All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

io8 All About Inventions now being seriously threatened. The outstanding drawback of any system of locomotion depending upon its own thoroughfare, as represented by a pair of rails, is the absolute indispensability of keeping to that highway. There is an utter lack of flexibility. If a car breaks down the interruption not only affects the disabled vehicle, but it brings every following car to inactivity. Traffic cannot be resumed until the accident has been repaired or the lame duck has been towed away. A similar state of affairs is precipitated if anything befalls the track or the conductor, although in the case of an overhead system the breakdown can generally be repaired within a short time. The condemnation of the vehicle to the pair of metals was responsible for the perfection of another trend of thought and its reduction to practical applica- tion. This manifestation of ingenuity has produced what may be termed as a hybrid—one with the salient characteristics of the omnibus and the tram- way ingeniously combined. In this instance the vehicle, which follows the familiar lines of the omnibus in its design and which may be adapted for carrying both inside and outside passengers, or the former only, is equipped with the trolley pole. The overhead conductor is strung in the usual manner, but the trolley pole is of sufficient length to command the radius of half the road, or in the case of a narrow road, when the conductor is placed to one side of the street, to reach across the full width of the thoroughfare. The flexibility of this trolley pole and its freedom of movement enables the car to travel at the full reach of the pole, and with as per- fect contact with the conductor as when travelling