1.
Washington, Pennsylvania
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Washington is a city in and the county seat of Washington County, Pennsylvania, United States, within the Pittsburgh, PA Metropolitan Statistical Area in the southwestern part of the state. The population was 13,663 at the 2010 census, according to the United States Census Bureau, Washington has a total area of 3.3 square miles, all land. Delaware Indian chief Tangooqua, commonly known as Catfish, had a camp on a branch of Chartiers Creek, the French labeled the area Wissameking, meaning catfish place, as early as 1757. The area of Washington was settled by immigrants from Scotland. It was first settled by colonists around 1768, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed an act on March 28,1781, erecting the County of Washington and naming Catfish Camp as the place for holding the first election. This was the first county in the U. S. to be named in honor of General George Washington, David Hoge laid out a plan of lots immediately after the legislatures action. There have long been rumors among locals that the town was named “Washington” because George Washington spent the night in the region once and this is not true however, Washington had never been to the area. The original plot dedicated a tract of ground to the people for recreational purposes. A lot was given for a courthouse where the current building now stands, and Lots 43 and 102, according to the plan, were presented by Hoge to His Excellency, General Washington, and Mrs. Washington. Washington, Pennsylvania, was the center for the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791, the rebellion was centered on a tax being imposed on whiskey distillation in the region. The house of David Bradford, one of the leaders of the rebellion, is now a devoted to the Whiskey Rebellion. The town was incorporated as a borough on February 13,1810, in August 1875, construction began of the 3 ft Waynesburg and Washington Railroad, conceived by John Day in 1874 and chartered in 1875. Passenger services ended in 1929, conversion to standard gauge followed in 1944, freight services ended in 1976, although part of the line still survives for access to a coal mine. The discovery of oil and natural gas among the Washington oil field caused a period from the 1800s to the early 1900s. James B. Wilson chartered the Washington Electric Street Railways in 1889 with construction beginning in November 1890, the first line was built from the Waynesburg and Washington Narrow Gauge station to Wilson Orchard, just north of the present day site of the Washington Hospital. In 1903 the Washington and Canonsburg Railway Company linked the two towns with a trolley line, the company was bought by the Philadelphia Company in 1906, later becoming part of the Pittsburgh Railway Company, linking through to Pittsburgh as part of their interurban service in 1909. The line closed on August 29,1953, a short section of the line and a number of trolley cars are preserved at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum north of the city. As of the census of 2010, there were 13,663 people residing in the city, the population density was 4,140.3 people per square mile
2.
Pennsylvania
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Pennsylvania /ˌpɛnsᵻlˈveɪnjə/, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle, Pennsylvania is the 33rd largest, the 5th most populous, and the 9th most densely populated of the 50 United States. The states five most populous cities are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie, the state capital, and its ninth-largest city, is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 140 miles of shoreline along Lake Erie and the Delaware Estuary. The state is one of the 13 original founding states of the United States, it came into being in 1681 as a result of a land grant to William Penn. Part of Pennsylvania, together with the present State of Delaware, had earlier been organized as the Colony of New Sweden and it was the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, on December 12,1787. Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were drafted, is located in the states largest city of Philadelphia, during the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, was fought in the south central region of the state. Valley Forge near Philadelphia was General Washingtons headquarters during the winter of 1777–78. Pennsylvania is 170 miles north to south and 283 miles east to west, of a total 46,055 square miles,44,817 square miles are land,490 square miles are inland waters, and 749 square miles are waters in Lake Erie. It is the 33rd largest state in the United States, Pennsylvania has 51 miles of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary. Cities include Philadelphia, Reading, Lebanon and Lancaster in the southeast, Pittsburgh in the southwest, the tri-cities of Allentown, Bethlehem, the northeast includes the former anthracite coal mining communities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pittston City, and Hazleton. Erie is located in the northwest, the state has 5 regions, namely the Allegheny Plateau, Ridge and Valley, Atlantic Coastal Plain, Piedmont, and the Erie Plain. Straddling two major zones, the majority of the state, with the exception of the corner, has a humid continental climate. The largest city, Philadelphia, has characteristics of the humid subtropical climate that covers much of Delaware. Moving toward the interior of the state, the winter climate becomes colder, the number of cloudy days increase. Western areas of the state, particularly locations near Lake Erie, can receive over 100 inches of snowfall annually, the state may be subject to severe weather from spring through summer into fall. Tornadoes occur annually in the state, sometimes in large numbers, the Tuscarora Nation took up temporary residence in the central portion of Pennsylvania ca. Both the Dutch and the English claimed both sides of the Delaware River as part of their lands in America
3.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
4.
Pittsburgh Railways Interurban
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Pittsburgh Railways was one of the predecessors of the Port Authority of Allegheny County. It had 666 PCC cars, the third largest fleet in North America and it had 68 street car routes, of which only three are used by the Port Authority as light rail routes. With the Port Authoritys Transit Development Plan, many names will be changed to its original. Many of the routes have been remembered in the route names of many Port Authority buses. 1895 to 1905 was a time of consolidation for the street railways serving Pittsburgh. On July 27,1896 the United Traction Company was chartered and absorbed the Second Avenue Traction Company, the Southern Traction Company acquired the lease of the West End Traction Company on October 1,1900. Pittsburgh Railways was formed on January 1,1902, when the Southern Traction Company acquired operating rights over the Consolidated Traction Company and United Traction Company. The new company operated 1,100 trolleys on 400 miles of track, with 178.7 million passengers, the Pittsburgh Railway had over 20 car barns located around the city as well as power stations. 1918 was the peak year, operating 99 trolley routes over 606 miles of track. Costs to the rose in the early twentieth century. PRC faced constant pressure from the city to improve equipment and services, workers walked out when a pay raise was rejected. On July 26,1936 Pittsburgh Railways took delivery of PCC streetcar No.100 from the St. Louis Car Company and it was placed in revenue service in August 1936, the first revenue earning PCC in the world. Large scale abandonments of lines began in the late 1950s, usually associated with highway or bridge work, highway improvements in the Duquesne-McKeesport area resulted in the replacement of trolley services with buses on September 21,1958. The replacement of the Point Bridge with the Fort Pitt Bridge precipitated the abandonment of routes to the West End. Pittsburgh Railways Company was engaged in ongoing litigation over the failure of the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission to provide streetcar tracks on the new bridge, in the end the company was allowed to abandon 27 miles of street track in situ and was awarded $300,000 as compensation. However, this was the beginning of the end for trolleys in Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Railways Interurban Division ran an interurban trolley system linking Pittsburgh with towns in Washington County such as Washington, Charleroi and Roscoe. The origins of the Charleroi interurban line began in 1895 in Monongahela City, in 1900 the line was extended north to Riverview and in 1901 extended south to Black Diamond Mine. Here it turned inland, south along Black Dam Hollow and it met the northern end of the newly constructed Charleroi & West Side Street Railway at the now disused Lock number 4 in North Charleroi
5.
Pittsburgh
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Pittsburgh is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States, and is the county seat of Allegheny County. The city proper has a population of 304,391. The metropolitan population of 2,353,045 is the largest in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia, the second-largest in Pennsylvania, and the 26th-largest in the U. S. The city features 30 skyscrapers, two inclines, a fortification and the Point State Park at the confluence of the rivers. Aside from steel, Pittsburgh has led in manufacturing of aluminum, glass, shipbuilding, petroleum, foods, sports, transportation, computing, autos, and electronics. For part of the 20th century, Pittsburgh was behind only New York and Chicago in corporate headquarters employment, Americas 1980s deindustrialization laid off area blue-collar workers and thousands of downtown white-collar workers when the longtime Pittsburgh-based world headquarters moved out. The area has served also as the federal agency headquarters for cyber defense, software engineering, robotics, energy research. The area is home to 68 colleges and universities, including research and development leaders Carnegie Mellon University, the region is a hub for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, sustainable energy, and energy extraction. Pittsburgh was named in 1758 by General John Forbes, in honor of British statesman William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham. The current pronunciation, which is unusual in English speaking countries, is almost certainly a result of a printing error in some copies of the City Charter of March 18,1816. The error was repeated commonly enough throughout the rest of the 19th century that the pronunciation was lost. After a public campaign the original spelling was restored by the United States Board on Geographic Names in 1911. The area of the Ohio headwaters was long inhabited by the Shawnee, the first known European to enter the region was the French explorer/trader Robert de La Salle from Quebec during his 1669 expedition down the Ohio River. European pioneers, primarily Dutch, followed in the early 18th century, Michael Bezallion was the first to describe the forks of the Ohio in a 1717 manuscript, and later that year European fur traders established area posts and settlements. In 1749, French soldiers from Quebec launched an expedition to the forks to unite Canada with French Louisiana via the rivers, during 1753–54, the British hastily built Fort Prince George before a larger French force drove them off. The French built Fort Duquesne based on LaSalles 1669 claims, the French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years War, began with the future Pittsburgh as its center. British General Edward Braddock was dispatched with Major George Washington as his aide to take Fort Duquesne, the British and colonial force were defeated at Braddocks Field. General John Forbes finally took the forks in 1758, Forbes began construction on Fort Pitt, named after William Pitt the Elder while the settlement was named Pittsborough
6.
Tram
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A tram is a rail vehicle which runs on tracks along public urban streets, and also sometimes on a segregated right of way. The lines or networks operated by tramcars are called tramways, Tramways powered by electricity, the most common type historically, were once called electric street railways. However, trams were used in urban areas before the universal adoption of electrification. Tram lines may run between cities and/or towns, and/or partially grade-separated even in the cities. Very occasionally, trams also carry freight, Tram vehicles are usually lighter and shorter than conventional trains and rapid transit trains, but the size of trams is rapidly increasing. Some trams may also run on railway tracks, a tramway may be upgraded to a light rail or a rapid transit line. For all these reasons, the differences between the modes of rail transportation are often indistinct. In the United States, the tram has sometimes been used for rubber-tired trackless trains. Today, most trams use electrical power, usually fed by a pantograph, in some cases by a sliding shoe on a third rail. If necessary, they may have dual power systems — electricity in city streets, trams are now included in the wider term light rail, which also includes segregated systems. The English terms tram and tramway are derived from the Scots word tram, referring respectively to a type of truck used in coal mines and the tracks on which they ran. The word tram probably derived from Middle Flemish trame, a Romanesque word meaning the beam or shaft of a barrow or sledge, the identical word la trame with the meaning crossbeam is also used in the French language. The word Tram-car is attested from 1873, although the terms tram and tramway have been adopted by many languages, they are not used universally in English, North Americans prefer streetcar, trolley, or trolleycar. The term streetcar is first recorded in 1840, and originally referred to horsecars, when electrification came, Americans began to speak of trolleycars or later, trolleys. The troller design frequently fell off the wires, and was replaced by other more reliable devices. The terms trolley pole and trolley wheel both derive from the troller, Modern trams often have an overhead pantograph mechanical linkage to connect to power, abandoning the trolley pole altogether. Conventional diesel tourist buses decorated to look like streetcars are sometimes called trolleys in the US, the term may also apply to an aerial ropeway, e. g. the Roosevelt Island Tramway. Over time, the trolley has fallen into informal use
7.
Pittsburgh Railways
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Pittsburgh Railways was one of the predecessors of the Port Authority of Allegheny County. It had 666 PCC cars, the third largest fleet in North America and it had 68 street car routes, of which only three are used by the Port Authority as light rail routes. With the Port Authoritys Transit Development Plan, many names will be changed to its original. Many of the routes have been remembered in the route names of many Port Authority buses. 1895 to 1905 was a time of consolidation for the street railways serving Pittsburgh. On July 27,1896 the United Traction Company was chartered and absorbed the Second Avenue Traction Company, the Southern Traction Company acquired the lease of the West End Traction Company on October 1,1900. Pittsburgh Railways was formed on January 1,1902, when the Southern Traction Company acquired operating rights over the Consolidated Traction Company and United Traction Company. The new company operated 1,100 trolleys on 400 miles of track, with 178.7 million passengers, the Pittsburgh Railway had over 20 car barns located around the city as well as power stations. 1918 was the peak year, operating 99 trolley routes over 606 miles of track. Costs to the rose in the early twentieth century. PRC faced constant pressure from the city to improve equipment and services, workers walked out when a pay raise was rejected. On July 26,1936 Pittsburgh Railways took delivery of PCC streetcar No.100 from the St. Louis Car Company and it was placed in revenue service in August 1936, the first revenue earning PCC in the world. Large scale abandonments of lines began in the late 1950s, usually associated with highway or bridge work, highway improvements in the Duquesne-McKeesport area resulted in the replacement of trolley services with buses on September 21,1958. The replacement of the Point Bridge with the Fort Pitt Bridge precipitated the abandonment of routes to the West End. Pittsburgh Railways Company was engaged in ongoing litigation over the failure of the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission to provide streetcar tracks on the new bridge, in the end the company was allowed to abandon 27 miles of street track in situ and was awarded $300,000 as compensation. However, this was the beginning of the end for trolleys in Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Railways Interurban Division ran an interurban trolley system linking Pittsburgh with towns in Washington County such as Washington, Charleroi and Roscoe. The origins of the Charleroi interurban line began in 1895 in Monongahela City, in 1900 the line was extended north to Riverview and in 1901 extended south to Black Diamond Mine. Here it turned inland, south along Black Dam Hollow and it met the northern end of the newly constructed Charleroi & West Side Street Railway at the now disused Lock number 4 in North Charleroi
8.
Frank J. Sprague
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Frank Julian Sprague was an American naval officer and inventor who contributed to the development of the electric motor, electric railways, and electric elevators. He became known as the Father of Electric Traction, Sprague was born in Milford, Connecticut in 1857 to David Cummings Sprague and Frances Julia King Sprague. He attended Drury High School in North Adams, Massachusetts and excelled in mathematics, in 1874, he won an appointment to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he graduated seventh in the Class of 1878 and he was commissioned as an ensign in the United States Navy. During his ensuing naval service, he first served on the USS Richmond, while his ship was in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1881, Sprague invented the inverted type of dynamo. After he was transferred to the USS Lancaster, flagship of the European Squadron, in 1883, Edward H. Johnson, a business associate of Thomas Edison, persuaded Sprague to resign his naval commission to work for Edison. One of Spragues significant contributions to the Edison Laboratory at Menlo Park, prior to his arrival, Edison conducted many costly trial-and-error experiments. Spragues approach was to calculate using mathematics the optimum parameters and thus save much needless tinkering and he did important work for Edison, including correcting Edisons system of mains and feeders for central station distribution. In 1884, he decided his interests in the exploitation of electricity lay elsewhere and his motor was the first to maintain constant speed under varying load. It was immediately popular, and was endorsed by Edison as the practical electric motor available. His regenerative braking system was important in the development of the electric train, Spragues inventions included several improvements to designs for systems of electric streetcars collecting electricity from overhead lines. Within a year, electric power had started to more costly horsecars in many cities. By 1889110 electric railways incorporating Spragues equipment had begun or planned on several continents. In 1890, Edison, who manufactured most of Spragues equipment, bought him out, however, he continued to be interested in the use of electricity for urban transportation and proposed a major expansion of Londons Underground in 1901. Spragues system of supply was a great advantage in relation to the first bipolar U-tube overhead lines, in everyday use since 1883 on the Mödling. In 1892, Sprague founded the Sprague Electric Elevator Company, the company developed floor control, automatic elevators, acceleration control of car safeties and a number of freight elevators. The Spague-Pratt elevator ran faster and with larger loads than hydraulic or steam elevators, Sprague then sold his company to the Otis Elevator Company in 1895. Spragues experience with elevator control led him to devise a unit system of electric railway operation
