Thereafter the electric railway spread quickly over the land,
obliterating the old horsecars and greatly enlarging the
circumference of the city. Moreover, on the steam roads, at all
the great terminals, and wherever there were tunnels to be passed
through, the old giant steam engine in time yielded place to the
electric motor.
The application of the electric motor to the "vertical railway,"
or elevator, made possible the steel skyscraper. The elevator, of
course, is an old device. It was improved and developed in
America by Elisha Graves Otis, an inventor who lived and died
before the Civil War and whose sons afterward erected a great
business on foundations laid by him. The first Otis elevators
were moved by steam or hydraulic power. They were slow, noisy,
and difficult of control. After the electric motor came in; the
elevator soon changed its character and adapted itself to the
imperative demands of the towering, skeleton-framed buildings
which were rising in every city.
Edison, already famous as "the Wizard of Menlo Park," established
his factories and laboratories at West Orange, New Jersey, in
1887, whence he has since sent forth a constant stream of
inventions, some new and startling, others improvements on old
devices. The achievements of several other inventors in the
electrical field have been only less noteworthy than his.
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