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As the two men began their slow ride, people must have stared. Horses must have balked. It was almost undoubtedly the only car in the city. Credit for the first American electric vehicle is generally given to Boston’s Philip W. Pratt for his lithe three hundred–pound tricycle, but this new vehicle was one of the very first automobiles in the world. Even eleven years later, only five hundred cars were registered in the city.1

Pedro Salom, a chemist, and Henry Morris, an inventor, had built their new ride in only two months. As much tank as carriage, the Electrobat, as they called it, weighed 4,400 pounds and was powered by an adapted ship motor. Its designers freely admitted that the vehicle was not designed for “an attractive appearance to a carriage builder’s eye.”2 Instead, they built the vehicle rugged because they wanted it to stand up to the rough city roads—not at all smooth like the roads of today—and they happened to need a place to put 1,600 pounds of lead-acid batteries.

We’re not sure where Messrs. Salom and Morris went that first day, but over the next few months they buzzed all over the city, from Salom’s house in the newly fashionable area by the 49th Street station all the way across the Schuylkill into downtown and even into Fairmount Park, where just a few years later the horseless carriages of the young and restless would become common enough to require an ordinance explicitly permitting them.3

The first version of the Electrobat, on which they glided through the streets of Philadelphia that fall and winter, looks like an uncovered wagon, complete with the spoked wheels—big ones in back, small ones up front. Two could comfortably sit atop the battery compartment, which housed the monster lead-acid cells, but it could have carried up to a dozen people. It gives the impression of a stagecoach missing both the horses and the coach, but it got the job done. It had a maximum range of fifty to one hundred miles and traveled hundreds of miles in its few months of testing, if Salom is to be believed.4

Its successor, the Electrobat 2, weighed closer to 1,800 pounds and packed a couple hundred pounds of batteries. It looked like a box on wheels, and a conductor sitting in the middle of the front of the car drove it with a steering stick. This automobile was the one that would propel Morris and Salom into history.

The week before Christmas of 1895 Salom showed up at the Franklin Institute in the Electrobat 2. Sessions at the Institute were like the TED talks of their day. The most exciting science was discussed. For example, a few weeks after Salom spoke, audience members were wowed by Roentgen rays—known to you and me as X-rays—that let humans see their skeletons right through their skin. Behind the stage, a screen hung onto which lantern pictures were projected. The Institute helped define the landscape of mechanical dreams. In this august setting, Salom delivered a talk on the subject of automobiles, most specifically his own and its advantages. “The subject of automobile vehicles is almost as old as the locomotive,” he began, and proceeded to show images of hallucinations of automobiles from classics of literature: Homer had dreamed of “self-moved” tripods that were “instinct with spirit,” and Milton had described the Chinese, who “drive / With sails and wind their canny wagons light.”5

Then Salom launched into his adventures with the Electrobat. The car had made a fine showing at a car race sponsored by the Chicago Tribune the previous month. It didn’t come close to finishing the race, but it was awarded a gold medal for handling and good looks.6 Finally, he made his plea for electric vehicles in thirteen easy points. The electric car was safe and clean; it made no noise, vibration, or heat; and it seemed unlikely to cause environmental problems if produced en masse. In a way, Salom foresaw 1970s Los Angeles:

All the gasoline motors we have seen belch forth from their exhaust pipe a continuous stream of partially unconsumed hydrocarbons in the form