Editing Distributed power (section)

==History==
Since the 1960s, railroad distributed power technology has been dominated by one company, Harris Controls (originally [[Harris Corporation]] — Controls & Composition Division, later purchased by General Electric—the division now known as GE Transportation) who have manufactured and marketed a patented radio-control system with the trade-name of [[Locotrol]], which is the predominant wireless DP system in use around the world today.

With its origins in the early days of [[SCADA]] technology for the remote control of pipelines and electric utilities, and from an early concept of Southern Railway President D.W. Brosnan, Locotrol was a product of the North Electric Company (Galion, Ohio) which was later purchased by Radiation Inc. (Melbourne, Florida) and—in turn—purchased by Harris Corporation (also headquartered in Melbourne). The nascent technology was first tested on the Southern Railway in 1963, and the first production systems were installed on the Southern Railway in 1965.

In the early years of this technology, [[WABCO]] also had—for a relatively brief period—a competing system called "RMU" (Remote Multiple Uniter), which was installed on a few North American railroads. However, this system did not prevail and soon went out of production.  Prior to the advent by North Electric of the proprietary ''Locotrol'' name, the product was referred to as "RCE" (Radio Controlled Equipment) or "RCS" (Radio Control System) and the lead and remote units as "master" and "slave". The colloquial ''master'' and ''slave'' terms, though, were not formally used by the manufacturer. In some U.S. railroad parlance, Locotrol trains are referred to as "radio trains".