Electric motors were extremely compact compared to the sprawling steam plants of the turn of the 20th century. Without the complications of operating a steam engine and the danger of being burned by a hot boiler, the technology could make any boat's interior sociable and functional. Electric power produced no noise. Any vibration was hardly noticeable, and electric motors did not belch smoke or hot vapor. They had few moving parts and were relatively efficient. Their weak link, then as now, was always in the challenges of storing electrical energy; however, by the 1800s batteries were small enough to be discreetly hidden under seats or even floorboards, unlike the earlier one-off experimental types tried as far back as the 1830s in Russia and the 1850s in England and France. Significantly, boats running on electrical power were not only much safer than those using steam power, in which boiler explosions were not uncommon, but also much simpler to run. An electric launch could be operated entirely by a single person, which was a radical novelty for those who grew up in the steam-engine era. The fact that the skipper could control both direction and speed from the helm without having a licensed steam engineer aboard astonished people.
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