PHOTO: KGPA LTD./ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Visitors at the 1879 Berlin Industrial Exposition were pleasantly shocked to encounter the world's first electric train. Up until then, public transportation in urban areas was chiefly dependent on horse-powered conveyances, whose prolific effluence covered the streets. Built by German inventor Werner von Siemens, the founder of Siemens AG, the miniature locomotive pulled a total of more than 80,000 attendees around the exhibition grounds on a nearly 1,000-foot circular track. Two years later, the prototype became a reality, when in 1881 von Siemens built a 1.6-mile-long electric tramway in Berlin.