A blue double-decker trolleybus with "Bradford's Last (Special) Trolleybus" on the front leaves Town Hall Square.
Bradford's last trolleybus, vehicle 844, was built in 1950 as a single-decker for another system. It was rebuilt as a double-decker and entered Bradford service in 1963.
(photograph by Alan Murray-Rust)
A trolleybus and a horse-drawn cart share a cobblestone street in Bradford, 1911. The destination board reads "Dudley Hill." Children with bicycles are on the pavement and overhead wires and trolley poles are visible too.
Bradford and Leeds both opened on June 20, 1911 as the first trolleybus services in Britain and both used the Schiemann system. Bradford was the last in Britain to close, 61 years later.
The first Olivetti factory on Via Jervis in Ivrea. A two-story red brick industrial building.
Olivetti had about 20 workers in 1908. By the late 1920s there were 500, so the demand had outgrown the line, and without the resources to build a tramway, it kept running until 1935, when buses replaced it.
Ludwigsburg station square, around 1910. There are trolleybuses (one in the background) in front of the old station building and an advertising column on the left.
Schiemann's trolleybus system was built by Siemens & Halske and Stoll's by Austro-Daimler, but Ludwigsburg chose Lloyd-Köhler over both. The system hadn't been tested yet, but at 15.1 km it became the longest of five Lloyd-Köhler lines.
Map of the world with a title 'How the Trolleybus Spread by 1914', and a subtitle 'Five continents. 48 lines opened, 21 still running.' Dense cluster of trolleybus lines fills Europe and individual lines are scattered across four other continents. Different shapes and colors mark different systems.
By 1914, the trolleybus had reached five continents. Most lines were short-lived, and the Great War stopped almost everything.
Two trolleybuses face each other on the road with two drivers standing on them and exchanging the current collectors. The left vehicle is seen from the front with round headlights, and the right one from the side with large glass windows. There are bare trees in the background.
Bremen, 1910. The Lloyd-Köhler system used a single pair of overhead wires for both directions, and when two vehicles met, they had to stop until the drivers exchanged the current collectors. The trolleybuses were built by NAMAG, an automobile company backed by the Norddeutscher Lloyd shipping line.
Period postcard showing a Cantono-Frigerio trolleybus marked N1 on a dirt road at Castellamonte. A man sits on the roof, two men stand on/next to it. Overhead wires and poles recede into the distance. Mountains in the background. Text reads Castellamonte - La Filovia.
Ivrea, 1908. The Cantono-Frigerio trolleybus to Cuorgnè opened the same year Camillo Olivetti founded Italy's first typewriter factory in the same town. It ran from the railway station, about 300 meters from the factory, and the first departure was at 4:20 in the morning.
Map of Europe with a title 'How the Trolleybus Spread by 1910', and a subtitle 'Competing systems. 34 lines opened, 14 still running.' The markers fill Europe with five more listed as text (Hill City, Reno, Greenwich, Scranton, Los Angeles). A dense blue cluster of filled Stoll squares covers Austria-Hungary, with Cantono-Frigerio orange diamonds at Ivrea and Siena, and three gray circles at Bremen and Ludwigsburg. Outline markers show earlier closed lines.
By 1910, five systems were competing and Stoll filled Austria-Hungary (the blue cluster). Cantono-Frigerio held Italy, with two lines still running at Ivrea and Siena.
Page from the Electrical Review, August 11, 1906. A highlighted paragraph describes a company proposing a trolley franchise to the Detroit City Council.
Three years later, maybe a different group of promoters (though Upham was from Boston too) proposed a thirty-year franchise to the Detroit City Council at three cents a ride (streetcar fare was five cents). Nothing seems to have come of it.
Historical photograph of a large trolleybus with 'THE AMERICAN TRACKLESS TROLLEY CO.' painted on its side. Two men and a boy stand beside it, and two children are visible on the right. Overhead wires and two houses are visible too.
Scranton, 1903. Three years after Caffrey's patent, Artemas B. Upham formed the American Trackless Trolley Company and demonstrated a 35-passenger omnibus on private property. The Street Railway Journal covered it that month. It worked, but no contract came through.
Map of Europe with a title 'How the Trolleybus Spread by 1905', and a subtitle 'First sustained lines. 18 lines opened, 5 still running.' The markers span Europe with four more listed as text (Hill City, Reno, Greenwich, Scranton). Three filled triangles mark Lombard-Gérin lines, with one filled square and one filled circle for the other surviving systems (Stoll and a Schiemann variant). Outline markers show earlier closed lines.
By 1905, the first real systems had emerged. Lombard-Gérin ran from France and Schiemann from Germany, while Stoll and Cantono-Frigerio had appeared too. Most closed quickly, but the ones that lasted ran for years.
Historical photograph at the 1900 Paris Exposition showing two vehicles beneath overhead wires, with current collectors linked by cables above them and several men standing on and around them.
Paris, 1900. Louis Lombard-Gérin's system appeared at the 1900 Paris Exposition. He was 52.
It would be tried in several European cities, but only three lines of this type were still running five years later.
#trolleybus
Map titled 'How the Trolleybus Spread by 1900', subtitled 'The experiments. 7 lines opened, 3 still running.' Seven markers are scattered across the US (Reno, Hill City, Greenwich) and Europe (Berlin-Halensee, Paris, Issy, Chillon-Villeneuve). Most are outline (already closed), three are filled (still running). The map is mostly empty.
How the trolleybus spread. By 1900, seven trolleybus lines had been tried across nearly two decades. Berlin-Halensee was first in 1882. The thought crossed to America, then back to the Paris Exposition in 1900.
#history #histtech
Carrying large batteries in every truck surely seems wasteful (maybe flexibility outweighs it) and actually some of the first trolleybus ventures were in an industrial setting (Schiemann, Cantono-Frigerio).
There are fewer horses now, in the horseless age.
1900 Number of horses: ~18 million
2023 Number of horses: 6.6 million
(in the United States)
Caffrey's patent was granted in 1900. Then nothing. It is possible that a Boston promoter acquired his rights. Whether the wagon ever ran beyond the foundry lot in Reno is unclear. What survives is this page.
Article from The Horseless Age, October 1897. Two columns of text under the headline The Trolley Road Wagon.
Three men on a four-wheeled wagon on a dirt road. Cables run from the wagon up to two overhead wires. Rural setting with trees, fences, barns in the background, and a horse on the right side. Credit line reads Sci.Am.N.Y.
October 1897. Trolley road wagon of W. G. Caffrey of Reno, Nevada. A vehicle that draws current from overhead wires but runs on ordinary roads. No rails.
#history #histtech #electricvehicles
Line chart showing unemployment rates from 2018 to 2026 for Finland, European Union, and World. All three start near 7% in 2018. By 2026, Finland rises to 10.2%, European Union falls to 5.8%. World line ends at 2024 at 4.8%.
Chart showing Finland's ranking in the World Happiness Report from 2018 to 2026. Finland is ranked number one every year. Scale runs from number one to number 150 countries. Most of the chart is empty space below Finland's position at the top.
Finland is #1 on the World Happiness Report, every year since 2018.
Finland has, as of January 2026, the highest unemployment in the European Union (10.2%).
#econsky