It's shaping up to be a big year for electric cars, with Chevrolet's Volt and Nissan's Leaf due before 2010 draws to a close.

Which makes it as good a time as ever to remind ourselves that the idea of an electric car is far from novel; in fact, it's been a persistent, tantalizing puzzle for automotive engineers hoping to eliminate gasoline from the equation for over a century. And there's no better place to track the history of the electric car than in the complete