Two Decades Ago in Popular Mechanics (Jan, 1924)
I’m pretty sure there are better ways to generate electricity on a train than using a windmill, maybe even ones that work when it’s not moving.
Two Decades Ago in Popular Mechanics
WHEN Popular Mechanics Magazine surveyed the field of invention a score of years ago, 1904 was just dawning, full of promise for the world in general. The past twelve months had seen the growth of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, that was to memorialize a century of progress.
In industry, the mining world marveled at a giant sand wheel weighing a million pounds that was to lift gravel, water, and sand from a stamp mill to a trough 65 feet in the air. Locomotives were expected by one inventor to help light the passenger trains they hauled, by means of a rotary fan that operated from contact with the wind.
Speed in transportation, then as now, was sought by the traffic world and an electric car was built that attained 80 miles an hour in test.