Fyodor Pirotsky
Encyclopedia
Ukrainians
Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...
-born Russian
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
engineer and inventor of the world's first railway electrification system
Railway electrification system
A railway electrification system supplies electrical energy to railway locomotives and multiple units as well as trams so that they can operate without having an on-board prime mover. There are several different electrification systems in use throughout the world...
and electric tram. While the commercialization of his inventions in Russia was relatively slow, Pirotsky is known to met with Carl Heinrich von Siemens
Carl Heinrich von Siemens
Carl Heinrich von Siemens was a German entrepreneur, a child of a tenant farmer. He is a brother of Ernst Werner von Siemens and William Siemens, sons of Christian Ferdinand Siemens and wife Eleonore Deichmann...
and to influence the Siemens's eventual introduction of the first regular electric tram line (for the Berlin Straßenbahn
Berlin Straßenbahn
The Berlin tram network is the main tram system in Berlin, Germany. It is one of the oldest tram networks in the world having its origins in 1865 and is operated by , which was founded in 1929. It is notable for being one of the largest tram systems; there are 22 tram lines operate across a...
).
Biography
Fyodor was born to the family of a military physician in LokhvytsiaLokhvytsia
Lokhvytsia is a city in the Poltava Oblast of central Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Lokhvytskyi Raion , and is located on the banks of Lokhvytsia River.The current estimated population is around 21,400 ....
Uezd of Poltava
Poltava
Poltava is a city in located on the Vorskla River in central Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Poltava Oblast , as well as the surrounding Poltava Raion of the oblast. Poltava's estimated population is 298,652 ....
Gubernia (currently, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
). His family was of Ukrainian Cossack
Cossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
s ancestry.
Fyodor graduated from the Konstantin Cadet Corps (Konstantinovskiy Kadetskiy Korpus) and Mikhail Artillery School (both in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
) in 1866 and served in Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
with the Fortress Artillery. There he became a friend of a famous electrical engineer Pavel Yablochkov
Pavel Yablochkov
Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov was a Russian electrical engineer, the inventor of the Yablochkov candle and businessman.-Biography:...
and an enthusiast for applications of electrical energy.
Work
In 1871 Pirotsky moved back to Saint Petersburg, where among other things he proposed a new type of blast furnaceBlast furnace
A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally iron.In a blast furnace, fuel and ore and flux are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while air is blown into the bottom of the chamber, so that the chemical reactions...
. In 1874 he started experiments on Volkov Field in Saint Petersburg and in 1875 he put electrically powered railway cars on the Sestroretsk
Sestroretsk
Sestroretsk is a municipal town in Kurortny District of the federal city of St. Petersburg, Russia, located on the shores of the Gulf of Finland, the Sestra River and the Sestroretskiy Lake northwest of St. Petersburg...
s railway Miller's line
Miller's line
Miller's line was a passenger railway line in Russia from 1873 to 1886, run by the Finnish Railways VR Group. The line ran from Beloostrov to Sestroretsk, and was the site of the world's first functional electric railway.- Organisation :...
(not far from the station Miller's pier
Miller's pier
Miller's pier , is a railway station at the quay in Sestroretsky kurort, Russia.In harbour of Gulf of Finland from boulders the 50-metre dam was dumped.In an operating time the name "Miller's Harbour" was fixed to harbour....
). The electricity was transferred over a distance of approximately one kilometer. In his design rails were connected to a Gramme
Zénobe Gramme
Zénobe Théophile Gramme was a Belgian electrical engineer. He invented the Gramme machine, a type of direct current dynamo capable of generating smoother and much higher voltages than the dynamos known to that point.In 1873 he and Hippolyte Fontaine accidentally discovered that the device was...
generator. Both rails were isolated from the ground, one rail served as a direct conductor and one as a reverse conductor.
In 1880 he modified a city two-decker horse tramway to be powered by electricity instead of horses, and on the unusual form of public transport started to serve residents of Saint Petersburg amid the vocal protests of the owners of the horse-cars. The experiments continued until the end of September 1880. Some historians claim that this was the first electric tram in the world. Pirotsky did not have the money to continue his experiments, but his works stirred interest in electric trams around the world. Among people who met Pirotsky was Carl Heinrich von Siemens
Carl Heinrich von Siemens
Carl Heinrich von Siemens was a German entrepreneur, a child of a tenant farmer. He is a brother of Ernst Werner von Siemens and William Siemens, sons of Christian Ferdinand Siemens and wife Eleonore Deichmann...
who was very interested and asked many questions. In 1881 the brothers Siemens started producing their own design of electric trams commercially. The first permanent electric tram line using Siemens tram cars was opened in Berlin in 1881 and the first permanent tram line in the Russian Empire was opened in Kiev in 1892.
Pirotsky continued to serve as an artillery officer. Among other things he installed the first underground electric cable in Saint Petersburg to transfer electricity from a cannon foundry to the Artillery School (1881). He also was the author of a project for centralizing the city's electricity production using underground cables, he proposed new constructions of blast furnaces and bakery ovens. In 1888 he retired with the rank of colonel
Colonel
Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...
, lived on his military pension in the town of Aleshki (now Tsiurupynsk
Tsiurupynsk
Tsiurupynsk is a city in Kherson Oblast of Ukraine that until 1928 was called Oleshky. It is the oldest city of the oblast and one of the oldest in the southern Ukraine. Population of it is 30,123 ....
, Kherson Oblast
Kherson Oblast
Kherson Oblast is an oblast in southern Ukraine, just north of Crimea. Its administrative center is Kherson. The area of the region is 29000 km², its population is 1.12 million.Important cities in the oblast include:...
, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
) and died in 1898. Since no money was found on him when he died, the burial was paid for by a credit secured by the colonel's furniture.