Background
Van Depoele was born on April 27, 1846, in Lichtervelde, Belgium. He was the fourth child of Peter John and Marie Therese Coleta (Algoed) van de Poele.
Van Depoele was born on April 27, 1846, in Lichtervelde, Belgium. He was the fourth child of Peter John and Marie Therese Coleta (Algoed) van de Poele.
Precocious Van Depoele fashioned an electric light when he was fifteen years old, in 1861 and inspired in part by his father's work in the East Flanders railway shops, Van Depoele devoted himself early to scientific experiment.
After attending a higher school in Poperinghe, he was apprenticed in 1865 to the wood-carving firm of Buisine-Rigot at its shops in Lille and Paris. In Lille, he studied at the Imperial Lyceum and continued his preoccupation with electricity.
In 1869, Van Depoele emigrated to America and settled in Detroit, Michigan. In Detroit, Van Depoele became a successful manufacturer of church furniture, but he soon began to concentrate his efforts in the field of electricity. As early as 1870, he exhibited arc lights and as early as 1874 was demonstrating the feasibility of electric traction by both overhead and underground conductors.
By 1878, when he was visited by Edison, the old church in which he had finally established his shop, at 28 Pine Street, had become famous. Styled "Detroit's Edison" by the Detroit Free Press on November 13, 1878, he proceeded to work towards vibratory regulation for arc lights, and by July 1879, he had demonstrated his improved lights publicly.
Early in 1880, the Van Depoele Electric Light Company was formed, and later in the year, Van Depoele transferred his experiments in electric traction to the factory of the Detroit Novelty Works at Hamtramck, Mich. , where he made tests on a half-mile track. In 1881, the Van Depoele Electric Light Company of Chicago was incorporated; and in 1884, the Van Depoele Electric Manufacturing Company. Meanwhile, in Chicago, January 18, 1883, Van Depoele gave a public demonstration of electric traction, the current being furnished from two wires laid along the track.
At the Chicago Inter-State Industrial Exposition early the following September, he continued with the first practical demonstration in the world of a spring-pressed under-running trolley. In 1884 and 1885, he was successful in Toronto with both the underground conduit and the overhead systems. On November 14, 1885, his overhead system was put into operation in South Bend, Ind. The South Bend Tribune of November 16 ran a proud headline: "South Bend the First City in the Union to Secure Practical Electric Traction" and a reporter announced: "The bray of the festive mule must go. "
In the winter of 1885-86, Van Depoele's system was adopted in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Montgomery, Alabama, and other cities, and by the end of 1886 eight lines had been installed in the United States and Canada. In this year he contributed an article, "Electric Transmission of Power, " to the Telegraphic Journal and Electrical Review of London.
Two years later, in March 1888, the Van Depoele system was operating in ten cities, with three other lines under construction claiming a greater number of lines than all other companies combined. In 1888, Van Depoele's electric railway patents were sold to the Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachusetts, and Van Depoele himself was engaged by that concern as an electrician, with American and foreign royalties for his patented railway systems. The sale of the Van Depoele Electric Manufacturing Company followed in 1889, and in this year Van Depoele's telpher and reciprocating patents were assigned to the Thomson-Houston International Company.
In November 1891, while planning an electrical exhibit for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Van Depoele contracted a severe cold, which with resulting complications caused his death after an illness of over four months. Van Depoele filed in all some 444 applications for patents, of which at least 249 were granted to him under his own name.
After his death seventy-two further applications were made, and of these some forty-six were allowed and assigned to the Thomson-Houston Electric Company. Van Depoele died in Lynn, Massachusetts, and was buried in St. Mary's Cemetery there.
Van Depoele's achievements covered a wide variety of electrical inventions and improvements, especially in the field of traction. His little "Giant" generator, patented September 21, 1880, with its smooth regulation of power, was considered one of the best on the market. His first patent on electric railways was granted October 2, 1883; his first on an overhead conductor, August 11, 1885. The patent for his carbon contact or commutator-brush, which he first used in 1882 and which revolutionized motor construction, was taken up October 9, 1888. Other basic patents of prime importance were his alternating-current electric reciprocating engine (1889); his multiple-current pulsating generator (1890); his telpher system (1890), first used in the mines at Streator, Illinois, in 1885; his multiple rock-drill (1891); his coal-mining machine (1891); and his gearless electric locomotive (1894). He was experimenting with electric refrigeration before June 16, 1886, and in the winter of 1889-90 at his residence at 502 Essex Street in Lynn he made several photographs in color. The two most distinctively original of his achievements, however, were the pivoted spring-pressed under-running trolley and the carbon commutator-brush. Of this latter epochal invention alone it has been justly said that the traction industry "would have been indefinitely postponed" even "impossible" "without the discovery of the carbon brush". He received the most recognition for his role in the development of electric railways. A portrait bust of him, in bronze, by Robert Kraus of Boston, is in the Lynn Public Library.
Van Depoele was a man of broad culture. Bilingual from the beginning in French and Flemish, he became proficient as well in Dutch, Latin, Greek, English, and other languages.
He became a naturalized American citizen on April 23, 1878.
On November 23, 1870, Van Depoele married Ada Mina, daughter of Cornelius and Cornelia (Weavers) van Hoogstraten of Detroit, and by her he had three sons and four daughters.
Was a furniture maker from Ghent.
13 September 1846 - 15 December 1916
15 June 1879 - 4 December 1966
24 December 1876 - 26 July 1950
1874 - 20 March 1959
30 November 1881 - 1 June 1889
23 September 1886 - 21 June 1954
