One of the things you learn in school in the US is that the Revolutionary War took place in North America, mostly involved colonial troops versus the British (or their mercenaries), and ended when George Washington defeated General Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. Not a single one of those things are true.
The final battle of the Revolutionary War ended on July 25, 1783, not 1781. It was called the Siege of Cuddalore, and involved British forces under General James Stuart and French and Mysorian forces under Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau. Oh, and by the way, Cuddalore is in India.
The siege — and the whole war — ended when everybody got word of the Peace of Paris, the series of treaties signed by England, France, the Dutch Republic, Spain, and the newly created United States. Although from a certain point of view the whole thing had been about independence for the North American colonies, it was really a sort of world war, with England fighting battles in India, the Caribbean, and the Mediterranean as well as North America — where it wasn’t just the colonists fighting the British, but the French and Spanish as well. It took four different treaties to get all the disputes settled.
The British came out less well in the Peace of Paris than they hoped, partly because of turmoil back at home. The British Government changed three times during the negotiations, and the negotiators went from Lord Shelburne, who had declared that he “would never consent, under any possible given circumstances, to acknowledge the independency of America” to Lord Rockingham, with Shelburne demoted to being an aide, along with Charles Fox. Shelburne resented his demotion and hated Fox — and this worked to the advantage of the US, because Shelburne did everything he could, behind the scenes, to undercut the negotiation process.
Among other things, Shelburne sent his own letter to George Washington — without telling Rockingham or Fox — letting him know that England would accept American independence without any conditions. Remember, this is the same Shelburne who had declared he’d never agree to anything of the sort.
There was quite a bit of other intrigue during the talks, too. England didn’t know that France and Spain had a secret agreement about Gibraltar (which Spain wanted back from England), and the Dutch were negotiating in the background with everybody because they had plenty of money, and England, France, and Spain needed loans after years of wars.
Anyway, mostly due to luck and infighting among all the European powers, the US got more out of the agreement than they’d ever expected — all the territory from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River, which made the US about the size of France and Spain combined. France got revenge on England for the Seven Years War, along with territory in India, Africa, and the Caribbean. Spain got Florida, but not Gibraltar. And the Dutch, who’d been the least involved in the hostilities, and the least affected by the war, didn’t get any significant territory, but did manage to maneuver themselves into being the premier financial power of Europe — anybody who needed a loan (or at least any country that needed a loan) had to talk to them.
One of the reasons a nation might need money is to pay for additional buildings in its cities. But at the time, cities really couldn’t get anywhere near the size they are today. Transportation was a big hurdle — to move more people and goods you needed either wagons or ships, and the ships only served the edges of a city that had docks. Wagons needed wide enough roads, and even then could only carry so much — not to mention needing horse-related infrastructure like stables, water, and food (which also had to be transported by wagon).
These were the same problems a hundred years later, in the 1800s. Even though steam engines were coming into use, they spewed a lot of smoke and ash, and to put a whole railroad inside a city just wasn’t very practical, for the most part, because they were powered by coal-fired steam. But then Frank Sprague was born on July 25, 1857 — in Milford, CT. In school he was amazingly good at math, but might have had some deficiencies in other areas — after high school he wanted to take the West Point entrance exam, but by mistake took the Naval Academy exam instead. You’d think he might have noticed — the exam took four days — but he didn’t, got the highest score, and ended up as an ensign on the USS Lancaster. On board ship he invented an electric generator, and installed the first electric bell system to send messages around the ship.
When the Lancaster was in Europe, Sprague attended the 1881 Exposition of Electricity in Paris, and by the next year was well-enough known that he was on the jury that gave awards for mechanical and electric inventions at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London.
He resigned from the Navy to work for Thomas Edison, then a couple of years later left to found the Sprague Electric Railway & Motor Company. He made so many improvements in electric streetcars that he changed them from a curiosity to a practical service. By 1889 there were 110 electric railways using Sprague’s equipment — and expanding the practical footprint of cities. Sprague is the one, by the way, who invented the “third rail” system still used in the New York subway system.
But even though cities with electric railways could be larger, there were still limits on how much you could pack into one area. You could make the buildings taller, but people balked at walking up too many staircases.
Sprague had an idea for that too: the electric elevator. Although he didn’t invent them, his improvements made them more efficient (he came up with the system of having more than one elevator car in a single shaft) and safer — he invented the automatic braking systems that are still in use. So it’s largely thanks to Frank Sprague that cities got bigger, and urban transport works the way it does nowadays.
Of course, not everybody likes cities, big or small. A good place to get away from them is Wyoming, where the biggest city (Cheyenne) is only the size of Frank Sprague’s home town, Milford. Another thing Wyoming has in common with Sprague is its birthday: the Wyoming Territory was established on July 25, 1868, Frank’s 11th birthday. He probably would have been in the sixth grade, learning about the American Revolution. But I bet they didn’t tell him its last battle happened in India.
