Origin of The Term
The term trolley predates the invention of the trolley pole. The earliest electric cars did not use a pole, but rather a system in which each car dragged behind it an overhead cable connected to a small cart – or "troller" – that rode on a "track" of overhead wires. From the side, the dragging lines made the car seem to be "trolling", as in fishing. Later, when a pole was added, it came to be known as a trolley pole.
The term trolley is also used to describe the pole or the passenger car using the trolley pole is derived from the grooved conductive wheel (trolley) attached to the end of the pole that "trolls" the overhead wire.
An early development of an experimental tramway in Toronto, Ontario was built in 1883, having been developed by John Joseph Wright, brother of the mining entrepreneur Whitaker Wright. While Wright may have assisted in the installation of electric railways at the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE), and may even have used a pole system, there's no hard evidence to prove it. Likewise, Wright never filed or was issued a patent.
Credit for development of the first working trolley pole is given to Charles Van Depoele, a Belgian-born engineer who moved to the United States in 1869. Van Depoele made the first public demonstration of the spring-loaded device on a temporary streetcar line installed at the Toronto Industrial Exhibition (now the CNE) in autumn 1885. Depoele's first trolley pole was "crude" and not very reliable, and he reverted to using the troller system of current collection for a commercial installation on a streetcar system in South Bend, Indiana, which opened on November 14, 1885, and on one in Montgomery, Alabama, in April 1886. However, within a few months, Van Depoele switched to the trolley-pole system for the Montgomery operation. Van Depoele and fellow inventor Frank J. Sprague were "working on similar ideas at about the same time", and Sprague employed trolley-pole current collection on an electric streetcar system he installed in Richmond, Virginia, in 1888, also improving the trolley wheel and pole designs. Known as the Richmond Union Passenger Railway, this 12-mile system was the first large-scale trolley line in the world, opening to great fanfare on February 12, 1888.
The grooved trolley wheel was used on many large city systems through the 1940s and 1950s; it was generally used on systems with "old" style round cross sectional overhead wire. The trolley wheel was problematic at best; the circumferential contact of the grooved wheel bearing on the underside of the overhead wire provided minimal electrical contact and tended to arc excessively, increasing overhead wire wear . The newer sliding carbon trolley shoe was generally used with a "newer" grooved overhead trolley wire of a figure "8" cross section. The sliding trolley shoe provided better electrical contact (with a reduction in arcing), and it dramatically reduced overhead wire wear. Many systems began converting to the sliding trolley shoe in the 1920s; Milwaukee, Wisconsin converted its large system in the late 1920s. Curiously, Philadelphia did not convert its trolley wheels on its remaining streetcars until 1978. Although a streetcar with a trolley wheel may evoke an antique look, the trolley shoe is modern and more practical as well as economical.
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