Baltimore - Home of the first electric streetcar - 1885

[MARC Rider]

https://www.baltimoresun.com/featur...0220910-xc3xgqapljgt7pxbgpkdrfmfca-story.html
(There may be a paywall, but I think they let you read a couple of free stories a month.)

It was powered by a third rail using a separate motor car. It was pretty successful, but it was rendered obsolete by Frank Spraque's trolley wire system in 1889 that is still being used.

 

[Willbridge]

Professor Sidney Short of the University of Denver also pioneered the conduit concept in 1885-86. An installation on 15th Street in downtown Denver had all of the same problems as the Daft system, especially giving horses disturbing electric shocks.

https://prabook.com/web/sidney.short/3766961
https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver-tramway-company
The world's first electric streetcar line opened in Berlin in 1881 (by Siemens). It ran to the cadet school that later became the U. S. Army's Andrews Barracks. The track had been built to get building supplies to the then remote school site and so it was available for the Siemens operation.

In 1889 Sprague's system was so successful that it became the standard. It's pretty amazing -- our era thinks that technology is moving fast, but the electric streetcar was developed on two continents in eight years.

 

[AmtrakMaineiac]

In 1889 Sprague's system was so successful that it became the standard. It's pretty amazing -- our era thinks that technology is moving fast, but the electric streetcar was developed on two continents in eight years.

Then in the space of 10 years or so practically every horsecar line in the country had been converted to electric. I know Boston's last horsecar ran in 1900.