Charles Van Depoele (1846-1892) was a Belgian inventor, born in Lichtervelde, who demonstrated the practicability of electrical traction in 1874. He patented an electric railway in 1883.
After immigrating to the United States in 1869, Van Depoele became a successful manufacturer of church furniture and then began to pursue his interest in electricity. In addition to his notable patents of 1874 and 1883, Van Depoele received patents on an electric generator (1880), a carbon commutator brush (1888), an alternating-current electric reciprocating engine (1889), a telpher system for a car running suspended from cables (1890), a coal-mining machine (1891) and a gearless electric locomotive (1894).
Van Depoele sold his electric-railway patents in 1888 to the Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachussets, which soon thereafter was absorbed into the General Electric Company (GEC).