Miniature Electric Vehicles in 1915

The George Roeding family from Fresno visited the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Among their snapshots of the PPIE was this photo of a little three-wheeled wicker cart.  The cart is traveling along the Avenue of Palms, on its own power, in front of the Horticultural Building.

The Exposition provided various ways for tired visitors to get around the exposition grounds. You could pay a fare to get on an auto train or a miniature steam train and go where they took you. Or you could rent one of these "Miniature Electric Vehicles" and motor about wherever you wanted to go (within reason of course).

The electric wicker chairs, also called "Electriquettes", were not completely safe. However, they were very popular and it sounds as if it was worth the risk.

Exposition historian, Frank Morton Todd humorously wrote about the popularity and safety of these vehicles. Here's what he said:

Another development for the transportation of the weary or those of becoming so was the "electriquette," a wicker basket chair on wheels propelled by a lead storage battery ... There were two models, one that ran on three wheels and carried two people and one on four wheels that was supposed to carry four people and sometimes was seen wandering about with seven... The speed of these chairs was four or five miles and hour depending on the condition of the motors... Their operation was not wholly free from accident, owing to the fact that many inexperienced drivers took them out, and sometimes in a pinch lost their steering sense and bumped into a pedestrian or the travertine base of a lighting standard. But on the whole the value of their service more than counterbalanced the risk; and if one broke your ankle the Exposition Hospital was handy or else you could enjoy a free ride to it in the ambulance.

If you read your Official Guide to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, 1915, you would have found out where to rent one of these vehicles. 

This guide was published in September, 

so the term electriquette might not have been used until later.

Many of us have had the fantasy of motoring about from the comfort of our sofa with five or six of our family members and pets. Am I right? Visit a replica of the Electriquette in San Diego.

The Electriquette at the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego

Electriquettes were also very popular at the competing 1915 world's fair in San Diego, the Panama-California Exposition. Yes, you heard right - two world's fairs in California in 1915.

Watch Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand goof around with the Electriquettes in San Diego.

A prototype of the Electriquette is at Balboa park in San Diego. Read about them.

There is quite a bit of historical information about the Electriquettes. These journals have lots of interesting ideas of how to use electricity.

• Commercial America, April 1915, "An Electric Wheel Chair", p. 43. 
• Automobile Topics, "Electriquette and Motor Wheel Chair",  May 29, 1915, p. 206. Figures below:

• General Electric Review, "The Osborne Electriquette", April 1915, p. 299.

• The Electrical Experimenter, "American's Vice President Tries Electriquette", July 1915, p. 96. Perhaps the only reason you will remember the name of the VP in 1915! 

Now you know who was Vice President. But do you know who was President?

Other forms of moving people at the PPIE

The Fadgl trains
Still looking for some history on this. This odd name was apparently changed to Fageol. Wikipedia has some starting points on looking for the history. More on this later. I'd read that there was a tiny Ford engine in the auto.

From Frank Morton Todd, volume 2, p. 380: A serious concern of exposition management will be intramural transportation and it was better satisfied at San Francisco by those little white "Fadgl" trains than by any other arrangement ever used under similar circumstances. They served 4,278,895 passengers during the season, and took in over $307,000 in nickels and dimes; and outside the Exposition they promised to form one of its important contributions to the service of the world. The inventor was B. F. Fageol, and E. P. Brinegar was President of the operating company. Before the Exposition was over the company received inquiries about this novel means of transportation from every large city in the United States and from many abroad.

The cars were low, and the running board but a few inches from the ground, so that tired people could get aboard with little effort. Some were hooded for rain (the cars, not the people), but most of them were open to the sky and the passengers could have an unobstructed view as they rode, of the palaces, the Tower of Jewels, the Column of Progress, the tall trees

and palace portals and the hills across the Bay. 

The Overfair Railroad
The steam engines from the PPIE are still running at the Swanton Pacific Railroad in Davenport.

From Frank Morton Todd, volume 2, p380-381. 

Another very fine venture in the field of intramural transportation and one that served the Exposition visitors well, was the Overfair Railroad, a miniature steam line with complete Lilliputian locomotives, and single-seat cars, that ran from the southwest corner of the Machinery Palace, around the east side of that structure to the Marina, curved around the Yacht Harbor and ran out to the Race Track and Polo Field. It offered a beautiful view; and sometimes stopped its trains near the California Building on evenings when there were displays of fireworks, so that its patrons could have comfortable seats while enjoying the pyrotechnics. It took in over $22,000and perhaps some misfortune of location prevented it from doing better, as it deserved to do. Its creator was L. M. MacDermot of Oakland.

References

• The Electrical Experimenter, where Baron Munchhausen regularly turns up on the cover and inside, you learn about gravity nullifiers, read interviews with Edison and Tesla (February 1919).
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