In 1812, a British inventor named George Medhurst proposed “a plan for the rapid conveyance of goods and passengers … by the power and velocity of air.” The heart of Medhurst’s system was a pneumatic tube, and while the far-out plan went nowhere, subsequent generations of inventors and visionaries eagerly embraced it, experimenting with so-called pneumatic railways -- or “atmospheric railways” -- that promised to carry passengers in carriages shot through airtight tubes.
British entrepreneurs built a few protoypes in the first half of the 19th century, but the challenges of maintaining an airtight seal proved difficult to surmount. In the U.S., the cause was taken up by Alfred Ely Beach, a polymath inventor and entrepreneur best known for publishing Scientific American magazine for many years.
In the 1860s, Beach turned his attention to the idea of building a pneumatic railway to shuttle passengers in New York City. He eventually proposed a number of variations on the idea, including both an elevated railway, the design of which looks eerily similar to Musk’s proposal, and a subterranean railway, or subway. In 1868, Beach said the technology promised to send passengers at a staggering 100 miles per hour, or as he put it, “four times the average speed of many of our best railroads.”
- More Here
British entrepreneurs built a few protoypes in the first half of the 19th century, but the challenges of maintaining an airtight seal proved difficult to surmount. In the U.S., the cause was taken up by Alfred Ely Beach, a polymath inventor and entrepreneur best known for publishing Scientific American magazine for many years.
In the 1860s, Beach turned his attention to the idea of building a pneumatic railway to shuttle passengers in New York City. He eventually proposed a number of variations on the idea, including both an elevated railway, the design of which looks eerily similar to Musk’s proposal, and a subterranean railway, or subway. In 1868, Beach said the technology promised to send passengers at a staggering 100 miles per hour, or as he put it, “four times the average speed of many of our best railroads.”
- More Here
No comments:
Post a Comment