In 1830, the American painter George Catlin accompanied General William Clark on a diplomatic mission up the Missouri River to the Mandan, Cheyenne and Crow Indian tribes. His accurate and sensitive depiction of Native Americans on that trip had a profound impact, especially in Europe, where his paintings were wildly popular and changed attitudes towards a people primarily regarded as "savages."
We start in the 1830s, with Scotland’s Robert Anderson, whose motorized carriage was built sometime between 1832 and ’39. Batteries (galvanic cells) were not yet rechargeable, so it was more parlor trick (“Look! No horse nor ox, yet it moves!”) than a transportation device. Another Scot, Robert Davidson of Aberdeen, built a prototype electric locomotive in 1837. A bigger, better version, demonstrated in 1841, could go 1.5 miles at 4 mph towing six tons. Then it needed new batteries. This impressive performance so alarmed railway workers (who saw it as a threat to their jobs tending steam engines) that they destroyed Davidson’s devil machine, which he’d named Galvani.
Masterpiece meme
In 1830, the American painter George Catlin accompanied General William Clark on a diplomatic mission up the Missouri River to the Mandan, Cheyenne and Crow Indian tribes. His accurate and sensitive depiction of Native Americans on that trip had a profound impact, especially in Europe, where his paintings were wildly popular and changed attitudes towards a people primarily regarded as "savages."
We start in the 1830s, with Scotland’s Robert Anderson, whose motorized carriage was built sometime between 1832 and ’39. Batteries (galvanic cells) were not yet rechargeable, so it was more parlor trick (“Look! No horse nor ox, yet it moves!”) than a transportation device. Another Scot, Robert Davidson of Aberdeen, built a prototype electric locomotive in 1837. A bigger, better version, demonstrated in 1841, could go 1.5 miles at 4 mph towing six tons. Then it needed new batteries. This impressive performance so alarmed railway workers (who saw it as a threat to their jobs tending steam engines) that they destroyed Davidson’s devil machine, which he’d named Galvani.