Anthony Reckenzaun

Anthony Reckenzaun (1850 to 1893) was an Austrian-born electrical engineer who worked in Britain and became an early designer of electric traction. Born at Graz, he came to England in 1872, worked as a draughtsman, and after visiting the Paris exhibitions of 1878 and 1881 turned to electrical engineering. As engineer to the Electrical Power Storage Company he designed in 1882 what Grace's Guide calls the first significant electric launch driven by storage batteries, named Electricity, and built an electric tramcar shown in March 1883 on the West Metropolitan Tramways line in London. From 1885 he ran his own company making electric motors, boats and tram cars, and his traction motors were used on the first large scale telpherage system, at Glynde in Sussex. His storage battery tramcars were tried on lines in Britain and mainly the United States, and in 1886 his boat Volta crossed from Dover to Calais and back. He received a Society of Arts silver medal in 1887, published Electric Traction on Railways and Tramways in 1892 and died in 1893.