Fyodor Pirotsky

Fyodor Apollonovich Pirotsky (Russian: Фёдор Аполлонович Пироцкий; February 17 [O.S. March 1] 1845- February 28 [O.S. March 12] 1898) was a Russian engineer of Ukrainian origin and inventor of the world's first railway electrification system and electric tram. While the commercialization of his inventions in Russia was relatively slow, Pirotsky is known to have met with Carl Heinrich von Siemens and influenced Siemens' eventual introduction of the first regular electric tram line (for the Berlin Straßenbahn).

Fyodor was born to the family of a military physician in Lokhvytsia Uezd of Poltava Gubernia (currently, Ukraine) of the Russian Empire. His family was of Ukrainian Cossacks ancestry.

Fyodor received his education at Saint Petersburg, where he graduated from the Konstantin Cadet Corps (Konstantinovskiy Kadetskiy Korpus) and Mikhail Artillery School in 1866, and served in Kiev with the Fortress Artillery. There he became a friend of the famous Russian electrical engineer Pavel Yablochkov and an enthusiast for applications of electrical energy.

In 1871, Pirotsky moved back to Saint Petersburg, where among other things he proposed a new type of blast furnace. In 1874, he started experiments on Volkov Field in Saint Petersburg and in 1875 put electrically powered railway cars on the Sestroretsks railway Miller's line (not far from the station Miller's pier). The electricity was transferred over a distance of approximately one kilometer. In his design rails were connected to a Gramme generator. Both rails were isolated from the ground, one rail served as a direct conductor and one as a reverse conductor.

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