Charles Joseph Van Depoele was an electrical engineer, inventor, and pioneer in electric railway technology, including the first trolley pole
Van Depoele became interested in electricity at an early age. He studied and experimented with electricity while attending college in the 1860s, moving to Lille, France to study at the Imperial Lyceum from 1864 to 1869. In 1869, Van Depoele moved to Detroit, Michigan where he supported himself by manufacturing church furniture.

Van Depoele continued to experiment with electric generators, motors, and lighting, eventually forming the Van Depoele Electric Manufacturing Company. He developed an electric generator in 1880, and he took out a patent for an electric railway three years later. In 1883, his first electric railway was laid in Chicago, Illinois, and nine of his electric railway systems were in operation in thirteen North American cities by the end of 1887. Van Depoele sold his electric railway patents to the Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachusetts in 1888.

Van Depoele remained a productive inventor for the rest of his life, being granted over two hundred United States patents for various electronic inventions until his death in 1892. Some of his most prominent inventions included an alternating-current electric reciprocating engine (1889), a telpher system for a car suspended from cables (1890), a coal-mining machine (1891), and a gearless electric locomotive (1894). Today, Charles Van Depoele is most recognized for his role in the development of electric railways.
He is credited with with more than 100 patents on electrical inventions.