Fyodor Apollonovich Pirotsky 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.
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 railwayMiller's line. 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. 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 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 of the Imperial Russian Army. Among other things he installed the first underground electric cable in Saint Petersburg to transfer electricity from a cannon foundry to the Artillery School. 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, lived on his military pension in the town of Aleshki 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.
