When Electric Cars Were for Women

At the turn of the last century, the automobile industry was still new and evolving rapidly. In 1898, there were about 50 carmakers in the United States. A decade later, that number had increased fivefold. In 1901, the companies produced 7,000 vehicles. By 1910, production had reached 181,000. For several decades, electric cars vied with those powered by steam and internal combustion, and nobody was sure which technology would come out on top. Steam had the legacy of locomotive technology behind it but came with a risk of fire. Steam-powered vehicles could also become 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 travel without refueling or charging? You could always throw an extra can of gasoline in the back of the car, but charging a battery involved more planning. The infrastructure for long-distance travel was not yet in place. Before the invention of the electric starter in 1911, gasoline-powered engines had to be started with a hand crank; once running, they were loud and emitted noxious fumes. Fully electric vehicles, by contrast, were easy to start; you just turned on the main battery switch, often with a key, and there was no foul exhaust to deal with. Electric carmakers looking for a way to differentiate their products decided that these attributes made their vehicles perfect for women. (Electric cars were also marketed to doctors so that they could make house calls in the middle of the night without waking the neighbors.) General Electric, which made car chargers based on mercury-arc rectifiers, was so captivated by the idea of women driving electric cars that the company created a series of advertisements featuring stylishly dressed women plugging in their cars and posing with their charging stations. In ads for its electric car chargers, General Electric featured women using the equipment.miSci—Museum of Innovation and Science A young woman named Fannie Goodnow was an early EV adopter. She owned a 1908 Bailey Victoria Phaeton, an open two-seater that really did look like a horseless carriage, and she used a GE mercury-arc rectifier to charge it. Who Invented the Mercury-Arc Rectifier? Electrical engineer Peter Cooper Hewitt invented the mercury vapor lamp, which became the basis for the mercury-arc rectifier used in car-charging systems. Bettmann/Getty Images Electrical engineer Peter Cooper Hewitt is generally credited with the invention of the mercury-arc rectifier. During the first decade of the 20th century, Hewitt received several U.S. patents for electric lamps and other apparatus 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 with George Westinghouse to manufacture and sell his lamps. The mercury-arc rectifier functioned as a diode. In a car charger like the one Fannie Goodnow used, it converted alternating current from the power grid into direct current needed to charge the car’s battery. A small amount of liquid mercury contained in a glass tube would vaporize and glow as electricity passed through it. Coupled with the carbon anodes, the vapor allowed current to flow in only one direction. This unit took about 12 hours to charge a drained battery. A Carriage Maker Pivots to Electric Cars I couldn’t find any records as to why Fannie Goodnow opted for an electric car. But as a well-to-do woman living in the Boston area, she had more than a half dozen automobile producers to choose from. The one she chose was S.R. Bailey & Co. of Amesbury, Mass. This early electric car charger used a mercury-arc rectifier to convert AC to DC.Heritage Museums & Gardens According to Galen Handy, who maintains the Early Electric Vehicles website, Samuel Robinson Bailey started in the carriage and sleigh business as a teenager, winning a best-in-show prize at a carriage exhibition in Portland, Maine, in 1855. Bailey developed a reputation as an inventor and designed processes to streamline the manufacture of his vehicles. He went into business for himself in 1882. Just over a decade later, one of Bailey’s carriages won a gold medal at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Bailey’s son Edwin attended the exposition, where he likely would have seen a vision of the future: the Morrison electric wagon. This six-passenger, battery-powered vehicle ferried visitors and VIPs around the fairgrounds. It wasn’t long before automobiles began eating into the carriage business. In December 1906, with the carriage industry collapsing, S.R. Bailey & Co. announced it was getting into electric vehicles. Thomas Edison Designed a Bad Battery Bailey’s first model, the Victoria Phaeton, used an Edison alkaline battery. Thomas Edison had been working on a lighter, more reliable, and more powerful battery for the auto ind