History
With electrification of the mayor European axes pending in the late-1950s, SNCF engineers dreamed of a locomotive type which could operate of all 4 major European currents: 1.5 kV DC, 3 kV DC, 15 kV 16⅔ Hz AC and 25 kV 50 Hz AC. Unfortunately, the technology to develop such kinds of locomotives wasn't advanced enough at that time. Therefore the engineers stuck to the idea of realizing a reliable series of dual-voltage locomotive first.
But, with the electrification of the Paris-Brussels line pending, the engineers wanted to modify the locomotives so that they also could operate of the Belgian 3 kV DC. As the locomotive had still primitive DC motors, this could be done by connecting them together in series or series-parallel.
In 1961 the 2 locomotives were delivered as BB 26001 and BB 26002 and closely resembled to their DC counterparts BB 9400, but had also some differences: they had already double lights (one couple for white, one couple for red) instead of a single couple on BB 9400/BB 16000 series and their pantographs were inverted.
Read more about this topic: SNCF Class BB 30000
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)