Frank J. Sprague Invents: The Constant-Speed dc Electric Motor [History]

ON A MISERABLY COLD SPRING day in 1998, it became necessary to clean out a little-used storage barn in Williamstown, Massachusetts, so that it could be sold. The barn was part of the estate of Robert C. Sprague, who had died in 1991. Although the winter snow was mostly gone, a misty drizzle made the muddy walk down to the barn?s entrance slippery and treacherous. Once used to house riding horses, the stalls were long gone and the building was almost completely filled with rotting wet hay and broken pieces of equipment, along with seemingly useless files that once belonged to electrical inventor Frank Julian Sprague, Robert?s father. The inventor had died in 1934, nearly 60 years before his son, and it seemed impossible that the barn could still hold anything of value. The building was sagging, and, once inside, broken light bulbs and wooden supports from Frank Sprague?s failed late 1920s programmable electric sign business made moving around nearly impossible and dangerous. With its stagnant hay and years of collected rodent droppings, the space reeked, and it seemed best to get a front loader, empty out the structure, take the contents to the dump, and hope for a buyer who could see more value than was apparent.