t discover any records as to why Fannie Goodnow opted for an electric car. But as a well-to-do female living in the Boston area, she had additional than a fractional dozen automobile producers to choose from. The one she chose was S.R. Bailey & Co. of Amesbury, Mass.
According to Galen Handy, who maintains the Early Electric Vehicles website, Samuel Robinson Bailey started in the wagon and sleigh endeavor as a teenager, winning a best-in-show award at a wagon showcase in Portland, Maine, in 1855. Bailey developed a position as an inventor and designed processes to streamline the industry of his vehicles. He went into endeavor for himself in 1882. Just complete a decade later, one of Bailey’s carriages won a aureate award at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Bailey’s son Edwin attended the exposition, anywhere he apt would have seen a imagination of the future: the Morrison electric wagon. This six-passenger, battery-powered conveyance ferried visitors and VIPs about the fairgrounds. It wasn’t lengthy before automobiles began dining into the wagon business. In December 1906, alongside the wagon industry collapsing, S.R. Bailey & Co. announced it was getting into electric vehicles.
Thomas Edison Designed a Bad Battery
Bailey’s archetypal model, the Victoria Phaeton, used an Edison alkaline battery. Thomas Edison had been operating on a lighter, additional reliable, and additional mighty battery for the car industry since the 1890s, and announced the accomplishment alongside awesome fanfare in 1903. Unfortunately for Bailey and another carmakers who deployed it, the power division leaked and wouldn’t clasp a charge. Edison was forced to go rear to the example board. By 1910, he had a improved power division in production, but by afterward his companion Henry Ford had introduced the Model T, environment the phase for the inner combustion motor to obtain complete the market.
While Edison toiled to enhance his tech, Bailey pivoted to a power division from the Gould Storage Battery Co. of Depew, N.Y. Gould additionally supplied batteries for railroads, utilities, subways, elevators, and farms. Goodnow’s Victoria Phaeton used a 30-cell lead-acid power division housed in a wooden box that was suspended under the chassis. The norm power division had a range of 64 to 80 kilometers; a larger power division alongside 50 percent additional capability was accessible for an upcharge. With the norm battery, the Victoria Phaeton disbursal US $2,000 (about $73,000 today, or concerning the catalog cost of an upscale EV akin the Audi Q8 or BMW i5).
Goodnow installed a mercury-arc rectifier charging position in the barn neighboring to her parents’ summer residence in Hull, Mass. Bill Lillie of Vintage Electric Cars notes that the charging plug was of an different design. This is, of course, among the banes of any first adopter: nonstandardized plugs and cables. The Electric Vehicle Association of America, which cast in 1910, tried to put onward a norm so that electric vehicles could be charged at any charging station. (Modern EV owners can no doubt relate.) But savvy electric car owners knew to transport spare plug adapters and cables whenever traveling.
When Edison’s improved power division was eventually available, Bailey began using it in the Victoria Phaeton and afterward went on a promotion blitz. In September 1910, the carmaker sponsored a round-trip tour from New York to Boston, alongside a flank trip up New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, totaling concerning 1,600 km. Sadly, the “This Car Climbed Mt. Washington” bumper sticker hadn’t yet rotate into popular.
Although Thomas Edison posed for a photo alongside the new Bailey Victoria Phaeton that featured his new battery, he himself chose a Detroit Electric Victoria for his own use. (Edison was known to be a awful driver, so person alternatively apt chauffeured him around.)
Unable to vie against the rising tide of Model Ts, S.R. Bailey sold its factory in 1915, having produced concerning 500 to 600 electric vehicles.
Although the conveyance Fannie Goodnow chose turned out to be fair a blip in automotive history, I akin to ideate her driving concerning town in a beautiful car that embodied all the quirks of first adoption. I anticipation her allies didn’t create fun of her for investing in electric fair before inner combustion took off. I anticipation she didn’t get stranded without the appropriate charging cable. I do not cognize what happened to her or her Victoria Phaeton, but her charging position remained in situ until 2022, whenever it was donated to the Heritage Museums & Gardens in Sandwich, Mass. Now it stands prepared to inform stories of scientific alter and acceptance that continue to resonate today.
Part of a continuing series looking at historic artifacts that clasp the boundless possible of technology.
An abridged type of this part appears in the November 2026 imprint issue.
