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New York 1*609 USA V^ (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone S^ (716) 288 - 5989 - Fax i!>C Vr^ the vyay. being 40s. in summer and 4ss in win er, which was also the tariff f^ the iourm from the capital to Chester or \ .k). In 1678 perform the journey between Edinburgh and Glasgovv and return. iJefore the close of fhe sev- dal?fnr\h'"'"''^ ^ similar vehicle demanded two da>s for the journey from London to Cambridge fifty-seven miles: while another half-century was to elapse before the ordinary journey to Oxford required less time. All traveling was done by dayhght: when night journeys 4re first in tro' ruil, '^k'^"*"' ^•'^'■'' ^''^'■^ "^^"y Who foreboded rum to the proprietors on account of the innova- tion. One who thought of leaving by coach from Edinburgh for the British capL [n'th. midSk of the eighteenth century, planned the ourney month in advance, consulted his lawyer and made his wil. Such an adventure was not to be em- bar .ed upon lightly, as is testified by an adver- tisement in the Edinburgh Couraut for 17=18 which states that, "with God's permission." the coach vyould "go in ten days in summed and twelve in winter." This would now suffice to carry a traveler from Edinburgh to Chicago or to Cairo with two or three days lo spare An Idea of what the enterprising projectors meant by a flying-coach' may be derived from an an- BEGINNINGS OF RAPID TRANSIT 13 nouncemcnt in 1765 that such a vehicle, drawn by eight horses, would travel from London to Dover, seventy-one miles, in a single d-t ,-. But we must remember that speed in transit was in those early days dependent on something more than the mere will of the coachman or coach-owner. The condition of the roads, not merely in Great Britain but throughout Europe generally, made rapid locomotion impossible. For centuries most of the roads were mere tracks across the face of the country, patched ' 'ith rude paving in the muddy places and "veiy i.oisome and tedious to travel on and dangerous to all passengers and carriages," to quote the statute act for the repair of the highways passed in Mary's reign. We may say that the first effort in the direction of real improvement dates from the passing of the Turnp-ke Act in 1633, which premised that por- tions of the Gieat North Road leading from the capital to York and Scotland were "very ruinous and become almost impassable, insomuch that it IS become very dangerous to all His Majesty's liege people to pass that way." The toll-gate' is an institution that began in the reign of Charles II.— the first turnpike ioll being erected on the road running from Hertfordshire to the counties of Huntingdon and Cambridge. Travelers, of course, at first resisted the innovation, which was designed for their benefit: improvement was slow • and the roads of England and Scotland a centurv later were but little bettered; indeed, some of them grew worse. We could hardlv require bet- ter testimony as to their actual condition in 1770 than is furnished by the celebrated Arthur Young 14 THE STORY OF RAFID TRANSIT in his "Tour." Speaking of a highway in Lan- cashire he declares: **I know not, in the whole range of language, terms sufficiently expressive to describe this infernal road. To look over a map and perceive that it is the principal one, not only to some towns, but even v/hole counties one would naturally conclude it to be at least decent; but let me most seriously caution all travelers who may accidentallv purpose to travel this terrible county to avoid it as they would the devil, for a thousand to one but they break their necks or their limbs by overthrows or breakings down. They will here meet with ruts which I measured, four feet deep, and floating with mud only from a wet summer— w!'r t, therefore, must It be after a winter? The on v mending it re- ceives m places is the tumbling in some loose stones, which serve n6 other purpose but jolting a carnage in the most unbearable manner. These are not merely opinions, but facts; for I actually passed three carts broken down in these eighteen miles of execrable mem jry." Young found else- where in the north other roads equally bad, where two miles an hour would doubtless have been uer- formed with difficuiiy. When the original Government postal system began— with headquarters just out of Eastcheap —the mails between London and Edinburgh took three days. Charles I. having determined m 1635 to mend the dilatory and imperfect com- munication between the two capitals, established a running post or two, to run night and day, between Edinburgh and London, to go thither and come back again in six days." With the downfall of the monarchy this service ended, and BEGINNINGS OF RAPID TRANSIT »5 in 1649 we find the city of London inaugurating a northern post of its own with a regular staff of runners and postmasters. The authority of a single postal syste* man- aged by the Government was finally seined by an Act passed in 1656. The preamble showed that "the erecting of one General I'ost Othce for the speedy conveying and re-carrying of letters by post to and from all places within England, Scotland, and Ireland, and into several parts be- y« nd the seas, hath been and is the best means, not only to maintain a certain and constant inter- course of trade and commerce between all the said places, to the great benefit of the p-ople of these nations, but also to convey the public de- spatches, and to discover and prevent many dan- gerous and wicked designs which have been and are daily contrived against the peace and welfare of this Commonwealth, the intelligence whereof cannot well be communicated but by letter of escript." In i6js;8 the first stage-coach Ijetween London and Edinburgh was put on the road, setting out once a fortnight, and taking nearly that time in transit. The ordinary method of traveling then, and for centuries, was on horseback or on foo . Coaches had been, it is true, introduced in 1553, but they were little used in the country, where, in fact, the fearful condition of the roads would have restricted their use. In London and all the other large towns the width of the streets prevented the use of car- riages; the Sedan chair, borne by porters, being the polite mode of progression. In Charles I.'s reign horses were occasionally used as bearers. i6 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSrf thusjorming the earliest idea of the "Hackney In 1662 there were only six stage-coaches in the yv-lu)Ie kingdom, and even this number was considered by some of the slow-going conserva t.ve c. .zens as just half-a- a lower stand- a.J of despatch prevailed, and six clavr in ?ead of three, were consumed by the maiU hi London a. d Edinburjrh ^.,1 ^ between fteless, „ ™„s, be re-ne-Sbered that [he voLme BEGINNINGS OF RAPID TRANSIT 17 of mail business lu'twccn the two capitals was very scanty, a hint of whirl, truth wc may obtain from the fact that, on one occasion in 1745, the mail brouKlit only a single letter from the Stmth — for the British Linen Company. ( )ii another day in tlic same year only one was received in London— for Sir William I'ulteney, the banker. With EdinburRh four days from London it was on a par with Constantinople at the present day. Early in the eiRhtcenth century, when the mails were conveyed on horseback or in light carts, and the robbery of the mail was one of the most common of crimes, the rate of traveling did not often exceed four miles an hour. There is still to be seen a time-bill for the year 17 17, ar"~essed "to the several postmasters between London anthmg, behmd those of England thp newly m roduced cabriolet being a luxifrv for the rich, and m the more populoul distS ravel ing was usually done on foot or on horseback in orh?r"4nh-^'''"^'^ ^y ^'^^' toward the en Lisbon t^ r"i' •" FT^-" The journey from Lisbon to Calais by land took two months in While these improvements in land carriafre= were taking p ce, attention was also bein J p!id to the provision of facilities for carriage by LtJr Canas were cut to connect various fiver'^bals.- c led oif of "^^^ "^^^ '^^'""^'^ a"d finally Clyde ' "°""^'^t'"& the Forth and the thi"n.fi.^^ ^/'u^^7 ^^"^ succeeded in carrying out the Duke of Bridgwater's scheme, and th s eave a fresh impetus to canal projects. The Duke wis the possessor of immense beds of coal at WnrX tttsfol' "°*- '" P-fi;/% w^rked^'^^t the cost of carriage to Manchester. The canal cut down this cost to a fraction and was the be ginning of a network of canals which was soon wTr X ^^'^''^ ^} "^^ *h^ D^l^e o fBridg- water, who, when asked his opinion of the m % n TsV. ''";"hr r"''''^'"'™ was a, hand 1' "?''"« establishment of the mail-rnarh Vstem by Palmer in ,784. This celebrrd aSvo- 23 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT cate of speed had had his attention drawn to the singular discrepancy between tlie average travel- ing rate of the post and of the coaches. Letters vy ru.,u left Bath on Monday night were not de- hvercd m London until two or three o'clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, and sometimes even later ; yet the coach which left Bath on Mon- day afternoon arrived in London early enough for the delivery of parcels by ten o'clock the next morning. Despatch was in many cas.-s of such importance to the Bath tradet,men that, al- though the postage was only threepence, thev willingly paid two shillings to forward their let- ters to the capital in the form of a coach parcel. Elsewhere Palmer found the same state of affairs Ihe post which left London on Monday night or early Tuesday morning did not reach Warwick Worcester, or Birmingham until Wednesday morning; and the Exeter post not until Thurs- day morning, while letters were five days in pass- ing from London to Glasgow. It was now pro- posed to alter all this and establish a regular mail-coach service all over the kingdom, a project which met with the utmost opposition from the ^i" il'u^^' ^'^° ^^''^^ *° ^^e "why the post should be the swiftest conveyance in England " and regarded the scheme of bringing the Bristol mail to London in sixteen or eighteen hours as altogether visionary." Nevertheless, Pitt was resolved to allow Palmer's plan to be put into execution, and the first mail-coach left London tor Bristol on the evening of August 24 1784. At the end of a dozen years it \vas found' that the greater part of the mails were conveyed in one-half the previous time; in many cases one- 24 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT third, and in some of the cross-posts one- tourth of the previous time. Although it became apparent after the intro- duction of railways that the days of the mail- coach system were numbered, yet coaches were not entirely superseded on the great highwavs for many years. In 1832, according to the Lonl don-Edinburgh time-table for that year, the coach left the Post C office at 8 P.M.f reached Grantham at 7.23 the following morning, Don- at 1.50 A.M., and Edinburgh at 2.2x p.m The whole journey of 397/, miles was thus made in forty-two hours twenty-three minutes. The "uo" mail was somewhat slower, occupying forty-five hours thirty-nine minutes, but both were equally fZ'i'u '" ^"'^^.^^ ^"d departures en route, so that It has been said that the farmers used to set their clocks and watche«< by the mail-coaches. Yet high speed was not yet gained. In 1751 Dov^r t^'l'^'^^"'" ^"'■^ ^° S° ^'•°'" London to Dover: thirty years 1.- or ft could be done in the course of the same day, and in 1802 Lord Camp! Belr" p"^-u'' '^" ''^''^'^ ^^°"^ the "White iJear, Piccadilly, at 4 a.m., reaching Dov^'r at Da^f fnf h'"*''" ^T'' i"*^l"^J'"& an hour's stop- page for dinner at Canterbury tha^'he'wll^'' "Progress of the Nation," states Dort L ^trU-^^'T"'^^''^ 'P^'"^ the town of Gos- port (in 1798) at one o'clock of the morning in the Telegraph, then considered a fast coach and eSiM? V' ''"•^^'^" ?°^^' Charing Cro;s! at eight in the evening; thus occupying nineteen hours in traveling eighty miles, being at the rate of rather more than four miles an hour " f THE FIRST RAILWAYS 25 In 1798 the Holyhead mail left London at eight at night and arrived in Shrewsbury between ten and eleven the following night, taking twenty- seven hours to run 162 miles. About this time too, there was a coach on the road be. ween Shrewsbury and Chester known as the Shrews- bury and Chester Highflyer. It started from the former town at eight in the morning and arrived at Chester (a distance of forty miles) at the same hour in the evening. CHAPTER II THE FIRST RAILWAYS Sf'Eed in locomotion now began to be tniblicly considered. 1 he performances of the crack mail- coaches were watched with that interest which to-day occasionally attends the journeys of an ocean greyhound" or an express train to the north. ^ ''It might have been supposed," writes Porter, that to attain so great a rate of speed as ten miles an hour die personal safety of passengers would be further endangered, but the very con- trary is the fact, so that notwithstanding the rapidity vyith which we are whirled along, the number of accidents is actually lessened, a result produced by the better construction of the car- dmer " * * ' ^"^' *^^ superior character of the n/^"/^^***^ •"." *'"' '■'''' mail-coach," wrote De Quincey, «'we needed no evidence out of ourselves to indicate the velocity We heard our speed, we saw it, we felt it . . . and this »3 i { 26 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT Sportsmen regarded these achievements as af- torduig them exciting entertainment, but the mercantile part of the community were not slow to perceive that the increased speed had a con- cern for them. Both classes recognized that bet- ter roads "vere necessary: Parliament became aroused, and Telford and iMacadam, by their im- proved methods of road-making, paved the way. literal y, for more rapid locomotion. By the use of broken granite, ashes, and burnt clav. hundreds of miles of roads in the kingdom became trans- formed, and It was not long before it was seen that one horse on a level track could do as much work as four on a common road. The maximum speed obtainable by the mail- coach on a good road had been reached When the era of railways dawned there were nearly 3,000 stage-coaches in operation— of which number about half plied out of and into London —and about 100 mail-coaches. In his coach system the Englishman took a natural pride, es- pecially upon comparing it with that of France in no other country was there such promptitude of arrival and departure, or such a volume of transportation traffic. For instance, the Edinburgh mail ran 400 miles in forty hours, stoppages included, which was at the rate of nearly eleven miles an hour A coach to Exeter, the Herald, went over its ground, 173 miles, in twenty hours, although the country was hilly; and the Devonport mail per- speed was not the product of blind insensate agencies, that ball n/^.^P^'^l}" ^'^'' '•"' ^"^^ incarnated in the fier; eye- sn-l ^- ""West among brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles and thunder-beating hoofs." hiJ THE FIRST KAII.WAYS 27 formed its journey, 227 miles, in twentv-two hours. Of course this increase of speecl was considered alarming by those who had been ac- customed to the old-fashioned slow coaches, and J a« THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT was le!rli '1 ^'"'-'^' '^^ "-'^ vehicles traveled i"R proTrt t' n;en lil^ T'? " '^'^^'>' «^ '"^" ^ry- '"*» H'^Kitss, men Jikc An( erson ati,i ■'"..-,• t .fcoarcl .ha, ,l,e conm^-rcX ,''(.' ,?col*' a rate (eififhteen or twenty miles an hoiir\ •' uroove,u.i,°';S^„3t„''?sr;tn.^h"?:s;L;° ^_ * . ,!■ THE FIRST RAFLWAYS 29 rkl^hiL^' ?^"'"^'"".''' «" <^"'i in '-tsclf. as witness skating, tobogganuis:. and the switchback rail! wnicn do lea-J us somewhere. It is true Dr. 30 THK srORV OF RAPID TRANSIT Samuel Jolmsun extolled the tleli^'hts of post- cha.se traveling at the excitinf; velocity of ten miles an hour; but celerity of n.ovcment seenjs even sometimes in warfare, to have been an un- important and therefore unconsidered factor Napoleon extended the principle of rapid transit to those arnncs which astonished Europe about the same t.me that England was bewildered by the news that a journey between L.mdon and bchnburgh could be done in less than two days. Ihc actual mventor of railwavs is unknown- most probably the idea was contributed to bv many. Roger North mentions a sort of wooden tram-ime exist mg in the neighborhood of New- cast e-on-Tyne prior to 1676. "The manner of the carriage, says he, "is by laving rails of timber from the colliery down to the river ex- actly straight and parallel; ard bulky carts are made with four rowlets fitting these rails whereby the carriage 'is so easy that one horse will draw down four or five chaldrons of coal and IS an immense benefit to the coal-mer- chants." It was soon discovered that one grave disad- vantage attended the use of wood for the con- st^'ction of the rails— its liability to wear Wherefore, instead of wooden rails, flat iron bars were employed, nailed to the sleepers in the same fashion as the timber rails. This change in construction was found to work well, there being less friction to overcome on the iron than on the wooden rails. In other cases, stone was em- ployed in the construction of these tramways, sometimes to form the rails, but more often the sleepers. A subsequent improvement was made THE FIRST RAILWAYS 31 (in 1789) III the- iron rails, by f.,rniin^ what is known as an edge rail. The advanta -c of this was that neither wheel iu)r rail became clogged with dirt, a condition inseparable from Hat rails. Dr. James Anderson, late in the eighteenth century, rec.jnimended the construction of rail- way.s for the purpose of conveying agricultural produce from one part of a farm to another. At a later date he proposed the general extension of railways or tram-roads throughout the king- dom. The carriages were of course to be drawn by horses. "Suppose." said he. writing m 1801. long before the introduction of the steam locomotive, "a railway were brought froni the wharfs to Bishopsgate Street. . . . all the wagons to be made of one size and form each capable of containing one ton of sugar or other goods of similar gravity. Let the body of each of these wagons be put upon a frame that rests upon the two axles of the four wheels calculated to move only upon the railway, and let each of these wagons be loaded with goods which are to go to the same warehouse or its vicinity. The whole of the wagons being thus loaded, they are moved forward till ihey came to the end of the road, at which place they should be made to pass under a crane." The crane would lift the wagon upon another truck, formed for street use, and when emptied at the close of the day returned to the railway truck, which returns to its point of departure Anderson believed that this method of distribu- tion, instead of the old and cumbersome carter system, would result in a great saving of money, time, anu labor. "The convenience of such 32 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT roads would be very great from the circumstance "tated "f)„t'^'''''''' r''''^' ^^-^^^""^ -^ ^l^ove taken ,n ^17 •^'^'' ^" ''^'^ '"^^^' «"^1 others taken up m tlieir stead, like passengers in a stage-coach without disturbi.Vg thf Others . . . Un the same plan it is certainly very prac- icable to carry roads of a similar description from London to Bath." ^s<^ripuon Soon afterward tram-roads or railwavs began to spread over the face of the countfy more e-specially m the northern counties, buTaryet no one contemplated the employment of tram- tho^L\u.T'\^ for stage-coaches, until about the era that the locomotive engine was invent- ed. I he plan just mentioned of a system of rail- ways the motive power being horses, was never herefore earned out, although so late as i8,o four years after the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, > it was proposed to use horse-power on the London Ind' Birmingham Railway, the vehicles being warranted to travel at the rate of eight miles an hour. In 1801 the Surrey Railway obtained an Act for the con- lise'frnn. w^ tram-road for general merchan- dise from Wandsworth to Croydon, and the line proved a success, one horse being able to pull more than fifty tons, or fifty times what could be done on an ordinary road Soon after this time James Grav, of Notting- ham, visiting one of these tramways which con- nected the mouth of a colliery with the shipping wharf, exclaimed to the engineer of the line: V\hy are not these tram-roads laid down all over England, so as to supersede our common THE FIRST RAILWAYS 33 roads and steani-cnffincs employed to convey goods and passengers along them, so as to was, Just propose that to the nation sir and see what you vv^ll get by it ' Why, : ir^- St ""» be worried to death for yo r plains.- K twkh- stand.ng from that mon. m (irav b gan o preach the doctrine of tram .-. Is Mccnrotrves DowTr""^!^' '"t!- 't' ^"Perseding of horse: power It was his thought by day; it was his dream by night. He talked of it tiil'h s Wen Is voted him an intolerable bore. He wrote of till the reviewers deemed him mad " Beyond all question the first steam locomo- tive engine which actually carried passengers on common roads was constructed b^ an infen ous French mechanic, Nicholas Joseph Cugnot a in his youth served in Germany as a military engineer, publishing several works on military science After Cugnot's retirement from thl army, he was enabled, at the public expense to monrnT"'TT''''^ ''''''^' *« run-on com^ mon roads, which was tried in 1769 in the ores- ence of a number of illustrious personages It was mounted upon three wheels, the leading wheel being driven by an engine whose two p"s^ un Cu?nn7°" '\ ^^ternately. During its Srlt run Cugnot s machine carried four passengers and traveled at the rate of two and a qufrtei^ ^lll 2tT ^""^'^^^ '°^.°"^^*'- fro- -S great things were expected was built in 1770 and made several successful trials in the streets' ?ort,in?; ^"'f ^'.ly- t'le niachine had the mis- fortune to meet with an accident; it capsized at 3 34 TirK STORY OF RAIMD TKANslT a slrcot conuM- and was appropriate! I,v ti,,- p„- CM nv V ''"•^^■^'^■^'.'■' ''r 'inu-kly rolcasc-,1. a,„l lon^r nuTw'" 'r'"?'." ^'■'••" *''^' <'<>vcMn„u.„t as a reward for Ins laI)ors. In l<:n«:Iand the first practical i.lca of applvinjr l)r Koh.son. l,y whom ,t was connmniicatcl to Watt Ml V59. Some tnne snbsopa-ntlv. the lat- er nude a model of a hif^h-pr'-ssure locomo- mtV.u n l-w'"''?- 1^' '""'■"^■•I^'^^ '■" '"■« fourth n.n I •/«4. which, anmnjr certain improve- ents. spec.fie.1 "a portable steam-enj,n, e and nachmcry or moving wheel-carria,?es." His fnend. Mu :loch. in 1787 made an en^nc whic oom'^if ^^^" ^""^ " ^"'•■»" ^^'-^^'^^^ >•"''-' room at h.s honse at Redruth in Cornwall Amonsrst those who saw it was Richard Treve- mot !T r i- ?>"""ff;"" •••'^" exhibited a loco- motive n Kdniburffh in 1787. and eij^ht vears hter worked a steam-en.^ine on a line of Urrn- Tonnt T," V""'"'^''"''"^* «''"*' ^^'^ adioininjr count). ^ The locomotive of Trevethiu< and \ vian in 1802 ran on the Merthvr tramwav. and drew a load of ten tons at the rate of five miles an hour. But one of Trevethick's loco- motives blew up— an accident which did much to create distrust of their use. k/" th^,.nn^intime Georsfe Stephenson was busy at Killins^vorth verifying the experiments of other inventors and perfecting his own. In 1 816 he patented enpnes that would travel ten miles an hour without a load. General discontent with the means of inter- TIIK FIRST RAII.WAYS 35 coiuiminicaiioii ilirni .ri, ,i, '^ " ''rarimKl..n. ,„ ,Ih. n)nnl\ ,,f Dtrliain. a .lis- tatu-o of ahciii drvni iniKs. |!v the a.lvia- of (.forjre Stop u-ns,Mi, wh., had i,rcn app..inl,-,l i'n«:iiUHM- .»f the hiu'. in.n rails were siil.stitutcd f.M- wood, a.ul Kra«liially j^ainiiiK^ tlu« cotiHdcMu-c <» the (hrivtors. hv prevailed upon tiieni to eni- pl.u- instca.l .f liorses. stieli a locomotive cnirine as he lia.I recently tried, and will, success, at lMll.n«:uorth Colhcry. It was iutendc.l, of course, solelv for lrausportin,tr coal, not passen- «:ors I he directors, chielly (Juakors. were ridi- culed f..rthe,r decision. "I am sorrv to fmd," said Lord l-.ldon. "the intellij,uMit people of the Aorth country ^ro„e mad on the subject of rail- ways Another authoritv observed that he would un.lertake to '"eat all the coals that vour railroa.l wd carry." The farmers were told they would be rumed. ^s there would be no de- mand for horses. Nevertheless, the bill was earned, the road was built and at the appointed hour, m the presence of a peat multitude, "the tram moved .^ff at the rate of from ten to twelve ititles an hour, with a weioht of eif,rhtv tons, with one enKnne-'Xo. .--driven bv George Ste- phenson hun.sef: after it six wa^n.ns loaded uith coals and Hour: then a covered coach, con- tamitifr directors and proprietors : next twentv- one coal wagons, fitted up for passengers, with which they were crammed : and lastlv, six more waggons loaded with coals." .J^'^ '"r'"^^' ''I ^^'^ "P^'"'"ff of the Stockton and_l)arlinj-ton line were in some respects sur- pnsmg. Although the convevance of passen- I THE FIRST RAILWAYS 37 u I, on lu- hrst .lay. as vvt- have st-vn. many l.mi- «lrc-(ls of ,uT.s„„s n.ade the vkcuvsuu '| - M-..j,crs soon msisu.,1 upon l.dn^ ,ak J^. I.'rlN. It tlK-rifo,T l,c-cai.u- nrcc-ssary to nrovidl carna,.es a-Iap,.,! to tlu-ir r.,,niru, "n s am) llic Liverpool and Manclu-stcr was the first The l-xteriment, the First Railway Passenger Coach, 1835. to the puhHe^;epteIX"f;^^^H3^ r;^,:;'--^ ence of i..e )nke of Welhn^.ton and othcT c elX r ties .nchuhns: Mr. Huskisson. who lost his life » rev ous to tne open•n^^ the directors, in doubt about what forn, of fraction to en.plov. offered t'ive tiat' l^^nd V""' 1 '-^'^ ' 'r ^'-- ''-^t locomo- tive that could, under certain stipulations, be 1} 'ill lili l! liii !fi 38 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT It was required of the competing should consume their own constructed, engines : — 1. That they smoke. 2. That if they weighed six tons each thev should be capable of drawing a train of twentv tons we,ght at a speed on th? leve? of tin 3 nno u^^^ ^^*i^ '''''"^'' ^'^^^ two safetv-valves— one bevond the control of the engine-drrcT 4. That the height of the engine, includimr chimney should not exceed fiffeen eet and lastly that the price of the engine of the sue cessful competitor should not exceed A =0 bunl'fhr^V'u"'" ^r^''^'''^' Stephenson h\^S budt the Stockton and Darlington engine) bew/7' Tu^^'^^'" Stephenson's Rocket bemg declared the winner, the other compct- ^op bemg the Novcltv bv Braitlnvaite an 1 Encson and the Sans Parcil by T. Hackworth Clowns. The Rocket twice performed the dis- ance of thirty miles: the first time in vvo hours and a quarter, the second in two hot^rs am rZ7n^rT- ■}'' ^''''''' «P^'^^' was at tSe atoutlu'r'teJn."'^^ ^" ^^^"^' '^' ^'^ --^^^ beS^r \r^* "^«"^5"tJ^ "ew era in rapid transit began. No one in Europe had ever traveled thirtv miles an hour before except in a Soon Stephenson vvas forthwith appointed to bS THE FIRST RAILWAYS 39 '^- '830. at the jjrand On September ,^. j^^o at t ly onwani, .Iccply impressd the spccMors • • fi m 40 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT At Parkluirst, seventeen miles from Manchester, a halt was made to replenish the water tanks, when the accident occurred by which Mr. Hus- kisson lost his life, a tragic blot on the day's ■ v^NA ■ Tlie /?oya/ George triumph. On the following day the line was thrown open for business. The Northumbrian drew a tram vvith 130 passengers from Liver- pool to Manchester in one hour and f^fty min- utes ; and before the close of the week six trains Northiimbrhni, observed, " 'Ihe engine started off with this immense train of carriages, and such was its velocity that in some parts the speed was frequently twelve miles an houi." ■I -a THE FIRST RAILWAYS 41 daily were regularly running. The surprise and excitement already created were further in- c-eased when one of the locomotives by itself covered the thirty-one miles in less than an hour. Of the thirty stage-coaches which had plied between the two towns, all save a single one went off the road soon afterward. The trans- port of goods and ff.-rchandise began in December and furnished new occasion for amazement to the public, for a loaded train weighing eighty tons was drawn by the Planet engine at from twelve to sixteen miles an hour In the following February. 1831, the Savwm achieved a greater feat conveying 164/. tons from Liverpool to Manchester in two hours and a half, including stoppages, which would have required seventy horses to perform in twelve hours. The success of the line render^^d obvious the possibihties of the system to the whole world Branches were soon made to Warrington, to liolton, and later a junction was effected to Bir- mingham. Yet when in 1830 the London and Birmingham Company had sought to obtain their charter a well-known engineer openly deprecated "the ridiculous expectations, or [nr^w^f ?."'' "^*'^^ ^-tlnisiastic specula- tor that we shall see engines traveling at the rate hour. Nothing could do more harm toward their general adoption and improvement than the promulgation of such nonsense." The no- tion that one hundred miles an hour would one day be achieved would probably have driven this if V3f ' THK FIRST RAILWAYS 43 faint-hcartocl champion of rapid transit into par- oxysnis of di-nsion. * Karly in iH?8a Scottish periochcal annoiuucl that, before ihc pubhcation of its next number m conse(juence of the despatcli of the mails to' Uarnngton by the railway, the inhabitants of Ivhnburph would receive their letters and pa- pers a whole day sooner, that is to sav. in thirtv- oiie mstead of fifty-rtve h.)urs. A return by po^t between London and Kdinbur^d.. which in i«i8 occupiet a week, would now be done in three 'lays and a half. The prophecies of disaster on account of the radway were unfulfilled : instead everythnip prospered on t.'ieir account, even' the canal proprietors were amazed to find that railvvay competition improved their profits, in- stead of (lechmng: them. Even horseflesh in- creased m value, and yet it had been declared t lat If railways were to be introduced the stajre-coach horses would soon become worth- less. Georsre Stephenson prophesied that it would be cheaper for a workinff man to ride bv rail than nifin ' "^■"' ,*''"' prediction has been literally fulfiHer: ,rban districts. As earlv as 1844 Parliament enacted that passengers 'should be earned over all lines with moderate speed and comtorf at fares not exceeding id. a mile To these parliamentary trains, as thev were called however, the lowest class of passenjrers were at first njridly restricted. The speed may be pufi-ed from the fact that the train from Eiiston to Liverpool. 201^ miles, started at 7.40 am stopped at every station, and arrived, if punctuai, at 0.35 P.M., thus occupying nearly eleven hours ^»^^^^iK8i^ i I h I 44 THE STORY OK RAPID TRANSIT on a jounuy wl.icl. passcnK'crs. paying' ,1,,. sa.nc ')« fare, can now perform in a little more than lour hours. CHAPTER III STEAM NAVIGATION OxcK the art of navigation had been mastered and the regular trade routes estahhshed, the matter o spee e t « > • I » * T»Slm^ . I 3 I < i « * •'< 0)3 « ■-z:^ trmOifim HtmnH ... KJm, •^ i»>-. > • I «ll 3 « < t • 3 •: 4 t * •■ 4 0| — -• - - - » I « • rt\t Mj irii. t (14 ( , J I Facsimile Time-table, 1839. i r 68 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT was out of sight. This speed was not, however, regularly niaintaiiiecl; twelve miles an hour was for a long time the standard schedule time on the Spanish railways. But let us return to England just before the general employment of railways. In 1837 it was necessary in order to proceed to Dover by the most expeditious public convey- ance to book seats in the Foreign Mail, which left the General I'ost Office in St. Martin's le Grand every Tuesday and Friday night and ar- rived in Dover in time for the packets at 8.15 the following morning — thus beating by half an hour any other coach on the road. For day travel, the Express started from the "Golden Cross," Charing Cross, at 10 a.m. each morning, doing the journey in nine hours, as did the Union Coach. The others took longer. The famous Tally-ho coach between London and Canterbury left town every afternoon and accomplished the fifty-nine miles in five hours and a half. Laws were actually passed in England, on the first introduction of steam on railways, limiting the pressure in the engine-boilers to thirty pounds per square inch. The first railroad char- ter contained a clause hmiting the speed of trains to twelve rniles an hour, and when thirty m-los an hour vvas suggested, it was ridiculed as an idea simply insane. "Such a fearful velocity would, without doubt, have the most disastrous effects upon the circulation of the blood and the vital organs." We have seen what was the time consumed between London and Paris: let us now glance at e u s < 70 THE STORV OF RAPID TRANSIT the conditions which obtained in 1843 by the chief routes : By Dover and Calais. London to Dover (by railway) Dover to Calais (by steamer) Calais to Paris (by diligence) Total By another route, via Brighton the journey to the Frenjrh capital follows : — London to Brighton Brighton to Shoreham Shoreham to Havre Havre to Paris .... Total . 28i>^ 24^ When in 1839 the Midland Counties Railway was opened the only modes of conveyance were the canal, the fly-wagon, and the coach. Only three of the latter ran daily each way between Leicester and Nottingham. A wool-stapler stated at the time that he frequently had from twenty to five hundred bags of wool lying at Bristol which could not be brought forward by land, and he had, therefore, to divide the bulk'and send it by different routes; the part despatched by the road taking from a week to ten days in transit, and that • In 1842 it is given in " Murray's Guide " as five hours Miles. Hours. 88 3/^* 25 3 178 23 291 29/^ 1 and Dieppe, was made as Miles. Hours. 50/2 2 5 oM 94 9 132 13 DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY 71 by water from three weeks to a month. So Rreat were the lifficulties at Plymouth that goods had usually to go by sea to London. Yet in the early days of railways great speed was attained on special occasions. Mr. Allport has recalled that in 1845, before the era of tele- graphs, w 'len "the battle of the gauges" (i.e., be- tween the broad and the narrow gauge system) "was being vigorously carried on, I wished to - show what the narrow gauge could do. The elec- tion of George Hudson, as member for Sunder- land, had that day taken place, and I availed my- self of the event to see how quickly I could get the information up to London, have it printed in the Tivics newspaper, and brought back to Sun- derland. The election was over at four o'clock in the afternoon, and by about five o'clock the returns of the voting for every half-hour during the poll were collected from the different booths, and copies were handed to me. I had ordered a service of trains to be in readiness for the journey, and I at once star+ed from Sunderland to York, another train was in waiting at York to take me to Normington, and others in their turn to Derby, to Rugby, to Wolverton, and to Euston. Thence I drove to the Times office and handed my manu- script to Mr. Delane, who. according to an ar- rangement I hat ' previously made with him, had it immediately set up in type, a leader written, both inserted, and a lot of impressions taken. Two hours were thus spent in Lc ndon, and then I set oflF on my return journey and arrived in Sun- derland next morning at about ten o'clock, be- fore the announcement of the poll. I there handed over copies I had brought with me of that day's 72 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT Times newspaper, containing the returns of what had happened in Sunderland the afternoon be- fore. Between five o'clock in the evening and ten 1 J s •a o at! that morning I had traveled 600 miles, besides spending two hours in London, — a clear run of forty miles an hour." It was at this period of the railway rnania that DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY 73 one express steamed up to London. 1 18 miles, in an hour and a half, nearly eighty niiles an hour. In 1846 the distance between London and Exeter (193^ miles) was regularly accompu^Lod m four hours and a half. In the same year tiie distance between London and Liver[X)ol (210 miles) occupied just six hours. In 1842 the Great Western Railv v caused some interesting experiments to be ui^de with regard to speed. On one occasic;i\ an -xpert driver ran his train over the eighteen niHcs ho- tween London and Slough in fiftetn niiiintcs, which was at that time the maximum spt oi whirii had ever been attained on a railway. Six whvh 5?ter the fifty-three miles between London and Didcot were traversed in forty-seven minutes. For many years the reputation of being the fastest train in the world was enjoyed by the Flying Dutchntan. The distance between Lon- don and Swindon, seventy-eight miles, was regu- larly done in one hour and twenty-seven minutes, which was at the rate of fifty-three miles an hour. In 1880, Exeter, 194 miles, was reached in four and a quarter hours, or at an average pace, in- cluding stoppages, of forty-five and a half miles an hour. Compare this schedule traveling by established routes with the seven hours from London to Swindon in 1830, or the twenty hours from Lon- don to Exeter, at the same epoch of the fast mail- coach. Since the journey between London and Man- chester had been cut down to four and a half hours, twenty-five years elapscc before it was found possible to diminish it. In 1885, however, fii 74 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT the three great lines had twelve expresses, each accomplishing the distance in four and a quarter hours, on some portions of the road over sixty miles an hour being made.* Between Crewe and Rugby, seventy-five and a quarter miles were covered in one hour and thirty-seven minutes. From Manchester to Sheffield is forty-one miles, and this journey is regularly done in fifty-nine minutes, including a twenty-mile gradient and a three-mile tunnel. It became possible at about the same time for a resident at Grantham to travel to London, i86 miles, in one hour and fifty-seven minutes, a journey which would have taken his grandfather eleven hours to accomplish by the best mail-coach on the rQad. By a new service London and Birmingham are now brought within two hours of each other. This is a saving of a full half hour over the time for 1 90 1. London to Holyhead now takes five hours. The journey from London to Edinburgh has from time immemorial been regarded as the cri- terion of rapid traveling in Great Britain. We have seen that the high-water mark of the Edin- burgh mail in 1820 was forty hours, stoppages included. To-day one may complete the journey of 392 miles via the Great Northern Railway in eight hours and fifty-five minutes. From London to Leicester (100 miles) is now regularly done in two hours ; from London to Leeds (186 miles), in three hours, fifty-five minutes, and London to Brighton (fifty-one miles), in fifty-one minutes. To the Midland Railway is due the credit of *The duration of the journey has now (1903) been curtailed to less than four hours. DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY 75 ?w ''V?"'",? third-class carriages by all trains. Up to March, 1872, progress for the ordinary pas- senger was provokingly and scandalously slow. Not only was the average speed scarcely more than fifteen nnles an hour, but the traveler was forced to start at an uncomfortably early hour to catch the only train that ran. The reform was hailed with joy all over the kingdom. "When " observed Mr. Allport, "the rich man travels, or If he lies abed all day, his capital remains undi- minished and perhaps his income flows in all the same. But when a poor man travels he has not only to pay his fare, but to sink his capital, for his time is his capital; and if he now consumes only five hours instead of ten in making a jour- ney, he has saved five hours of time for useful labor— useful to himself, to his family, and to society. The change, which had taken twenty- five years to come about, resulted in enhancing the passenger traffic of the English railways four- fold. If we wish to obtain an idea of the speed to which railway trains were brought in less than fifty years after their introduction, we have only to compare it with the velocity of a cannon-ball According to the investigations of Dr. Hutton] the flight of a cannon-ball with a range of 6,700 feet takes a quarter of a minute, or at the rate of five miles a minute, or 300 miles an hour. Hence it follows that a railway train moving at seventy-five miles an hour has one-fourth of the velocity of a cannon-ball— moving at 100 miles an hour it has one-third that velocity. Tt may there- fore be considered as a huge projectile, 'subject to the same laws that govern projectiles, but M ii J a. 1^ THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT weighing icx5 tons instead of loo pounds. When a train is running at fifty miles an hour, the pis- tons are working along the cylinders at the rate of 800 feet a minute. When running at seventy miles an hour, the i^ce of the train is at the rate of 105 feet per second, so tliat if two trains pass one another, each going at this speed, they would flash past each other in a single second, even if one were seventy yards long. Nine-tenths of the fast or express trains ii- England reach the standard of "thirty miles an hour, including stops" (or a journey speed of forty miles an hour), and the other tenth fall short only because their journey is exceptionally hilly, or exceptionally brief, or subject to delay. The above regulation test, tnerefore, for any train wishing to be called "express" i'^ England is m^t an artificial one, but a natural definition supplied by the companies themselves on their daily time- tables.* A modern railway authority informs us that on the Continent of Europe as a rule a train is held to be magnificent, worthy of heroic adjec- tives, and not to be rudely attempted by third- class passengers, it its journey-speed is as high as twenty-nine mileb an hour, trains there which attain such speed fonn a group and tower above the rest, just as in England it is trains that reach forty miles an hour, inclusive, which stand apart from the common stopping train. Considerable more force has to be expended to attain thih speed than would appear at first sight. "Imagine a train shot suddenly out from its starting-point at forty miles an hour, main- *E. Foxwell, " Express Trains." DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY ^^ taining with unflajrfri„g uniformity this same high speed uphill, through suburbs and junctions. persistmg tins pace without a moment's pause for two or three hundred miles till it come to an instantaneous stop at its distant terminus; the 78 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT li^i mildest of the trains we call "express" will arrive as soon as this iniaginaty one, though our actual train has had to labor slov.ly up the hills, to slack for bridges, curves, or junctions, besides con- suming precious time in four or live stoppages of as many minutes each. The feeblest 'express' is as smart as this; what then shall we say of trains which secure an 'inclu.-.ive speed' of nearly fifty miles an hour over summits of 1,000 feet?'' The Great Northern Railway has the shortest route to Leeds, Bradford, York, and Edinburgh, being eignt miles shorter to the latter city than the North-Western, and fourteen shorter than the Midland route. In the mere matter of speed this railway, as well as the Midland, is superior to the oldest and most punctual of the English railways, the North-Western, which has long en- joyed the distinction of being called the "leading line." Its rolling stock is probably the best in the kingdom, and some of its achievements be- tween London and Liverpool and London and Edinburgh exhibit a very high rate of speed. In the summer of 1888 the three great lines which start from Euston, St. Pancras, and King's Cross resolved upon an attempt to beat their own record to Edinburgh. The best long run made up to that time was that achieved by a special train on the Great Northern Railway in July, 18S0. It was conveying the Lord Mayor of London to Scarborough. The distance from London to York, 188 miles, was accomplished in 217 min- utes, which implied an average, including a ten minutes' stoppage at Grantham, of fifty-two miles an hour. The first fifty-three miles from London were done in an hour, not ten miles of the road DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY 79 nour diKl hftv-one minutes; while between Bark- stone ami Tuxford, twenty-two an 1 a ouarter ni. es. the speed was at the rate o six?v-four press tra ns of the line occupied three hours and on 's? t r;"^-°^ '--■>-"- "■'""-'"- In August took place the first of the exHt.'ncr S^a^^roftW' "'"" '""^ ^aily perfoTrn^cf 01 each of the rival expresses was wired in detail to the new-spapers. The origin of the comoS Ty rinnn '''°" "^ ^^^ ^^^^ Northern^ - would carrvtS^r"^' "^""^^^ ^^^°^^' that it wuuKj carry third-class passeneers in itc nJo-i^f nine hours to the former city and ten hours own'tl^;""''^1" '''' 'l"^^- T»i'« was throwing much a it^tr '* !^ '^' North-Western, inas? Sker tin h'V'" """^ "^" "^^^^3^ 3" hour express. company's best third-class By the new arrangement, therefore, third-class passengers could arrive in Edinburgh one hour sooner by the Great Northern line.^ The doym of railways quickly responded by lowerlnt^ts rrgiranc'rEus?" 'l^--. ^^^s^ow ^"fdin! inirgii and Euston. In addition, a new exoress Sn ' ?n P'' fr""^ '^^^'"^ Euston at'o^'d than bSor. lV'-^-^5. twenty minutes quicker tnan before. Admirers of speed were delijrhtPH at these evidences of youthful enterprise of the fo wo k its^tr"^'^'!'^*^'^^/'"^ "P t^Xn^Sntfn Sh^r of iS^t^rrieLr^'^^'^^ '^'^ '^"^^^ *^- 8o THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT Early in June the response of the Cireat North- ern came. It gave notice that it intended forth- with to shorten its EtHnhurgh and Glasgow jour- neys by half-an-hour both ways, making the time for Edinburgh eight and a half hours, and for Glasgow nine hours fifty minutes. The inter- ested public were also informed that the Midland line intended to lop a whole hour off their fastest time to Glasgow, and twonty-five minutes oflF that to Edinburgh, thus doing the former journey in eight hours twenty minutes (twenty minutes longer than the North-Western, whose route is twenty miles shorter) and Edinburgh in nine and three-quarter hours. But the North-Westdrn was not to be beaten: it felt its prestige at stake and abruptly gave three days' notice that from August ist they too would run to Edinburgh in eight and a half hours. This sudden move at the eleventh hour seemed to render it impossible for the other road to arrange reprisals in time to secure the bulk of the holiday traffic. Nevertheless, the Great Northern in a few hours issr r its working notices all over the line announci-.j^ 'hat from August ist by their route the JL'iU!\c_j to Scotland would be done in eight hours. The third competing railway, recog- nizing the futility of further long-distance rivalry, fell out of the running and kept to their previous programme. The last days of July were a stirring experience for the "Office of the Superintendent of the Line" at King's Cross and Euston. The urgent introduction of such extraordinary "accel- erations" as these, involving special "shunts" and signal-box instructions all along the line the whole length of the route, demanded the utmost DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY 8l coolness an' ^"•^^'^^'- '•«"t-. the Aew York Central, is accomplished in the same oTfom '".^^^''■^f speed for nearly i.ooo miles of fortv miles an hour. And both the Pennsyl- vania and New York Central now haye traTns coyering the distance from New York to Chi- cago in twenty hours. Chicago to San Fran- cisco takes eighty-nine hours and to cross the Sgrhor'""^ '^^'" •''^'^^- ^^^^'' ^-- '^y^' In 1902 in Great Britain the three northern companies had together forty expresses between t^n "n r^.'th'^'"'- '" f""-^^"^'-^ ^-^ '•" ^\Z' Sss .^ J"" ^'^'"^ nineteen, and in Au- gust, 1888 twenty-nine. There is thus an in- crease of fifty per cent, in the number of Scotch expresses since 1883, and their average speed has also mcreased. ^ ^ On the Great Western there are four ex press trains (led by the Dufclwian and Zulu) whir', have an average speed, including stops Fv.t.r "rf 'r ''°"'" '^"^^^•^^" Lonclon and Exeter. The distance between London and ±enzance was covered in eight hours fifty-five half "hour's" '^^'''' '' '^ '"^^ '''""^ '" ^■•■^'^t -'^" The following may be taken as the best ex- press service now regularly running in various 90 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT parts of the globe in miles per hour, includinir and excluding stops, respectively :— Kngland . United States France . Germany London to Birmingham Camden to Atlantic City Paris to '^'Nis . Berlin t •mburg . 5V4 58 bi.^ 5^ 66.6 393 43.5. As to the average rate for express trains we tnay quote the appended figures, all trains run- ning above forty miles an hour being "express" in Great Britain and America, and all above twenty-nine miles an hour on the Continent — Great Britain, with stops, 41.6; without stops, 44 6 Vrn^n. „ J2.8 .< 362 :: 32.S " 3S" 31.7 " 34-3 31.7 •• 335 30 '• 32 30 " 32 ;; 29>i •• 31.2 29 " 31,5 29 " 31.6 41-4 France Holland (iermany Belgium Austria Denmark Italy Sweden Russia United States The speed of American expresses was, fifteen years ago, from thirty-five to forty miles an hour. It has now been raised to over forty In France the Northern Railway runs its expresses at an average of thirty-seven, and tiie Paris Lyons and Mediterranean at thirty-four miles an hour. Several of the German expresses cover thirty-six miles an hour; the Swiss ex- presses, over difficult gradients, only twenty- two miles; the Dutch expresses, thirty-three and a half miles; the Belgian, thirty-three DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY 91 nulcs; the Scamlinavian, twcntv-oiie miles- the Itahan. twenty-seven miles; the Indian, thirty- three nnles; and the Russian thirty-four miles an hour. The journey from P.erlin to St. I'etersburtr, 1.028 miles, takes forty-six hours, or an averaiFe of thirty-two and a half miles an hour. Com- pare this with an express on the Lake Shore and M:chis:an Southern Railway which did the jour- ney between Buffalo and Cleveland. 183 miles in 187 minutes, exclusive of stops. Allowing for time consumed in slowinj, down, 172 miles of the distance was run in 161 minutes, averatr- ing 64.26 miles an hour. Short distances were covered at the rate of seventy-five miles an hour, ihe Orient Express leaves Paris and Constar- tinople twice a week, and takes five days to do the journey. By leaving^ London at 10 a.m., and traveling: by Chalons, one reaches Vienna at 5-5p the following evening; Budapest at 11 i> m • Belgrade at 6 a.m. ; Sofia at 4 p.m. ; and the con- clusion of the third day finds you at Constan- tinople. The Indian mail train, chartered by the Brit- ish Government, traverses 1,375 miles, and in titty-eight and a quarter hours reaches Brindisi where the passengers take a steamer for Alex- andria and from there reach Bombay in four- teen days from London. The distance between Paris and Marseilles (530 miles) was in i888 done in fourteen hours nineteen minutes. The speed has since been rai.«ed to fifty-seven miles an hour. The fastest ""q",/" ^■f^"''^ ^^ *''^^ between Paris and Calais (.105/^ mi'esj, doing the journey in three hours (I 92 THE STOUV OF RAPID TRANSIT hfteen minutes. This excels the time of any fast tram m England. ^ Germany and liel^nimi. while not as bad as some other countries in this respect, such as Italy and Spam, are yet far behind England and ,lX"? '".^''^ "'^^'^-f '•apicl ra.hvay transit perhaps ovvmg to the fact of state-owned lines and the consequent lack of competition. in 1891, on the Canadian Pacific line, a specia' tram conveyed the Japanese mail from Vancou- ver to lirockvdle, Ont. (2.800 miles), in seventy- seven hours, or a speed of thirty-six miles an hour for the whole of this vast run. On the (irand Trunk Railway of Canada the best service IS 36.8 miles, mcluding stops, and 39.2 excluding stops The best service in India i: from Bombay to Calcutta, about twenty-five miles .--n hour in Australia from Melbourne to Sydney is run at thirty-thrcv; miles an hour, including stops, and thirty-seven excluding stops. Less than forty years ago Jules Verne wrote his entertaining romance, "Around the World in Eighty Days. He was thought to have ex- ceeded all bounds of possibility; at that time the circumnavigation of the globe never had been accomplished in less time than 121 days In 187^ It was done in 109 days. Eventually, an Amer- ican performed the feat in ninety days, and in 1891 a Miss Bisland lowered the time to seventy- two days. Since then the record has stood at sixty-mne days, the main obstacle being to trav- erse speedily the mighty tract of Asia. Eastern Siberia, which a f a' years ago was one of the most remote districts on the face of the globe, will soon be as accessible as Canada 94 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT The coniU'Cti«)ti hctwi-cMi Russia and Sihcria forms the greatest riilway srlutiK' in the world. The first sod was cut at \'la(hvostt-tliree hours. By this same express Ijcrhn IS twenty-one lioiirs from London. (Juite recently the Siberian (or Rastern (^hina) Kaihvay has come t«j an arrangement with the International Sleepinjf Car Company for im- provmfT the facilities of travel on the line. To this enc; 100 sleei)injr-cars are supplied by the company, which will be attached to the express trams runm. :' between Irkutsk, Vladivostock and I'ort Arthur. These through trains will be made up unce a week exactly on the same lines as the tlirough trains which run now between Moscow and Irkutsk, and one car will perform the entire journey from Moscow to Pekinir With the introduction of this train service it will be possible to travel overland from London to Peking in fourteen days. In 1804 it took twenty-nine weeks. The i.r:t attempt to api,ly electric power for the propulsion of railway locomotives was by R. Davidson on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway in 1842; but a speed of only four miles an nour was attained and the piojett was aban- doned. Electricity wa.^ employed n 188. by Messrs. Siemens & Halske on 'an electric rail- way in Beriin ; a line being subsequently built one and a half miles long irori Charicttenburg to the Spandauer Bock. They also applied the system to a short ra 'wiy at Amsterdam and to another in Zankerorie in Saxonv. Great atten- tion was attracted in that ver to an electric line operated at the International Electrical Exhibi- 9^ THE STORY OK RAPID TRANSIT turn in Paris hy the Jjicinciis system. It carried ail average of ij.uoo passengers per week, few amongst whom did not perceive tlie possibilities which electricity offered to the future of rapid transit. Two years later an electric railway, six nnles long, was opened in Ireland, between I'ort- rush and Bushmills in the north of Ireland. The conduct* r employed was a tliird rail, electricity being transmitted through this conductor by means of steel brushes to the Siemens motor by which the car was propelled. The dynamo ma- chines were driven by the power of a natural water-fall of twenty-six feet, causing two tur- bines to revolve at a speed 225 revolutions per minute, each of which was capable of yielding fifty horse-power. The cars on this road ran at the rate of twelve miles an hour. It was not long after this that a number of electric tram- ways or railways were constructed in various parts of Europe and North America. The Liv- erpool overhead railway was opened in 1893. CHAPTER V THE TELEGRAPH— WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY When Shakespeare irade Robin Goodfellow declare that he would girdle this terrestrial globe in forty minutes, it was considered a ludicrous stretch of the poet's imagination. No one could have dared to suppose that the day would come when such a statement would become a mere truism—indeed, a far too modest statement of a fact which has grown commonplace. TEI.I <;| intclli.unce thus from 1 to l.ll, an.l the Jlottento. connnunicatcd ml, each other l,y means of hill-top rires meanf n?"* re,,uisite to menii-^n tl,c various means of conve\.n«: information to a distance ;y n.eans of somu! 1- u-.i to our ancestors u mifirht be prof^tab.. to jjlancc at the o ig ployed:^"'''' ' ' ^^^^^^rkhy came to be c^m- The first practical telecfraph datcj from ms a invon '"' "^'■- ^^•-'^-■^''^^ "nthematiciai iL n,. f ""^ "'^">' ingeniour instruments His meliioc consisted in exposii successively a many chflferent shaped lipures or signs as here are letters in the alphabet. If used in the dayt.me, *.hey mi^ht be'squares, circles tri- angles, etc.. and at night torches or other ligh" disposed m a certain order. These characu! s or s.gi.s were to be brought forward fro.n b" nnd a screen attached to'a n^ovable rod Of this telegraph the stations were to be at such convement chstances .s to enable the signals to be een yv.th a moderately powerful telescoped It s obvious that such a plan, although clever pt signals. But Its inventor was so confident of [''J'T'"'^ "tility that he declared that " tl^e same character might be seen at Paris within a minute after it had been exposed in London " It IS certainly a pity that the system was not V gS THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT tried, at least between London and York or Edinburgh. More than a century later, when Europe was in the throes of war, many experiments were made with the telegraph, the principal object being to simplify the mechanism. The first to render a telegraph available for practical purposes was probably Amontons in 1690. It is related by Fontenelle that he in- vented "a means to make known all that w::^s wished to a very great distance — for example, from Par's to Rome — in a very short time, three or four hours, ^nd even without the news becoming known in all the intervening space." This proposition, so paradoxical and chimerical in appearance, was executed over a small extent of country. The secret consisted in placing in several consecutive stations persons who, by means of telescopes, having perceived certain signals at the preceding station, transmitted them to the next and so on in succession ; and these different signals were so many letters of our alphabet, of which the key was known only at Paris and Rome. Other attempts were made in the course of the ensuing century to induce the French Gov- ernment to take up various schemes of teleg- raphy. At last, when the country was plunged into the horrors of war, one Claude Chappe laid plans before the Legislature in 1792, assuring them that "the speed of the correspondence would be such that the legislative body would be able to send thp'r orders to the frontiers and receive an answer back during the continuance of a sitting." i THE TELEGRAPH 99 After much vexatious delay the authorities approved of the scheme, and Cliappe. with the title of Ingemeur Telegraphe, was directed to construct a telegraph from Paris to Lille. The line, with Its apparatus (a combination of a pole a beam movable arms and ropes) which al- lowed of the transmission of 192 different sig- nals, was completed in two years. The first message sent announced a victory. On the last day of ISovember, 1794, Carnot entered the As- sembly with the news, "Conde is given uo to the Republic! The surrender took place this morning at six." The Chamber voted that "the army of the North had deserved well of the country; this message was sent instantly to headquarters, and before the day's session broke up the members were informed that their orders had been transmitted 150 miles to Lille and acknowledged by the coi.-mander there iiuch a successful result of course led to the immediate formation of other lines which ra- diated from the French capital to all parts of the kingdom. The signals (depending on varying positions of the beam and arms) were conveyed with great rapidity; and to avoid confusion, the movable arms on the right of the central post were reserved exclusively for Government mes- sages, those on the left being employed in the service of the hne. By this means, accidents or delays could be reported without detriment to the official despatch; and the Government was enabled to employ a cipher code of its own. From Paris to Calais, a distance of 152 miles there were thirty-three stations, and a message 100 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT I M .■ i i could be sent from one extremity to the other in three minutes; to Strasburj^, 255 miles and forty-four stations, in six and a half minutes; to Toulon, 317 miles and 100 stations, in twenty minutes. The longest lines were to Brest and Bayonne, the former 325 miles, the latter 425 ; and altogether there were 519 stations, the an- nual cost of the service amounting to £40,000. The brothers of the inventor Chappe succeeded him in turn, the last being in office until 1830, when the Revolution of that year deprived him of his post. A system of such value could not but be instantly appreciated by neighboring coun- tries, whose enterprising inventors proposed to each Government various forms of apparatus. Among those who submitted their plans was the father of the celebrated Maria Edgeworth, who contrived a telegraph of four wedge-shaped boards, mounted on the tops of poles and so pivoted as to assume various positions. Edge- worth believed his system was easily capable of serving for the transmission of messages all the way between England and India. Another inventor, named Gamble, devised an apparatus of shutters to fill the openings in a window frame, different signals being conveyed by the alternate opening and shutting of the spaces. Lord George Murray in 1795 substi- tuted a different arrangement of shutters ; they being six in number, painted black, the different letters and figures being indicated by the situa- tion of the open shutter. The Admiralty adopt- ed this plan for a telegraph between London and Dover. In 1806, Davis's sliding shutter in- THE TELEGRAPH jqi creased the value and celerity of Murray's ar- rangement, but ten years later the whole prin- ciple of shutters was abandoned by the authori- ties for a modification of the older movable arm system. n 1816 the telegraph or semaphore long fam.har to the public, on the roof of The T^nT'^'p^'' ^''^' ^'■^?^^- ^* ^^« invented by Sir Home Popham and consisted simply of an up- right pole with two movable arms. It was not capable of a large number of signals; but t proved simple and eflfective and the angu- lar position was easily seen at a distance The time between London and Dover was reduced for long messages, and Popham\ telegraph continued in use until it, and all its kind, was superseded by the wonder-work- ing magnetic flash. It was. of course! u^eTess - night, or in fogs and dull weather; and for hree quarters of the year the telegraph from he capital to Portsmouth stood idle. ^ As a^ Illustration of one of its drawbacks, on one oc casion when tidings of moment were expected from Spain, the Admiralty officials received a message-"Wellington defeated." The mmos? disappomtment and depression prevailed, unti the arrival of the royal messenger with "he despatches, when it was found that the fog had delayed the rest of the message, which should sXmara."'^'""^"" clefeatfd'the French at hancf ^nfl '/^ ""^ ^J^ctro-telegraphy was now at nand, and a means was about to be adopted which placed all the laws of time and distance at defiance. As far back as 1736 Stephen Gray had found that by means of pack threads, more 102 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT ■i! l 1! than loo feet in length, the electric current could be transmitted to a considerable distance. In France, two other experimenters, Dufay and Nollet, sent a current along a wet cord 1,300 feet. Dr. Watson carried a wire across the Thames at Westminster Bridge, one end being in contact with a charged Leyden jar, the other held by a person on the opposite shore. Another individual was placed in communication with the jar, and on a given signal both dipped an iron rod into the river, whereupon the charge traveled from one bank to the other by means of the wire, and completed the circuit by return- ing through the water. That this discovery was of a most important character it is not neces- sary to emphasize, seeing that it involved the principle governing all subsequent experiments in electrical transmission of this kind. Scarce had the nature of this new and most astounding agency become known before it was followed in various quarters by proposals to employ it in the conveyance of signals. It is related that as early as 1773 Odier wrote to a lady of his acquaintance: "I shall amuse you, perhaps, in telHng you that I have in my head certain experiments by which to enter into con- versation with the Emperor of Mogul or of China, the English, the French, or any other people of Europe, in a way that, without incon- veniencing yourself, you may intercommunicate ail that you wish at a distance of four or five thousand leagues in less than half an hour ! Will that suffice you for glory?" This vivacious spirit was not alone. In 1774, I Ml THE TELEGRAPH 103 Lesaf?e, a Frenchman at Geneva, published a plan for an electric telegraph. He proposed to arrange twenty-four metal wires in some insu- lating substance, each connected with an elec- trometer, from which a pith ball was suspended. On exciting the wires by means of an electrify- ing machine, the movements of the twenty-four balls represented the letters of the alphabet. Under date of September 16, 1787, Arthur Young, in his "Travels in France," remarks: "In the evening to Monsieur Lamond, a very ingenious and inventive mechanic. In electricity he has made a remarkable discovery. You write two or three words on paper ; he takes it with him into a room and turns a machine en- closed in a cylindrical case, at the top of which is an electromet.i, a small, fine pith ball ; a wire connects with a similar cylinder and electrome- ter in a distant apartment ; and his wife, by re- marking the corresponding motions of the ball, writes down the words they indicate. . . As the length of the wire makes no difference in the effect, a correspondence might be carried on at any distance ; within or without a besieged town, for instance ; or for a purpose much more worthy, and a thousand times more harmless — between two lovers prohibited or prevented from any better connections." Here, then, was a complete electric telegraph on a limited scale, and yet years were to elapse before it was put publicly into practical effect. We have seen that Chappe's invention of sig- nals was adopted instead, and probably delayed the discovery or employment of voltaic elec- tricity. In 1796, Salva, a Spanish physician, con- 104 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT structed an electric telegraph, which was made useful; and soon afterward a more extensive attempt was made by Betancourt, who stretched wires from Aranjuez to Madrid, forty-five miles distant, conveying signals by the discharge of Leyden jars. But nothing really came of these attempts, because the experimenters had not yet hit upon the right agency. P'rictional elec- tricity and galvanism differ in many ways ; one will leap over short distances and is uncertain, the other seems to require a continuous con- ductor and furnishes a steady current. Iron can be magnetized by galvanism, but not by elec- tricity. In 1816 Ronalds sedt signals by frictional electricity through eight miles of wire at Ham- mersmith. This same inventor proposed the adoption of an electric telegraph to the Admi- ralty, and in a volume published on the subject in 1823, remarked that if he "should be proved competent, why should not our kings hold councils at Brighton with their Ministers in London? Why should not our Government govern at Portsmouth almost as promptly as at Downing Street? ... Let there be elec- tric-conversatior offices, communicating - ith each other all over the kingdom." Without pausing to trace all the steps of Arago Soemmering, of Schweigger, and others, we may remark that at last, in the early thirties, the elements of modern Telegraphy were ready for some master mind to combine in a single in- vention. It is claimed for Professor Morse, an Ameri- can, that he invented the first electro-magnetic THE TELEGRAPH 105 IN ew York in 1832. But no account of this per- A- H. J. ■. MHBB W«- AINH ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH, 01. WE STEBIV RAIL WAY? I faomatiiruni^ ADMiaazoN u. *nk FMtv Tut— it»wr«M«|»Mt, i«>V» JlMMipn Ml Mil mmrtmtt T«aiA8H0MHJUww»i» Earnest Advertisement of the Electric Telegraph. ' thes?SSnrio^rifr"tte£rth/^" '"'""'"'"-^ '« with her Ministers in LondCu^^^ communication formance was published until 1837, when Schil Img, Gauss and Weber, Steinheil,^„i Whea^: I06 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT Stone had achieved considerable success in the construction of electric telegraphs. The first message by the Wheatstone-Cookc system was sent between the ^ ^ton and Lamden Town stations of the L ndon and North-Western Railway on the evening of July 5, 1837. Morse's contrivance included a marker at one end of a wire, which, as contact was made or broken, conveyed an arbitrary alphabet of dots and strokes, representing definite characters. Wneatstone (whose first patent was taken out in 1837) soon made improvements which greatly simplified his first methods ; the n".mber of wires was reduced to two, aqd thirty letters could be indicated in a minute. A new field for observa- tion was opened up for the world by Wheat- stone. He showed that inasmuch as electricity traveled at a speed which would girdle the globe seven or eight times in second, it could be employed in measuring tiie rate of motion of projectiles, or regulate the movement of all the clocks in the country. With the proper me- chanical accessories a "lady seated in her draw- ing-room in London might play Beethoven's sonatas on the piano of her friend at Edinburgh ; or a ringer in St. Paul's belfry might entertain the frequenters of the Pariiament Square with a lively carillon from the Tower of old St. Giles's." The first example of the commercial applica- tion of the electric telegraph was in connection with the Blackwall Railway, opened in 1840. The announcements of departures, of stoppages, of the number of carriages attached, of accidents or causes of delay were regularly transmitted by THE TELEGRAPH 107 electrr -magnetic apparatus, placed at each of the hve intermediate stations Two years later, the system had been adopted on he London and North-Western, South- Western and other hnes. It had not been lone completed on the Great Western when a striffi instance occurred of the service which te new nivent.on was to render to society. A man o^ carnage at Slough, eighteen miles from Pa-l- dington-he was a murderer fleeing from the yet warm body of his victim. The -luSy ng cngme reared the terminus: the desperate man felt certain of his escape ; but he had not reck- oned on the speed of the telegraph. An alarm hau been given at the scene of his crime" S as a flash the wires bore it to London, describ- ing the mans flight and personal appearance. In three minutes an answer announced the ar- rival of the tram, the identification of the fur- tive and the certainty of his capture. This, and other similar incidents, naturallv nTfh t .u^: 'mpression on the public mind. On the birth of the new year (184O a teleeram sCTI'^kI ^"""T P^ddi/gton' was receiveTa^ Slough before the old year had expired, there being a sufficiem difference of longitude to be marked by the velocity of the mysterious new We are now so accustomed to the rapid public recoH of passing events by the newspapers as hardly to understand the patience of the reading ^"¥1 ?"«'• to the era of the telegraph. Ihe first newspaper report received bv wire appears to have been of a public meeting at Ii i M; 108 THE STORY or RAMD TRANSIT Portsmouth, durinR: the railway mania of 1845, which created such interest in London that the Morning Chronicle printed it an hour or so after the mcetinjf broke up. The other newspapers, receiving their reiwrts by train, which took three hours, followed the example the next day. After this, the proprietors of a Southampton journal resolved to print the Queen's speech without waitmg for the railway. The report was trans- mitted, letter by letter, and the 3.600 letters were set up in tyi)e in Southampton two hours after delivery in Parliament. The only limit now was the expense: and news telegrams accordingly began to appear regularly in the press. The old signaling system or semaphore still lingered on at the Admiralty until 1848, in which year the new electric telegraph was substituted. Two years before the Electric Telegraph Com- pany had been incorporated, with a central estab- lishment n Lothbury. The premises were amply equipped with all the necessaries of telegraph servl; ; and by means of wires, laid in tubes underground, was connected with all metropoli- tan railway stations, the Post Office, the head police station in Scotland Yard, the Admiralty, the New Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, and many other public buildings. In ad- dition, communication was made with various places in the Provinces, including the chief towns and seaports. "Electric telegraphs," declared the Parliamentary statute, "shall be open for the sending and receiving of messages bv all per- sons alike, without favor or preference, subject to a prior right of use thereof for the service of Her Majesty and for the purposes of the Com- THE TKLKCJkAPlI 109 Miiy. A pruv.s.) is also t,,.- • • i„ fav„r of tl.p Hotne SccTilary of Sta.v. wl,„ .nav.o, extra 'I'nary occasions, take possession of all the tde Kra,.h statums and hul.l then, for a vve -k . i" ixnvcr to contiiuie the occiiinfi,.., 1, I'l . Laiiiiit and professiojial uiterostw t' '"^' ^hlpnes long txceedmg any other nation. This suoeri- ruf has. smce the establishment of s xrin^y "£ grajm been transferred to the UniterSgdom And now we come to telegraphing without wires. It was conjectured by pSfv Helm holtz and others that light from The ^unimi clectr,cuy were of the same orde^ only differing wavof'Th- • '" !^^. '""^^'^^ °f tWir^re pect ve waves. Their velocity through space was "he same, namely ,86.400' miles a seS. Li^t fro^'';h''''' ^^^^\«"d electric waves in raveh.g from he sun to the earth-a distance so |ei? that ail express train traveling sixty miles an ?ea"chr'iit' ^^•\>'^^" to^ccoi^plTsh it!!l reach our earth in eight minutes. These waves cannot travel along nothing: they must have an eastic medium which will transm^tThem If the from the sun without loss and without interven «ng wires, it was reasonable to ask Why ca™ some form of nstrument be devised which wH also send out along the terrestrial ether e lertrka currents, even in a small way.> Air ^"0 IK) f ■; i 112 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT be confounded with ether. ( )ne set of vil)rations may concern, perhaps, thousands of waves per second, but those in the ether are reckoned by hundreds of millions, hundreds and even thou- sands of billions per second. For example, if in a thunderstorm, three miles distant, we see a flash of lightning, the light waves in the ether reach the eye at practically the same instant the flash occurred ; but the sound-waves of the elec- trical discharge traveling through air travel only 1,150 feet a second, and so would not reach us for fourteen seconds. In this time the electrical cur- rent would have circumvolated the earth at least 100 times. Yet although there is such a wide difference in rapidjty between the air and ether waves, yet they bear so much resemblance to each other, as is seen in practical experiments in syntony. Every musician knows that if a violin and a piano be in the same room and are tuned to each other, a note sounded on the violin will find a response in the piano, if the dampers be raised from the strings, by actuating the pedal. In the same manner, in all recent experiments with the Hertzian waves, a system of "tuning" is resorted to, in order to establish perfect unison between the receiving apparatus and the trans- mitter. So important is this tuning or syntony between waves that the privacy of messages sent and received by wireless telegraphy may be se- cured by it. The first to suggest a method of signaling across space without intervening wires was J. B. Lindsay, of Dundee, about 1853. I" the follow- ing year he patented his invention and conducted experiments in London and Portsmouth, where 'mm' WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY 1 13 he successfully telegraphed without wires across 500 yards of water. After a lapse of thirty-four years, in 1887-88, other experiments were made tnrough the air by direction of Sir W Preece who some years later successfully sent messages across a distance of four and a half miles hv the use of dynamic electricity. Static electricity was first used by Hertz, when it was found that waves or vibrations passing through a wire set up simi- lar vibrations in the other. These waves vibrate in all directions, and by very delicate receiving instruments it was found possible to gather them up m sufficient strength to repeat their pulsa- mT.r^" m'^'^at'^ ^^^'' "messages from the trans- mitter. Mr. Marconi, a young Italian inventor, has been experimenting with this form of com- munication since 1890, and late in 1902 achieved urLl'^^u «f f^ss. o V^'^^'"^P^'"^ ^'thout wires across the Atlantic from Cape Breton to Corn- wall, and later from Cape Cod to Poldhu, in Cornwall, a distance of 3,000 miles. Other suc- cessful systems have been devised by Prof. Slabv and Count dArco in Germanv. and by Dr. Lee DeForest in the United States. Thus a new method of rapid communication, destined to work mighty changes in commerce and warfare, has been discovered. The reality of the new science may thus be il ustrated: The S.S. Umbria, like alUhe boats of the Cunard line, is fitted with the Marconi N?w V^!jTr'^''' telegraphy. She set out from t %u ^^fy 31, 1902, and was soon in mid- ocean. 1 he American ambassador, speaking at a concert on board, could only express a hope that on landing, the news of the conclusion of 8 114 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT war in South Africa might be imparted. He reckoned without science. Late on that night a Marconi message was received giving the news of peace and — the winner of the Derby ! It has become a regular experience on tht Atlantic boats, at whatever distance from land, to see, as in a London club, the servants cr ...g round telegrams, and calling the name of the recipients. The lonely sea has thus lost another of its terrors. CHAPTER VI AERIAL NAVIGATION— HOMING PIGEONS Of all forms of Icx^omotion the palm for speed must be given to the aerial variety, although it is true that as a reliable means of rapid transit aerial navigation has advanced scarcely more than a single step since the invention of balloons ijiore than a century ago. Yet it is equally true that during this time a large number of voyages through the air have been successfully carried out by intrepid aeronauts. These certainly serve to show how great will be the boon conferred on mankind when some means of guidance of balloons or airships is discovered which will stand all tests. Already MM. Krebs and Renard, and Santos-Dumont and others have demon- strated that it is possible to navigate an airship in favorable weather in precisely the direction desired; but the form of locomotion can never beconrie of economic value until the safety of the machine and its occupants is better insured than it is at present. m^"m AERIAL NAVIGATION 1,5 Franklin said of the science of aerostation- It IS an infant, hut it will ^row " " The discoveries and inventions relating to tho uses which have hitherto been made Jthe at' An Airship Designed by Francis I ,na, of Barcetona, 1760. mosphere and the mathematical deductions which so clearly teach us to hope for the practicability of aenal navigation, form a most interesting story. But in these pages we must confine our- selves to a few of the actual achievements of aeronauts in rapid traveling through space. I he earliest recorded instance appears in the I i 3. Il6 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT Ministrc's History of Lyons : "Toward the end of Charlemagne's reign, certain persons who lived near Mount Pilate, in Switzerland, know- ing by what means pretended sorcerers traveled through the air, resolved to try the experiment, and compelled some poor p -ople to ascend m an aerostat. This deiicended in the town of Lyons, where they were immediately burned to prison, the mob desiring their death as sorcerers. The judges condemned them to be burned; but the Bishop Agobard suspended the execution, and sent for them to his palace that he might ques- tion them." , , • 1 r When the good predate had heard their tale ot the singular manner in which they had traveled so far in so incrediblv brief space of time, he pardoned them, although himself incredulous. Posterity, which reads this story, may likewise share the bishop's incredulity. Francis Lana, of Barcelona, was said to have invented an aerial machine in 1670, but it failed to travel: where- fore we may wisely pass over a host of similar relations, as well as all the aerostatic experiments up to the invention of the balloon by the brothers Montgolfier in 1783. , • c ^ Nearly ten months had elapsed snice this tirst aerostatic experiment, when a young chennst, Pilatre de Rozier, offered himself as the first voyager in the newly invented aerial machine. The first to make an" aerial voyage (in the hori- zontal sense) in England was a Neapolitan, Vin- cent Lunardi, on September 15, 1784. he traveled from the Artillery Ground, Moorfields, to Standon, near Ware, Herts, a distance of thirty miles. The journey was not remarkable The First Aerial Voyage. Il8 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT for speed, as it occupied two hours and a quarter, iticludintr a stoppage at South Mimniii. "The departure was most exciting." "Perhaps," ob- served the Morning Post of the following day. "the Enghsh nation never witnessed upon an'v occasion whatever such a number of persons col- lected together and so loftily displayed; not a plain or an eminence, a window or a roof, a chim- ney or a steeple but were prodigiously thronged." Lunardi became a popular hero: was presented to the King, and made a honorary member of sev- eral learned societies. Four days later, in Paris, the brothers Robert performed a journey in the air from Paris to Arras, 150 miles, a portion of the trip being made at the ate of twenty-four miles an hour. This journey is remarkable as being probably the fast- est ever made by human beings for such a dis- tance, up to that era. But this record of speed was soon to be broken. Sadler, an English aeronaut, ascended from Ox- ford on October 12th of the same year, going fourteen miles in forty-one minutes, descending, and, after considerable delay, proceeding to Romsey, in Hampshire, at the rate of twenty- nine miles an hour. A memorable aerial voyage — the first across the English Channel — took place January 7, 1785. Blanchard, a Frenchman, and Dr. JeflFries, an American, pushed off in a balloon from the cliff at Dover at i p.m. The weight being too great for the power of the balloon, some time was consumed in discharging ballast. When they rose, they continued vertically, so that properly the journey did not begin' until half- t -*»- « "^ AERIAL NAVIGATfON ng past one. Exactly at three o'clock, after an 2uT^r^'^^'' ^"'•'"^ ^hich they 'ha been obhged to throw overboard their very clothes ween^'rf' %'' 't ^'^^' ^'•"""^' midway be-' twee. Cape Blanc Nez and Calais. The^ de- Sals J.V'k ^ "'■^1 "^ ^"•"^•«' ''^'^ frecSm of Calais was bestowed ujwn Blanchard and a friend Romaine lost their lives The maximum of speed had not yet been at- ained-and Lunardi, October 5,\78s was SrS'' Ri."^" '■^'"'■^^ ^"^^ ^" «^ his c^o'nterS- Gardens* F^ ,^K^' t' J'^^ p.m., from Heriofs wardens, Edinburgh, he says: "The citv of Glasgow I could plainly distinguish, a'so the town of Paisley, and both shores of the Forth but my attention was now diverted by findhig thir?v1' ^^'^- ^^'^'^"^PJi^hed forty-six miles in thirty-five minutes, which is a speed almost T'rSV'^'lT'' ^^^^ ^- -- b?en do'ilron a railway A longer journey was subseatienflv done by Lunardi, leaving Glasgow at mTp m Sdk,>ks''hr"fn'"°,''°^"i='"""S a. Afemo^r: June 28, 1802. in 120 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT company witli Captain Snowdon, R.N. They (lepartt'd from Chelsea (lanlens and came down near Colchester, sixty miles in fortv-five minutes. On July 5th Garnerin asceuvled' from Marv- lehone and descended at Chinpford. seventeen miles, m fifteen minutes, and attained also durinir this interval a height of 7,800 feet. lUit a more notable voyage was to be made bv the French aeronaut Garnerin, in the balloon commemorating the coronation of Napoleon I At II P.M. on December 16, 1804, Garnerin allowed his colossal machine to rise from the square in front of Notre Dame, Paris. Twentv hours later it had passed through France and Italy, over St. Peter s j^t Rome and the Vatican, to descend into Lake IJracciano. It had traversed a distance of 800 miles. The coronation balloon was subsequently suspended in a corridor of the Vatican, where it remained until 1814. No further notable aerial voyages are record- ed until October 7, 181 1, when Sadler and Burcham left Birmingham at 2.20 p.m. and by 4 P.M. had made a flight of 112 miles. They finally alighted near Boston, zia Leicester, Mar- ket Deeping, and Peterborough. Sadler was the first to attempt to cross the Irish Channel, ascending from the lawn of Bel- vedere House. Dublin, October i, 1812, and receiving his flag from the Duke of Richmond. But he found himself precipitated into the sea ctr route, the feat not being accomplished until 1817. when the same aeronaut's son, Windham Sadler, traveled from Portobello Barracks, Dub- lin, at 1.20 p.M'. on June 22d, and at 6.45 alighted a mile south of Holyhead. !|! I AERIAL NAVIGATION ,21 £r.n"h!l f''' ^^''''. '^'' ^'""'^"^ f'»'arIos Green l.e- gan his loufr series of intrepid aerial i„iirn. v« 3 1;:;'"'; :r^" ^^•"^^^^'^'•^ fo;";st!;n^' ^ i speed One- of these was undertaken in a ston , from Nevvhnry. Berkshire, to Crav-^e S r ' fifty-e.pht mdes. in an honr and a alf £ i «ar, bc,„K f.o,„ ,I,o \-„„xl,ail Gar n T.'t' .hen opcJcl. anXS' T fti Jo rcirrbT. 7 coach was five and a half hZs Au'i5'"G ceil (who was accompanied bv Monck Mason ,irS writps Macr^r. " I- 1 i"-"-"- in tnis manner, writes Mason, (hd we traverse with rapid strides It was at 7.30 on the following morning that 123 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT 1 I i 1 ;!! I I : ! J:;i the descent took place, so that the (hiration of the voyage was exactly eighteen hours. "The first question, 'Where are we?' was speedily answered, 'In the Uuchy of Nassau, about two leagues from the town of V/eilburg.' The second was theirs, 'Where do you come from?' 'I'>(.m London, which we left yesterday morning.' The aston- ishment of the inhabitants at this d;cla ation may be imagined." To reach Weilburg from the l^ritish capital in the year 1836 by the fastest coaches and steamer would have taken three days, (ireen ami Mason had done it by balloon — a distance of more than 500 miles — in eighteen 'hours. A considerable portion of five kingdoms, England. I*" ranee, Bel- gium, Prussia, and the Duchy of Nassau ; a long succession of cities, including London, Rochester, Cinterh 'ry, Dover, Calais, Cassel, Ypres, Cour- tray, Lib Oudenarde, Tournay, Brussels, with Waterloo and Jenmapes, Namur, Liege, Spa and Coblentz were all brouglit within the compass of their horizon. When one reflects on the smooth- ness of the traveling, its quiet and absence of dis- tracting apparatus, we may safely regard this long journey as an ideal transit and among the most remarkable for speed which ever took place prior to the establishment of railways. In June, 1841, Wise, an American aeronaut, set out from Danville, Pa., at 2.35 p.m.. and ar- rived at Morgantown, seventy miles distant, at 4.25, having in reality traveled a tortuous course at the rate of fifty-five miles an hour. In the same year Green traveled twenty miles in twenty min- utes from Chelsea to Rainham, Essex. A few years later Coxwell traveled through the air from AERIAL NAVUJATION 123 lUrlin to Dantzi^r, 170 miles, in three hours aiwl ten nnntites. A rnnarkable instance of speed in aerial transit was afforded in 1849 by M. Arhan, who crossed tile Alps from Marseilk-s to Tnrin, a distatice of 400 tndes ni ei^dit hours. This reconl between the two cities never has been broken. The speed however, was equaled in C«)xweirs journey in i«57 from Xorth Woolwich to Tavistwk, Devon 250 miles, in five houi.,. "It was some time be- fore the particulars .,f the journey obtained cre- dence. At Sidmouth the alarm-bell was runir by. the niRht watchman : but before the inhab- itants were astir the balloon was out of sinht and the man laughed at, until the Devonshire papers were published with an account of the voyape. ' The aeronauts walked into the town of lavKstock.and put up at the Queen's Hotel, where they had difficulty in persuading the W(jrthv host that they had been in London the night before A shorter journey from Winchester to Harrow seventy-six miles, was in 1862 accomplished in sixty-six minutes by Colonel M 'Donald and SIX officers of the Rifle DepcM Uattalion, ac- companied by Coxwell. For most of the vov- age the velocity was not less than seventy miles an hour. We now come to one of the most celebrated of modern aerial voyages, that of Xadar's "Geant" in 1863 from Paris to Xienburg, Hanover This fan-ous journey \yas preceded by a brief one on October 4th, in which no fevver than fifteen persons were carried in the monster car. The balloon held 6,098 meters of gas enclosed in 20,000 meters of silk, and was the largest ever 134 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT constructfd. It descended on tliis occasion two IiaKHt's frotn Neattx. and a fDrtni^ht later, with nine passengers, reascended at 5 r.M. from the (hainp de iMars. At half-past ei^jht it was over C'ompeiK>H', seventy-eijjht miles from I'aris. Xothinj; more was heard of the balloon nntil a second telejj;ram was received in I'aris statin}^ that Nadar's j^'ant halUnin passed over Mrque- lines, on the Itel^ian frontier, at midnight on Sunday. The airsliip was movinu; not far from the ground, and the customs officer called out to know if there was anything on which duty should he paid! No attention was pai!c>inff aoro .ats from the Hin- pocrome was attenueci wui: l..ss success. In sev- eral mstances we are told they directed their skiU rlr t'o \^^i! I^'^-' '^ ^I'PI-^ clown the guid": sortche. t^i ' v^V""^ l^'^ passengers and de- spatches to look after themselves. But on the whole the balloon service was distingu shed bv smgular ab.hty and precision. From Sep ember to January s,xty-four balloons were sen! off and of these fifty-seven fulfilled their mTsslon and' e Gambetta left by the .Innand fiar^-. (every Ih wJ'^^' °^ ^^"'•^^ ^ "^-^e) on October 7 h When at too low an altitude he was Sime- chately fired on by the Prussians and naJrowlv escaped being hit by a bullet narrow l> On October 27th the Brctai^ne fell, owinjr to bad management, into the hands of th; enemv near Verdun ; on November 4th the Gal2r had a simdar fate near Chartres; and on the latl seizeci a few leagues from Paris. The loss of ni^ht .f"°°"f f"^ ^ ^'"'^ ^^^' than a for?- t^ ft h. •"'?' '^'^ Government. It w^as obvious that the vigilance of the enemy had been aroused and whenever a balloon was' seen advices were telegraphed along its probable line of flight and the swiftest Uhlans were put on the alert in the 128 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT hope of capturing it. Tlic danger had vastly in- creased, since a new rifled gun of enormous range had been made by Krupp for the purpose of firing shells at the aerial transports. One of these was about this time set up at Versailles, h'or these reasons the (lovernment resolved that in future balloon departures should take place at night. At the same time the darkness added greatly to the difficulties of the voyage, and several of these nocturnal ascents were attended with singular adventures. About midnight, on November 24th, the Villc d'Orlcans rose from Paris with an aeronaut and one passenger. The wind blew from the north and it was hoped tlw balloon would descend near Tours. lUit in a short time the voyagers heard a sound below them which caused them both deep apprehension ; it was the lashing of breakers on the shore. At the time of this dis- covery they were in a thick mist; when at day- break this cleared they found themselves sus- pended over the sea, out of sight of land. Several vessels were perceived and to these they tried to signal, but were not answered. One vessel, in- deed, responded; but it was by firing at them. Scudding now rapidly to the north they were giving themselves up for lost when they came in sight of land to the eastward. Before they could gain it they descended rapidly from loss of gas, their ballast being gone they were obliged in despair to throw out a bag of despatches. This expedient saved them; the balloon rose, encoun- tering a westerly current which carried them to shore. What part of the world they were in at their descent they had no notion; the ground was iil! AERIAL NAVIGATION 129 covered vv.tli snow, they saw no inhabitants, and henjg: overcome with fatigue and hunger, C amted on gettmg out of the car. ( )„ recovering hey wa ked through the snow with great exer^ tion, anc after a painful journev of several hours passed the night in a shed, in the .norning a couple o woodmen informed them, bv means of s^ns and a box of matches marked Christ'ania that they were in Norway. Their speed wa over' fifty miles an hour for a number of hours A week later, on November ^oth two hto ful ascents from beleaguered Pa^is uer mad!^" namec? Prinl'"'? ^' " ''[■ '" '^'^'^^ «^ ^ ^^i'or aTso.r"i! S '^'^''''l new-found aeronautic zeal vvas so great that as the ropes parted he cried out • Je veux faire un immense voyage: on parlera de mon ascens on." He was nnfaiJl ., balked of his ambition Drivnbv a' 'outhLt' While over the V ^"e Eng^ij,,, ^^^^^,^ picked up on the rocks. Thus lightened th^bal- Atlant^liHotf'l '"'^^^^' clisap'pear"ed over 'the Atlantic billo vs and was never heard of again The second balloon, the Jules Favrc started at half-past eleven with two passengers Onlvbv a miracle chd it escape the fate Sf ih^ J acamrd The wind blew from the north and the aeronau s fancied they vyere on their way to Lyons W ZZlV^> they emerged at daybreak and saw beneath hem an island which they supposed L S ^"'^"•'■• Th^y ^^^'•^ grossl/ deceived It was Hoedic, in the Atlantic! They were driv ing furiously out to sea; but in front of^hem lay 130 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT as a forlorn hope, the larger island of Bell-Isle. It was seen that they would have to pass one end of it where it was very narrow, and that they must either land on this strip of land or be lost. They tore the valve open with frantic energy, caused the balloon to descend some 1,000 feet in a few minutes, and luckily succeeded in striking the land. Albeit the shock was terrific; three times did the balloon bound into the air, and at last caught against a wall, precipitating the occu- pants of the car to the earth. They were badly injured, but received great attention from the people of the neighborhood. The father of Gen- eral Trochu resided there, and ordered them to be brought to his. house. On December 15th the Ville dc Paris was so unlucky as to fall at Wertzlar, in Prussia; and four days later the General Chancy was made captive at Rothenburg, in Bavaria. On the morn- ing of January 28th the Richard Wallace, which rose from Paris the previous night, was observed at La Rochelle approaching the sea and almost touching the ground. The people shouted to the aeronaut to descend, but instead of doing so, he threw out a saciv of ballast, rose to a great height and soon disappeared in the western hori- zon. Doubtless, the poor t>Uow had lost his senses on seeing the danger which confronted him. This almost completes the story of the ballooning during the siege of Paris. It was the last ascent but one; that on the next day bore intelligence to the provinces of the conclusion of an armistice. These aerial voyages had solved the problem of communication from Paris outward. The AERIAL NAVKJATION 131 other prohlcni of cninutnicati.jn inward from the Provinces was hardly less important ■ rectfrr ''''"'^- V "■'^"''•^'J ^ Pankular d^ rection of current, and although U. Tissandier Of :ll "*' -"^r' Y^', a'^andoned as impossible. Of the projects which were offered to the Gov- ernment to encompass the desired end. some were among the wildest and most visionary that ever entered the brain of man. One balloon took TJ?T^[?'^'''^ "^""P' '^'"'-'''' 't ^^-as hoped, reappea^red. ' """' ^''^' '^^'"' ^"^ ^'^^>' "^-^'• The actual method by which the difficulty was solved deserves, we think, a place in a vvork dealing with modern locomotion. The return post was effected by means of carrier pigeons wnich, having been taken out of Paris in bal-' 00ns, were let loose in the Provinces to find their way home There existed in Paris a "So- fU% S" '"n'^^P'"'^' ^"^' ^^ter the departure of Approached r°" ''? t^"'T^ ^^'"^^ ^^^'^"« b«dy approached General Trochu. and proposed that ward"3o''"'" ''' ""l"' *« com'i.in'e the out- pigeons. The second balloon carried three l).rds, which came safelv back six hours latcT with new. from the aeronauts. The return of cS''"."^^" despatched in following days TZrlZi Z ^^^^St'cability of the s?hem'e 1 Hereupon, he service was regularly organized throi'bo,r;r^' ?" ^''^ ^ ^^'^ ^"^«""^ -^ ^'^'e? enemv A, h T'''''T' ^^ '^^ ^^P^*^' ^v the enemy. As the despatches were required to be very small and light, recourse was\ad to mi! 132 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT croscopic photography. 15y this means sixteen foHo pages of print (32,000 words) were reduced to a pelliciile two inclies long, one and a quarter inches wide, and weighing about three-quarters of a grain ! The messages were destined for residents of Paris, and came from all over France. Here are a few samples: DEPECHES A DISTRUilKR AIX DESTINATAIRES. Pail, 26 Janvier. — A TocIilt, Kuc Chausce d'Antin. Ma- deleine accouche heureusement hicr, liit-n beau j^ar^on. Biarritz, i Fevncr. — A. Martin 68 Kue I'etites Ecuries. Sommes a liiarritz, l)ebe c<)nii)letv.ment remis, enibrasse papa, doloureusement impassiones cvenenients. A, 'J'aiit. — Hcsoin d'argeni, demande Masquier. A. Verier. — Tout partaitement bien ; trouverons charbon dans cave. Each pigeon carried twenty of these tiny gel- atine leaves, carefully rolled up and placed in a quill. They contained sufficient printed matter to fill a large vohnne, and yet the weight of the whole was only fifteen grains. When the bird arrived at his cot in Paris, his precious little bundle was taken to the Government office, the quill was then cut open and the gelatine leaves extracted. Placed in an enlarging optical ap- paratus, similar to a magic lantern, the messages were thrown on a screen, copied from thence, and sent to their destination. Tlie charge was fifty centimes a word. The despatches were not entrusted to one pigeon, but repeated by others, in order to provide against accidents, which were very common. The Prussians were pow- erless against the winged messengers, although an attempt was made to chase them with birds i,' -Jk. '^T'i^:'^^:- '^ss'.iawsBJHSBawi-'' AEKIAL NAVIGATION ^35 of prey; but dense fogs and severe cold played havoc with the birds. Tliere were sent out oi Tans 363 pigeons, of which only fifty-seven re- turned, some having been absent a long time buch IS a brief narration of this aerial post' It was, beyond question, a marked success Al- though It could not save France or her capital yet It was an immense boon to the besieged for It established, during the whole of the siege that communication with the exterior which would otherwise have been impossible. Had the cause of the French been less desperate the strategic advantage this correspondence would have imparted might have even turned the scale against the enemy. This suggests to us a reference to the speed attained by pigeons as agents of rapid transit. Ihe idea that fast homing pigeons cover a mile a minute for a considerable distance must like the tradition that Eclipse once accomplished' t[iat feat, be finally abandoned. In no part of Great Britain are the breeding and training of these birds brought to greater perfection than at bheflfield, and if its champions cannot travel at the pace of express trains, or approaching such speed, jt is not probable other localities are better supplied. In a competition early in 1002 from Banbury to Sheffield, a distance of ninety- two miles, nearly 300 birds were flown with a strong wind behind them. All other circum- stances being propitious, and the birds being se- lected for speed from a very much larger num- ber. It was anticipated that the winner's time w-^ould he exceptionallv fast. Whether that was the case is not recorded, but the official timing lyr-^-y?^'*- 134 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT gave the leading bird an average velocity of only about two-thirds of a mile [)er minute, with sev- eral others in pretty close attendance. Some time was lost, no doubt, after flu- start before '->\v si m 1 Santos-Dumont Rounding the Eiffel Tower in Hiib Air:>hip. the direct line for home was hit on, and also at the finish before alighting. But even when full allowance is made for these delays, it does not go far to make up the difference between 1,161 yards and 1,760 yards a minute. Still, since very few of the birds liberated at Banbury failed to arrive at their destinations, the pigeon- : V AERIAL NAVIGATION »35 post presents the additional advantajje of a large degree of security. We have seen that when several of these birds were entrusted in war- time with the samr message, some were sure to reach their destination, even if the enemy were ever so vigilant. Subsequent developments in the history of aerial navigation are speedilv narrated. On the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War, M. Du- puy de Lome, naval architect to the French Government, produced an elongated balloon, I20 feet in length and fifty feet in diameter, con- taming 120,000 cul)ic feet of hydrogen. It was actuated by a screw propeller, and with it the mventor made a journey of some ninety miles, but without being aole to control the direction! Other similarly shaped aerostats (to which the name airships has latterly been applied) followed until in 1884 MM. Krebs and Renard of the French army accomplished for the first time a circular voyage, returning from the point of de- parture after a considerable aerial flight. They did so, howevei under the most favorable at- mospheric conditions, the car was of great light- ness and the electric dynamo operating the screw was of eight horse-power. Attempts to imitate this feat under less perfect conditions failed, until in 1901 Alberto Santos-Dumont, a young Bra- zilian experimenter, circumnavigated the Eiflfel Tower in an airship of his own construction. But still the problem of a dirigible balloon is far from being solved, and adverse climatic con- ditions render the feat a highly dangerous, if not an impossible one. There are' many who believe that the possibilities of the balloon have been 13^ THE STORY OF UAPID TRANSIT exhausted and that the future locomotion through the air will only be made possible by Hying niachmes constructed on the kite or aero- plane pnnciple. CHAPTER VII OCEAN TELEGRAPHY -THE TELEPHONE - PNEUMATIC TUBES-POSTAL SYSTEMS "The restless spirit of modern invention, not content with guiding the mysterious power of electnc.ty, both above and beneath the surface o the earth, -roposes next to join the shores of England nn< |--ance by means of a submarine telegraph 1 hai such an undertaking is possible there IS but little doubt; but the question is. ^''" V, 'L?^ ^'0'"th while to attempt to carry it out The author of the foregoing in a work on Telegraphs, published in 1848, decides in the negative, for says he, "the injuries to which the wires would be subject appear to create almost an insuperable objection to this plan beine ear- ned out on a large scale." As yet we have seen that the speediest com- munication between any points separated bv the sea was by neans of the fast steamers, vvhich had now replaced the fast sailing ships of the begmning of the century. Dover and Cr.lais, as well as London and New York, were solely de- pendent on steam to convey at the most rapid rate tidings upon which the fate of nations might In 1845 an American newspaper boldly pre- OCEAN TfcLEGKAPIlY »37 .lcs of cable, which was to stretch tVrln^?^ &^;:^1;nrlh'"!. '"" ^^^'''^'^ <--^nn;e;;^ n trctort, Wut the Asamnumm, and the Unitec work I he shore-end was lan.le.I and received with ceremony by the Lonl-Lieutenant of Ire he fervent hope of esfahiishin^r "a „Vw materi-.l •nk- between the Old WorI,^ and tl e N w *' ; nre M? 'TrT 'T "^''"^''^^ to temporary ^^Z ,V'"^''^^iir^"'"^' 'I^'ay. a new plan was "\c. c.ded npon The two ships steamec out toijeth- er nito nnd-ocean. where the two cables were sphced and snbn.er^ed. and then each ship 1,1! Ran steanunff. one east and the other west Rm they had not proceeded far when the c.lVie snapped aR:ain ; a^-ain it was spliced and o, • more was it broken, this time in tw^ pCs Ihns there lay at the bottom of the ocean r^ miles of cable and the whole ren let cd wort^ than nseless. Nevertheless, the pro ectors we e t'hird'Ktic':^ rr'^"' *" ^^y ^S^---r^^^i success-^ expedition met with success— a temporary success, it is true— anrl tn^t'' ''^i""'"«^ T^*^^-^^ -^P^^J across he At ^ntic on Aujrust 6, 1858. Ten davs later Queen Victoria cabled the follovvhiff message whtch took but sixty-seven nn-nutef in trans-' W^sl •:;,t:;T-^'"" ""''^-^ ^-- ^ondon^To "lo the President of the United States. The I40 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT Queen desires to congratulate the President on the successful completion of this great inter- national work, in which the Queen has taken the deepest interest. "The Queen is convinced that the President will jom with her in fervently hoping that the electric cable which now connects Great Britain with the United States, will prove an additional link between the nations whose friendship is founded upon their common interest and recip- rocal esteem. "The Queen has much pleasure in communi- cating with the President, and renewing to him her wishes for the prosperity of the United States." President Buchanan replied in a similar spirit, declaring that the new enterprise was a "triumph rnore glorious, because far more useful to man- kind, than was ever won by conqueror on the field of battle," and trusting that "even in the midst of hostilities, the cable would be regarded as neutral by all nations." The rejoicings over the cable of 1858 were great ; but, alas, they were speedily cut short. The electric impulses became weak, and gradually failed after having conveyed a total of 400 messages between the two hemi- spheres — the last word transmitted being — curi- ous to tell— "Forward." For five years following, no further capital was forthcoming to make another attempt. But in 1865 a company was organized; this time the cable made heavier, and the whole length, 2,300 miles, was shipped on board a single vessel, the Great Eastern. Still again, when the vessel was 1,064 miles from Valentia, the cable broke, owing THE TELEPHONE 14, to an accidental strain, and after a futile attemot to recover ,t fron, the bottom of the sea it wL abandoned for the season. In the folLwTng year another hne was at last successfully laid bv the Grra/ £aj/^r«, the former cable recovered" and thus the Old World and the New were perma nently jomed together in an intellectual bond Its success led to other cable systems. In 1860 a French company laid a line from B;es to S? Pierre, an ,s and oflF Newfoundland; n 187, a cable was laid from Lisbon to Pernanibuco in laM^n^gT/"", ^r '''''' Atlantircabrerwer The Pa^ffS^n"'' 'i^V ^"^* ''""''^^ others since. 1 he Pacific Ocean had to wait longer for a cable The British Pacific cable from Vancouver Brit" ish Columbia, to Sydney, AustraUa IS' Fan- ning Island and the Fijis, was opened n iZ Itjr -^^i^ to connect San Francisco ^th Manda. rm Hawaii, the Midway Islands, and SX'r nfth^"'^'^^"^ ^' ^^' ^' "«"°1"1" i" De- cember of the sa...e year and will be opened for service before the end of 1903, bridging the Vast expanse between North America and Asia and Australia, thus girdling the earth with wire f. means of rapid communication— rivaline- even the te egraph-a place must be found in hese pages for the telephone, whose introduc ion mto Europe dates only from 1877 Ihe idea of transmitting sound to a distance may be traced back to remote antiquity- its first K f h'^^P'^'^'^" ^^^ ^«""d in ?he speiking ^/? l^L^""^^^^ ^^^'^^ '■elates how by the aid of a tightly drawn wire, bent in many angles. i 142 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT he conveyed sound to a very considerable dis- tance. " 'Tis not impossible," he writes, "to hear a whisper at a furlongs distance, it having already oeen done ; and perhaps the nature of the thing would not make it more impossible, that furlong should be ten times multiplied. And though some famous authors have affirmed it impossible to hear through the thinnest plate of Muscovy glass; yet I know a way, bv which 'tis easy enough to hear one speak through a wall a yard thick. It has not yet been thoroughly examined how far Otacousticons may be improved, nor what other ways there may be of quickening our hearing, or conveying sound through other bodies than the air." He assures the reader that he has 'by the help of a distended wire propagated the sound to a very considerable distance in an in- stant." Again, in the Repository of Arts, September I, 1821, there is a description of an instrument mvented by the electrician, Wheatstone, and called a "telephone." "Who knows but by this means the music of an opera performed at the King's Theatre may ere long be simultaneouslv enjoyed at Hanover Square Rooms, the City of London Tavern, and even at the Horn's Tavern at Kennington, the sounds traveling like gas through snug conductors from the main labora- tory of harmony in the Haymarket to distant parts of the metropolis ? . . . And if music be capable of being thus conducted, perhaps words of speech may be susceptible of the same means of propagation," Sixteen years later Page, an American, found THE TELEPHONE 143 that a magnetic bar would emit sounds when ex- «?Jr s ''r ^*^ -a^netizations and Z oolls o n h ?y '■^P''">' approaching the traversed hv /'^^' '""^"u"* *° ^ ^^' 'P'^'^^ <^oiI traversed by a current, he obtained a sound termed the "magnetic tick." De la Rive Gass"ot a"soft^ron"h ^^"^^'•'^-' ^he same phenom^n'n in ment tCth^-^ surrounded by a helix, at the mo- ment that this hehx was traversed by a current rZed th''' ^''''■'''•^"' '^^'^^"^^ freq/ently S rupted they gave rise to a distinct sound of con- siderable intensity, and when the interruotions were sufficiently rhythmic and rapid a " usTcal note ensued. '"pm, a i..usicai ^uhv^uJ Bourseul, a Frenchman, who in 18^4 of sS Ur^'^l °"/^^ ^'^^^"^ transmisS lead^ ^Snn ' ^" u^^'^y ^° ^^^t ^" this would lead. Suppose," he savs, "that a man sDeak«i near a movable disk sufficiently pHaTfe to^ose none of he vibrations of the voice, that this disk a baTerv^ '"'^'^ '"u^ '^''^^^^ the currents fmr^ a battery you may have at a distance another vtoH^f "'" --"'taneously executf thT^lm: vmrations . . It is certain that in the more by elmrichy" ' '"'"'' '^''''' "'" ^^ transmS A few years afterward Philip Reis betran his powers^ of r "^ '°"^'>' *^^ h""^«" voice its powers of transmission were of a limited order Improvements in the musical tele^one were made by succeeding inventors; but^it was not 144 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT until 1S76, wlun Alcxandir ( iraliain P.cll and TClislm (Iray, workiiijjf separately and without col- lusion, each produced a sj)eakinf; telephone, that the dream of articulatinjj; telephone became realized. Strange to relate, both inventors ajiplied for patents on the same day, February 14th. The question of jiriority led to a celebrated law-suit, and ended in a coniiiromise, one company taking up the patents of both inventors. Hell, however, had made imjjortant developments in his instru- ment, while Clray did but little to improve his in- vention after ai)plyitig for a patent. As every one is aware, a telephone consists of a transmitter and a receiver, the former being the instrument into which words are 'Sjxiken, the latter the in- strument which is applied to the ear. The receiver has rcmainetl virtually the same as described in Bell's patent, but this is not the case with the transmitter, which is to-day another device altogether. In lieu of the original mag- netic teleijhone, the carbon transmitter, involving the use of a battery, is now universally emplo}'cd. This invention is due to Edison, who devised it in T877, soon after the first Rell telephone was made. It was subsequently replaced by the microphone of Hughes. The lines used for telephone purposes are, so far as erection, interment submersion, and mode of insulation are concerned, about the same as ordinary telegraphs. The vast superiority of copper wire to iron for long circuits is shown by the fact that Rysselburg and others have spoken clearly to a distance of over 1,000 miles through a copper wire insulated on poles, whereas Preece PNEUMATIC TUBES ,43 ^nllS^TZ^Zi" "'">■ "'y ''" ">= world, life, on iis H.'™-;, S '"-' " '■'™»''''>- "f 'I""/ Tlie „ ,„ , • '" "" °" "s economic side "4gnrS iirKr-,', '*i;"""^' ^>^'™' -»■ the Po,'; Oftv'f"' ™l"il.t»l»tch controlled by ticiuufcd is tlnf nf Vi, ' sometimes an- Clark between the CeS J i '|53 by Lat.mer telegraph stations hi T^U"f ^^[-f' ^^^''^"^c were connected bv a t T '*''*^'""^ inches in diameter^nd to -r , '7' ""^-i'^'^ ceptacles containing' batchcW Jnl ^""^- ^^'- piston-wise in tlio tnK telegrams, getting by the prTaZi^oul^^^^^^^^ ^'"""^'^ •* In 1858 Varlev infmJn . "^^^"""^ ^t one end. used in con unc on w th tl?'"'''"''''^^ ''' *« ^e for the purpose of reH/r.- ^ ^^^""'" P^neiplc same tube ' The system^ "^ '^"T^u' ^^""^ ^'^^ Post Office until th^rl ^"^ '" ■*^^' ''^"^'^ ^^ the some forty mde of nnf' "°>' '"London alone tion toitsLe orpostaUnd tn' '"'^f-' ^" ^^'^"- the pneumatic desnatch i i 'f ^'S'^ purposes, for internal conS ca. L • 'l''^''\^' ^"^P'oyed and also in shons for?h '? " ''^"'' ^«^^'«' «^tc.. bills between rcShie'rVSram^^^^^^^^^ '"' As to the time taken L f " *"^ counters. 146 THE STORY OF KAPID TRANSIT vacuum of seven pounds, one minute is required for a lengtli of i,ooo yards, and five and one-half nimutes for a length of 3,000 yards. In I'aris, where the i)ncumatic s>stem dates from 1866, large areas of the city have Ijeen covered by pneumatic circuits made up of iron pipes, round which long trains of "carriers" are despatched at intervals of fifteen minutes. A similar arrange- ment is also followed in Berlin and Vienna and in the cities of the United States. Notwithstand- ing all the developments which have taken place, however, in other departments of rapid locomo- tion, the pneumatic despatch has made com- paratively few strides, and the application of its prmciple on a large scale is a problem for the future. Before concluding this chapter it may be worth while to glance back at the conditions which formerly obtained at the Post Office. Under the postal regime of 1820 it took as long a time to convey a letter from Kingsland to Camberwell, a distance of only five miles, as some twenty years later sufficed for its transmission from the Scottish to the English capital. The mails were first sent by the railway on November 11, 1830; as the railways extended the Post Office authorities lost no time in avail- ing themselves of the means which railways offer for expediting the transmission of letters. Before the morning mails were established a letter from Brighton for a town in Yorkshire was stopped fourteen hours in London, as it could not have been transmitted until eight o'clock at night ; but it' now reaches its destination (200 miles, say, from London) several hours before it would POSTAL SYSTEMS ,47 formerly have left the Post Office; ajrain the Liver,„M,l merchant receive, his foreiin. etters ot thirty hours after\var«J bv'^EarJri[^i"h ""■ "f '^>'. ^r'-^^^'-' invented oy i-arlc, lias been adopted bv everv imi)ort-inf country m the world. ' " ""1"^"^'" svstmM'^M '''''^*''' character of the mostem with reference to the savinj^ of time it IS now possible to ,K,st a letter in a letter box' in divelf ?;•;?' '" ''^^- '^ '''''''' •" ^"^' ^'-n an n motk n Ih ''"^''f ^'^^town while the train is in motion. The postman has merely to re-sort it at Its proper street and slip it in the letterbox of Its destined recipient. Railways carrying the mails are obliged to observe the greatest punctualitv. Verv heavv fines are imposed upon them if thev are late ami tis he same vyith the mail-boats.' Governmen tipulates that the duration of the Channe vova ' e shall not exceed two hours and five minutes hT> tween the Admiralty Tier at Dciver a id t e JeuT at Ca ais JUit inasmuch as this journev is frp quent y done under an hour, it w H b" seen that" cons^erable margin is allowed for these days of The Post Office department of the United States IS responsible for much of the quickeninl Irs^'so Zs 'h'"'- "'"'^ ^"""^ *he last ten A^Sn:;^-|^^^^ 148 THE STORy OF RAPID TRANSIT CHArXER VIII THE BICYCLE— MOTOR CYCLES When we -onsidcr that it is possible for a human animal to propel himself on a pair of wheels without the aid of steam, electricity, or any other agent btit his own muscular power, along the earth's surface at the rate of forty-one rniles an hour, it is clear that in the bicycle man- kind possesses extraordinary means of rapid transit. Such a means in the eighteenth century a^ ' the first thirty years of the nineteenth would of itself have revolutionized the mails and despatch carrying system ; but its invention, or rather de- velopment, being reserved until the era of rail- ways, of telegraphs, and even of telephones, the economic value of the bicycle has been greatly lessened. Yet it is not a mere instrument of sport and exercise ; although even in that character the benefit it confers upon mankind is enormous ; it is everywhere, in nearly all civilized countries, an important convenience, oflfering facilities for transit far superior to the horse, and hardly in- ferior to the road motor, besides doing without the latter's cost, compkxity and disadvantages. The modern cycle is the lineal descendant of the "dandy" or "hobby-horse" of the early vears of the nineteenth century, which is to be found caricatured in countless prints of that epoch. It was a bicycle with wheels attached to a bar of wood rudely shaped like the body of a horse, the THE BICYCLE 149 rider sittiiiR- astn.Ic it anu two co>f-whei-ls wliiih oiKTati- ..n a s(|uart' axle. \'„„ will lUThaps think t he man hchnid has hard lahor— not s<, Ironi the velocity of the Hy-wheel. tn^^ether with th.^ aid of a lever, which is in the hand of a person in front stetTin^. he has not often to put his feet to the treadles. Mr. M'Donahl intends, when he shall have nnproved the friction of the hodv of the carriage, to present the same to the Societ'y of Arts ; and as he flesires to receive no cm.)lument for the same, he hopes it will come into general In the same year there is recorded another ex- ample of these so-called "self-moving carriages" invented by a cari)enter of Huckland. and another, a \\elshman, describes a lever-action machine which accommodated three persons, and "went with ease eight miles an hour." All of these self- moving carriages were to be propelled bv levers. Velocipedes," or "carriages to go "withouc horses. mamvelociters," "bivectors." "tri- yectors, "accelerators," "allepodes" are among the names of machines brought forth in the course of the next forty years. Yet, although the hobby-horse graduallv dis- appeared from fashionable circles, it had shown that even along an ordinary road it could go longer period. In 1830 we learn that certain "im- proved dandy-horses were supplied to the post- men in a rural district, where thev were used for many years. But not being replaced when they wore out (except by the railway), the postmen had once again to trudge on foot. 153 THE STORY OF KAl'ID IRANSIT Ten years later. Kirkpatrick M'Millan. a Scotchiuau, made a wooden l>iivcle with cranks, side levers, eonnectinjj hmIs, and pedals. It was nsed with considerable snecess for years, and to its inventor, therefore. w«)uld seem to helonjr the honor of inakinjj the first hicvcle vMh cranks. IVevionsly, M'Millan had tried his ranks and side levers on a tricycle in 1833. After him came (iavin Dalzell, a Lam Llii-e cooper, with a crank-driven bicycle ; an ' in 1.S62. Messrs. May- hew, of Chelsea, exhibited a three-wheel vel«)ci- pedc, the front wheel steerinj,' as in a modem bicycle or the old hobby-horse, the other two smaller wheels beinjj placed tojjether behind. A pair o, cranks was fitted to the front wheel, and on '!iis vel(Kipede it was iwssible to attain a speed ( over ten miles an hour on a snKxnh track, luuir years later, the firm of Michaux. in Paris, .sent over to I<:ngland a perfecte«l bicvcle, which, in spite of its weight and clumsiness as compared with the modern machine, seemed then a miracle of grace and lightness. Several of these machines found their way to the London gymnasiums, and became a popular form of sport on a smooth track, (^ne of the earliest long journeys taken in England was by Mr. Mayall. the photog- rapher, who mastered the machine sufficiently to ride from London to Redhill, in an attempt to reach Brighton; "he returned from Redhill by train, exhausted, and covered with dust and glory." It was only a few months before that Mayall had seen his first bicycle at Spencer's gymnasium. "The gymnasium" was cleared." he writes, "Mr. Turner took off his coat, grasped the handles of the machine, and with a short run, rriK BICYCLE '53 ami to iny imctise sun.risr. vauln-d ot, to it. and imu.nif hKs fat oti lUv troarlUs. „,a,k. ,he circuit of tiK- r.joui. Uf were soim- half-(l«,zcn .«fK«ctu- tor». ami I shall nevrr for^ut onr astotiishmnu at tlie s.^'lH ol Mr. I ..rntr uhirlin^r |,i,„,^.,^ round thr r.M.tn. sutu.^r on a JKir alH.vo a pair of wIutIs in a lux- that ouKht. as we inn.H.-etitlv supjKised, to lall down iinmedialely he juniiwd off the Kroiuul. ' It nnist |)<- re.nemf)ered that up to that peri(i ^'^^ ^^^^ ^•-^^'•t»'>» than he could walk half the distance. In 1869 Mayall started for Rrighton at 8 a.m. and arriv^nl at die Old Ship at tea-time, llie head-porter, who had never seen a bicycle, was puzzled about the train the new arrival had come by. He was told that no tram had brought him. "Did you drive or ride a horse? Did you F?Tf?^S^?^^^^.-ivllf;*. A+kifc !■ .S 154 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT walk ?" were next asked. "No," was the reply, "I came down on those two wheels vonder in the corner : and if you live long enough you will see thousands of others which will carry travelers to Brighton in half the time it took me to come." In 1894 Mr. Wridgway traveled to Brighton from London and back again in just a little more than five and a half hours. In June, 1873, it was decided to test the new machine by a ride from London to John o' Groat's, the most northerly point of the kingdom Four tourists, Messrs. Spencer, Hunt, Leaver, and Wood, took part in this long-distance ride, on machmes which, although of the most im- proved type in 1873, have little resemblance to the Coventry productions of to-day. The four were escorted for a few miles of their way by friends, but soon distanced their escorts, and that evening the message came to London that they had reached Buckden, sixty-five miles away. On the second day they reached Newark, thus achieving forty-three miles. On the ninth day they gained Edmburgh, and the fifteenth day saw the party ^fely landed at John o' Groat's, 861 miles. This was the first long-distance ride on record, and attracted a great deal of attention; for It brought home forcibly that a new factor of speed had been introduced, which, although inferior to the railway, yet was inferior to it alone. How amazed even the riders would have been to know that twenty-one years later the dis- tance between London and Edinburgh would hav^ been covered on a bicycle in twenty-eight hours' XT ^1* il ^^^ "°* '°"Sr after their exploit that H. S. Tharp rode from London to York in THE BICYCLE 155 twenty-two and a half hours. In 1876 Snivthe and Caston rode 205 miles in twenty-two hours, the actual time in the saddle being seventeen hours seventeen minutes. Apropos of Tharp's performance we may compare it with the adver- tised journey of the regular stage-coach two centuries ago: "York Four Days Coach Begins The i8th April, 1703. All that are desirous to pass from London to York, or from York to London, or a"y other place on that road, let them repair to the Black Swan in Holbourne, in London, and to the Black Swan in Coney Street, York, at each of whi h places they mav be received in a stage-coach every Monday, Wednesday and Fri- day, which performs tl whole journey in four days, if God permits." A copy of the foregoing IS still preserved at the Black Swan, ^'ork. But the innovation was not to come into gen- eral use, for the purpose of rapid transit, without opposition. The medical faculty decried it as injurious to the health, and the coachmen and hackney cabmen followed the example of the blacksmiths of 1819 toward the hobby-horse. In August, 1876, for instance, the driver of the St. Albans' coach lashed with his whip a bicyclist who was passing, while the guard, who had pro- vided himself beforehand with an iron ball on the end of a rope, threw it between the spokes of the machine and dragged it and the rider to the ground. For this assault the driver was fined £2, the guard £5, and a further penalty imposed of £10 for the damage of the machine. But cycling was not to be damned by the prejudice of ill-natured or ignorant persons, con- 156 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT S '? P^^l'- ^^"^T *''^ ^'■^^er of the day. In 1876, John Keen, who announced himself as the professional b cycle champ.on, rode fifty mil^sn n ?if ^n '' -"'^ """"^^^ ^«rty-five seconds and in the ollowmg year W. Tomes, of Portsmouth teTs^cttls:" ^^^^^""^ ^ '"^'^ ^" three^n^:^ As an illustration of the fact that the future of cychng was not to be limited to sport a one the H.shop of Manchester publicly stated th^t a brother bishop had suggested the use of the bi- (Ind Zt'eAT''- uf-"" ^'^^ "'^^ '^'^ conference (and, ndeed the public generally) to appreciate the value of the cycle, that this statement was ?e! CarHiT'\-"'''f °^ ^^''^^'''- The JJishop of Carlisle facetiously regretted the hilliness of his diocese remarking that "if there was one thing a bicycle objected to, it was going up hill " Thf practical use which would be made ^of the cycle by hundreds even thousands, of the clerg? throughout the length and breadth of the lan^ isJsri'i^ T n ^7't''- Yet. in this year , "The bicycle has come to the front and is fight- ng for existence Dimly prefigured in the myth- ical centaur, and then in the hobby-horse of mediaeval games, and attempted in the veloci- pede, now half a century old; long prejudiced by the evident superiority of wings to wheels, the bicycle has now surmounted the difficulties of construction, and adapted itself to human capa- bilities— it augments at least three-fold the loco- motive powers of an ordinary man. A bicyclist can perform a journey of a hundred miles in one THE BICYCLE '57 (lay with less fatigue than he could walk thirty: fifty miles-that is. from London to Brighton- as easily as he could walk ten; and a daily journey to and fro between London and the distant sub- urbs with just the usual results of moderate ex- In August 1879, H. Blackwell, jun., traveled on the "steel steed" from London to John o' Uroat s in eleven days four hours, while at Stam- ford Bridge, on a prepared track, a mile was run se^conds" '" ^^'"^ minutes fifty-two and one-fifth When, in 1880, it was decided by the municipal authorities of Coventry to mount its police offi- cers upon the new machine, the circumstance created wide-spread interest. One commentator, however, suggested that a defaulting debtor pur- sued by a constable mounted on a tricycle and armed with a summons, sounds more like a hor- Tenn son'T *^^" ^ P^bable reality, and quoted " New men, who in the flying of a wheel Cry down the past," as suitabK '.o the innovation. It may be men- tioned thai the tricycle dated from 1878, and was the invention of James Starley of Coventry. It was soon found posible to make great speed on the tricycle, and five years after its introduc- tion i^. H. K. Cosset covered over 200 miles in the course of twenty-four hours on the road. At lhi\ *r^' V ''°"'"f.' '* "'"'t be borne in mind that the ordinary bicycle consisted of one great wheel five feet in height, and a smaller one bc- ik 158 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT hind, only eighteen inches in diameter. The "safety" bicycle, as it was called, did not become general until i8yo, and the "ordinary" held its own, until the advent of the inflated tire made the new machine superior both from the point of view of speed and comfort. What was regarded as an astonishing feat occurred in 1886, when G. P. Mills traveled on a bicycle from Land's End to John o' Groat's, a distance of 861 miles, in five days one hour forty- five minutes. Some weeks later the same cyclist rode a tricycle over the same course in five days ten hours, or thirty hours faster than it had ever been done before. As time went on, great and still greater speed came to be attained on the cycle — speed which would have caused the early champions of the "silent steed" to gasp in astonishment. In 1890, in a race viewed by the Prince of Wales, F. J. Osmond accomplished a mile in one minute fifty- five seconds on an old-fashioned high bicycle. But the limit of speed on this form of machine had now been reached: the "safety" and the in- flated tire rendered new records possible, and the "ordinary" was soon afterward completely super- seded. Although the cyclists had already surpassed the speed attained by the fast coaches in the halcyon days of coaching, yet the coaching re- vival was to witness several new records, the most celebrated being the performance of July, 1888, b-'tween London and Brighton. In that month, James Selby drove the Brighton coach from the "White Horse Cellars," Piccadilly, via Croydon, Merstham, Red Hill, Horley, Crawley, THE BICYCLE 159 Hand Cross Cuckfield. and Clayton to Brighton and back, a distance of 108 miles, in seven hours fifty minutes. This remarkable feat was done with sixteen changes of horses. It was taken as a challenge by the cyclists, who at once attempted to beat it. At first they met with ill success, but at last the journey was done in eight hours thirty-six minutes nineteen and two-fifth seconds, by four riders using the same machine and dividing the journey into four stages. This, however, was not considered satis- factory. P. C. Wilson and M. A. Holbein made an attempt, single handed, but failed, and it was not until 1890 on an inflated-tire "safety" cycle that F. Shorland effected the journey in seven hours nmeteen minutes. This achievement cre- ated great enthusiasm, and was commonly re- garded as an unbreakable record. Yet it was not ong before S. F. Edge, not only for the first time beat the coach time for the outward journey (three hours eighteen minutes twenty-five sec- onds), but did the whole in seven hours two minutes fifty seconds. This was the fastest time ever achieved on a public turnpike by any vehicle whatsoever in ureat Britain, and therefore probably in the world. Yet fast as it was, it was to be beaten again and again, before the advent of the motor car was to demolish all road records; and in 1894, C. J VVridgway accomplished the excursion in hve hours thirty-five minutes thirtv-two seconds. Even a tricycle, ridden by W. R. Toft, achieving It in six hours twenty-one minutes thirty seconds. As to other examples of the velocity which can be, and has been attained on the road by means I' l60 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT of the cycle, we might mention that the journey from London to York, 197 miles, has been done in eleven hours fifty-one minutes; and London to Edinburgh, 400 miles, in twenty-eight hours twenty-seven minutes; and London to Liverpool in thirteen hours four minutes. One hundred miles have been covered in four hours thirty-nine minutes twenty-eight seconds, and half that dis- tance in two hours seven minutes and fifteen sec- onds. Great as these instances are, they are sur- passed by the speed of the cycle on a prepared track, where 100 miles have been done in two hours thirty-three minutes forty seconds; and fifty miles in one houf fourteen minutes fifty-five seconds. The introduction of the motor cycle, driven by steam or electricity, has naturally influenced long-distance records. Early in the development of the Daimler motor certain French firms turned their attention to it in very small sizes for propelling tricycles. In 1896 a Dion tricycle ran in the Paris-Marseilles race, making an average speed over the whole distance of 14.8 miles an hour. In 1899 a motor tricycle accomplished 28.1 miles an hour, being fitted with a I ^ h.-p. motor, or twice the power of the first mentioned. A year or two later these tricycles were fitted with 2.25 h.-p. motors, and some with two-speed gear. They soon became exceedingly popular machines, many persons ac- complishing long journeys regularly upon them. In the Paris-Malo race of 1899, 231 miles were covered in seven hours eleven minutes, an aver- age of 32.2 miles per hour. We have already seen that a motor bicycle had MOTOR CARRIAGES i6i been made by Daimler as far back as i88<; but for the next ten years only spasmo,?ic efforts a mproven,ent occurred. They' offered, of course the several advantages of the ordinary bicvclJ Jeeri^f •'"■' '""'^ '•■'">■"'"' "^ Hshtness, easy dimSnr ^^' °^ ""^^^^- ^^'^^^^ ^^-'^ °^ -^"- biJyci?^ Wolfmuller invented his petrol motor The cycle, as a useful means of transit, is in universal employment by doctors, clergyn^en am" ta^es th'e i" *^^ l"'^"'"^^- I" certaS.' dti;s h bv rlrW P Tk°^ -^^ '"^' tram-car. and omnibus, by clerks and busmess men and women. In the Th^tSdr '' ' ^"""•■•^^ '"^^^^^ °f progression! Ihe tradesmen s emissary adopts it in lieu of the horse and cart for the delivery of parcels ^nd it js in common use by rural postmen!'''6n1he whole, the cycle as a means of rapid transit dl serves a prominent place in contemporary econ- CHAPTER IX MOTOR CARRIAGES We have already seen in an earlier chapter how the necessity for the speedy conveyance of pas- sengers and merchandise came to be widely felt in England early in the last century. If Svays had not appeared upon the scene-the develop- 1 62 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT nient of a new agent of speed would have been inevitable, and that agent would have been the motor car. Railway traveling for the past sev- enty years has been at best a compromise. The ideal is, of course, a conveyance capable of trav- eling easily and swiftly to any destination, and not restricted to lengths of rail fixed along a cer- tain route. Railways promptly checked the de- velopment of the steam locomotive for the com- mon roads. It was found unnecessary to strive toward the production of a light, speedy vehicle, when a heavy one on an iron track would do as well. Thus, all the early locomotives were what we now designate as motor cars: and are by no means of recent introduction. Du Halde relates that about the year 1700 the Jesuit missionaries in China invented certain mechanical curiosities for the entertainment of the Emperor Kang-hi. They caused a wagon to be made of light wood, about two feet long, in the middle whereof they placed a brazen vessel full of live coals, and upon them an eolipile, the wind of which issued through a little pipe upon a sort of wheel made like the sail of a windmill. The little wheel turned another with an axle-tree, and by that means the wagon was set a-running for two hours together. The same contrivance was likewise applied to a little ship with four wheels; the eolipile was hidden in the middle of the ship, and the wind issuing out of the two small pipes filled the little sails and made them turn round a long time. It is a matter of conjecture whether this de- notes a kind of steam or hot-air engine. It is, however, significant, that not many years after- MOTOR CARRIAGES 163 ward CuR:not produml a steam-carriairc in Paris vvh.ch after having, been proved in fficiint was abandoned, and is still to' be seen i„ he V^' serva o,rc des Arts and Metiers. In 772 an st'amwiJh?"" ';'''''' l^'--^^" -perimenS with Torl^J^ ^'^"^ to employing it as a substitute for an mal power. Evans was sanguine enough to declare that steam would one day bL the Prime agen of locomotion; and frequently prXted that the time would come wheS travelers Sd n»ir"'''r^ °" ^°°^ ^"'•"P'><<^ roads at mZn mdes an hour or 300 miles a day by a device re- sembhng h.s own. During the next thirty vears innumerable were the attempts of EnglLrin L u J appeared encouraging: for once they had succeeded with their en|in? they need alreadv".'- .'^°"! ''""^"y^' ^^«"^"t hig^h^ajs already existed along which to conduct traffic In the part of this book relating to railways men: tion has already been made of the Co% shman Trevethick s experiments. Griffiths introduced a steam-carnage in 182 1 ; another by Gordon in the followmg year was contrived to%vork inside a large iron drum, as a squirrel runs m h^ re! n^lTevt'nfnl^^Hr ^"'^'^•>' abandoned. G^r- ney next produced h,s engine, which was marked y clever construction, the objectionable noise bang overcome by cau^.n^ the waste steam to enter a chamber from which it issued with a teady and noiseless current to the funn.1 In R.^h '\n^.T''^^ ^'^^ i«"rney ium \.2L to field ' Vltf T' °'^^:'" ^,r»^^'''»^^« ''^'^^ i" the held. Dance Maccroni. dutrch, and Hancock each produced a road locomotive. In iSsTgut. l64 THK STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT ney had three steam-carriages running for the conveyance of passengers on the road between Chehenham and Gloucester, four trips being made daily, at a greater rate of speed than that of the stage-coaches on the same nine miles of road and at half their fares. This success betokened the permanency of the new enterprise, but prejudice vyas strong; a formidable opposition was organized, injurious reports were circulated and all travelers cautioned against trusting themselves to the dangers of steam. A more effectual hindrance was offered by the parochial authorities, who covered a por- tion of the road to a depth of eighteen inches with loose stones. While attempting to surmount this impediment the working axle of the engine was broken and a stop thereby put to steam locomo- tion in this quarter, for a time. Ere the inventor could renew it, local opposition had crushed the whole enterprise. While this was happening to automobiles at Cheltenham, Hancock started a steam-carriage — the Infant — to run between Stratford and London. It excited much attention owing to the compactness and efficiency ol its arrange- ments, and led to attempts in other quarters. It was even proposed by the more sanguine pro- jectors to run steam omnibuses in all the great thoroughfares of London — a consummation which three-quarters of a century has not sufficed to bring about — as well as in the suburban dis- tricts and coaches for Birmingham and Bristol. Hancock built nine carriages altogether, the first being the Infant and the Era, built in 183 1-2. The latter was intended to run the coach between iii MOTOR ( AKRIAOliS 165 Lon.loi. and Cirocinvich. I,nt tlic compaiiv f„r wind, ,t was built n. vcr ^ot into working' nj^. Another, however, the London and I'a.hlinfjton Steani Carriaj^o Company, was started in 18^2 and Hancock s n..xt carriage was bnilt to its order. Ihe fourth, he ran daily for twenty-four l66 THE STORV OF RAPID TRANSIT wcfks between Finsfniry Square and Pentonville. Hut althouK'H thousands of passengers were car- ried by these vehicles, yet commercial success vyas not very promising for town service at the time, and extended practise and experience were required to make what, even with good roads, would have proved attractive and successful vehicles. Frequent mishaps occurred, and it is Steam Road Coach, 1833. to be feared that the comfort of the vehicles was not even up to the standard of the time. The passengers were all in front of the machinery, but with powerful and unbalanced engines, and with the rough chain-gear, the vibration was con- siderable. One, for example, had cylinders no less than nine inches in diameter, and these engines had no fly-wheels. Yet, after all, these things were matters for improvement, which would have naturally followed demand for the coaches, and for improved tools and methods of building. When Summers and Ogle were examined be- MOTOR CARRIAGES l6. fore the Select Committee of the Hous' .f ( om- nions in 1831, they stated that with ,1.0 of the two steam-carriages of their Cf-nstruction, they had frequently made thirty miles an hour. It was certainly a darinj; thinp the^c men did in usinfi: steam pressures of over -'(xj lbs. per scjuarc mch, in those days of inn -rfet t boilers. The coaches built by Mil about 1840 would carry nme pa.s.sengers and ;. ru! l[asiin, done in a siniflc day. But all of these steam coaciu s and caniaj^cs were one after another abandoned, until after the dKsappearance of Hill's carriage in 1813 not one was left on the road, and none are, so far as is known, preserved. The boorish and unjust treat- ment meted out to these pioneers effectually put an end to progress in steam road locomotion, so far as Great Uritain was concerned, and further harsh and narrow-minded legislation from 1861 to 1878 prevented England from taking advan- tage of the progress which had been made on the Continent. Great Britain had for half a century been as near to a practical self-moving carriage as was France when Serpollet, Bollee, Scotte, and De Dion and Bouton began in the early nineties, and before the celebrated invention of Gottlieb Darmler enabled Levassor to build his high- speed internal coml)ustion motor, and Benz had demonstrate' its practicability. England also possessed the Daimkr motor and was aware of Benz's labors, but it would have been futile to 1 68 TIIK STOKY OF RAPID TRANSIT attempt to make a motor carriage when English- men were without the freedom to use their own roads. r, The common roads were consecrated to the uses of horses, latterly of cyclists; to use a mechanically propelled vehicle upon them was MOTOR CARRIAGES 169 considered an outrage. The opponents, there- fore, of rapid transit upon the common roads retarded progress and experiment for full sixty years. ^ Nevertheless, although British inventors were denied facilities for progress in their country, the iintish public was very quick to reap the benefits slowly derived through foreign genius and in- dustry. France lent free roads to Bollee, Ser- pollet, Le Blant, and others turned out a succes- sion of ingenious steam vehicles, but it was not imtil the advent of the Daimler motor and the Benz motor cars that any real, rapid, and con- tinuous progress was made. We have now witnessed the successful employ- ment of steam for traction, and while the world is anxiously waiting for the development of elec- tricity a new agent appears. Experiments had long been made with gas and hot air as the motive power of engines: science was now ready to experiment with oil and carburetted air It was knovyn that the lighter oils, such as petro- leum spirit (petrol), or gasoline, or benzoline will all evaporate readily in presence of air and espe- cially in air in motion. When the air is saturated with the oil, I.C., contains 17.5 per cent., it will buri giving a fine white light. Such a mixture ot oil, vapor, and air will also burn with explosive rapidity under the circumstances of its combus- tion in a gas or oil cylinder. Gottlieb Daimler, who had been for some years occupied in gas-engine construction, turned his attention to the production of small light petrol motors, made highly powerful by their capability of running continuously at very high speeds of iSJi?^ i rT 170 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT rotation. In 1884 he patented his first high- speed gas-engine, and in the following year ap- plied his improved invention to a bicycle. This machine was rather clumsy in appearance, but it excited then, and does yet, the deepest interest. For it, Daimler devised the first of the carburet- tors, of which there are now so many for carbu- retting air with mineral and other spirit for motor purposes. The cy Under was cooled by an en- closed fan wheel which sent air round the cylin- ders within a jacket. Daimler's new engines, many of which were made for launches or fixed engine purposes, finally led to what became celebrated as the Daimler motor, whidi was introduced into Eng- land about 1892. It did not, however, obtain universal recognition until the successes of the Panhard and Levassor and the Peugeot car- riages (known as Daimler carriages as distinct from steam-carriages) appeared between 1894 and 1896. A description of the principles and mechanism of the Daimler motor will enable the reader to understand the idea of motors gener- ally, as applied to motor bicycles, tricycles, and carriages, which have introduced such' a power- ful element of speed into the common road traf- fic of the world. To begin with then, all these modern gas and oil engines are really hot-air engines, i.e., in which the expansion in volume of air when heated is employed to give rise to pressure on a moving piston, that expansion being eflfected in the cylinder containing that piston by the ex- plosive or rapid combustion of a small charge of combustible, such as ordinary coal gas or the V > •a I o O C < m 172 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT vapor from naphtha, or petroleum spirit, or from petroleum when vaporized under higher tem- perature in presence of air. This heating, ex- pansion, and cooling of the air is all done there- fore in the working cylinder. In the earlier hot-air engines of Stirling and Ericsson, on the other hand, t»vo pistons were used, one acting merely as a displacer piston for passing cooled air, wnich had done work in a working cylinder, back into a working chamber, where it was heated, and being again heated escaped to the working piston which was in a position to be pushed out, while the displacer piston was al- most still. Such were of necessity slow speed engines, large for their power, and very waste- ful as heat engines in spite of certain theories. The modern light, spirit, or gas engine has a single piston, which in its descent draws air into the upper part of the cylinder. The rush- ing current of air creates a partial vacuum in one of the tubes, the lower end of which dips into the petroleum. By this means a small quantity of oil is drawn up scent-spray fashion, and rushes with the air into the cylinder. The latter, then, is now full of air, with which is mixed the "petrol" vapor, or, in other words, carburettei air. The return or rising stroke of the piston taking place, the carburetted air is forced into the top of the cylinder at a pressure of about 45 lbs. per square inch.^ When the piston has reached its topmost position in the cylinder, the temperature of the air and vapor mixture being raised by its com- pression, it is readily ignited by the incandescent walls of the "ignition tube." This being effected a ., MOTOR CARRIAGES 173 just as the piston is ready to begfin its down stroke, the temperature of the air (about 1800° F.) naturally enhances its vohnne twenty-fold; there is no escape but by the downward move- ment of the piston. When the piston reaches the end of its downward stroke, an exhaust valve is lifted, and the products of combustion of the vapor and air forming the last working charge escape into a subjacent passage ; the oil supply is brought by a pipe situated in some convenient part of the carriage. A point to be remembered is that the engine makes four strokes, or two revolutions, at least, for one working stroke, a cycle or series of operations first used in the Otto gas engines. The very high temperature, due to the combustion of the charge in the cylinder, would heat the latter also to a very high temperature, were it not that in- genious means are adopted for keeping it suffi- ciently cool. This consists of a slow current of water passing round the cylinder in a "water jacket," the casting containing the valves being similarly protected. As a considerable quantity of water would otherwise have to be carried for cooling purposes, several kinds of water coolers have been invented to meet this difficulty. It is clear, therefore, that, with the exception of the means and apparatus for c( diverting the petrol into vapor, the Daimler motor is really a gas engine. In the Renz and De Dion engines this characteristic is even more apparent, for in these instead of a spray-making carburettor, as above described, a suppl> of strongly carburet- ted air is provided by a petrol surface evaporator, which the engine receives just as a gas engine 174 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT receives gas and mixes it with air sufficient for combustion, more or less, according to reciuire- ments. * Carl Benz of Mannheim in 1886 took out a patent for an oil-spirit motor tricycle, the fore- runner of the Benz car now so widely known In this car the piston in the cylinder was con- nected to a vertical crank-shaft. In the second car made by Benz he ran at about ten miles an hour, while two years later, in 1888. he secured a speed of from twelve to fifteen miles an hour 1 he inventor seems to have given his cars more hberal size of engine for such small vehicles than many succeeding makers in their first efforts. There IS no governor on the Benz motor, speed being controlled by the point or period of Ignition of the oil vapor, as already described, and by means of a throttle valve. Thus the dri- ver may vary the speed of the motor by varying the quantity of the mixture from about 250 to 900 revolutions per minute without leaving his fu^^'> ^he maximum of the Benz motor car in t^. {erlin-Leipzig race in September, 1890, was tn.i t> seven miles an hour. About the same time several English invent- ?/S o Pft<^"ted petroleum motors, notablv But er & Roots, but it was not until MM. Pan- hard & Levassor, of Paris, acquired the Daimler motor rights, and began to exploit it in the man- utacture of carriages, that the new automobile became popular. Up to that time, the future of self-propelled carnages seemed to be solely either with steam or electricity. In 1880 the elder Bollee of Mans constructed a steam coach, which went at the ■■^■- ■, . I 176 THE STOHY OF RAPID TRANSIT rate of ten miles an hour, and numerous auto- mobiles were built during that decade. In 1889 Leon Serpollet invented and made the instan- taneous generator or boiler now widely known by his name. As at first constructed, this gen- erator w. - composed of a large number of flat tubes, with only a capillary water space. The tubes V ere surrounded by a coating of cast-iron, which rendered them very heavy, but protected the steel tube from rapid corrosion in the high heat of the furnace in and above which they were placed. It also acted as a heat accumula- tor during the time when the engines were stopi)ed, and no ■ water was being pumped through for evaporation. The boiler gave very high pressure steam considerably superheated. Various modifications of form subsequently took place, and in 1895 o"e of Serpollet's car- riages was sent to England and tested, the trials exciting considerable scientific interest. But by that time as many as ninety oil or gas driven machines on the Daimler principle had been turned out in Paris, and in order to test respective merits of the two species of automobile, a race was organized between Paris and Rouen, 79.4 miles. The race was won by a De Dion & Bouton steam tractor, to which was attached an ordinary landau. It made an average speed of twelve miles an hour and was shown at the first exhibition of motor cars in England, that organized by Sir David Salomons in October, 1894. But the superiority of steam was not lo be long maintained. Another race between Paris and Bordeaux, 735 miles, occurred in June, 1895, * lii lii MOTOR CARRIAGES ,77 "VI r tiic route in fortv-o i' it h.iiirc (,„■,, ■ 1? about twelve hundredweight. aSVu!; t 't"' a Peugeot car, also equipped with a DaimLr' motor, coming second Uaimler a drstaS^'o? !^r5^''"/'°"' ^.""^ *" Marseilles, f "'S'lance ot 1,060 mdes, no fewer fh;in thJr*. two vehicles started, a P^nhard motor cover ^ the distance m sixty-seven hours fort -U ref minutes, or an average speed of 15.62 mis ner hour over the whole of that long run There W .11 f -^ f ?"" ^^" ^'"""ff the competitors but all failed from one cause or another ono however, only owing to the break (?own'^?"f' P-r^^;^ f es, for Ihich it wa?'ooTavv ''' th^M'^^''''l ^ °^ °'«" st^3"i brake run bv the Marqms de Chasseloup-Loubat won the tt Tourntv oril!^; "•/^""^^>'' ^^^7. achfev^ng ine journey of 1441^ miles m seven hours forfv ?uifyrSi;?s^tk'rrhr ^" '^""^^'^^' nearly three t^ntt't'^n' S^r^ ^1^ :::?J;:;| thS"" •'P'l' *'^^" ^^^' Previous'^been ma^l'^^ tl^rty-six miles an hour being attained for'Xirt beJantnT?' ""^ T^^ '" "^^t^-* «rs quickly in?&i7 . ''''■'^- /" '^^ Paris-Dieppe race in 1897, a mean speed of twentv-five mJi^e .„ hour was reached/which pJCTihe au.omobn" 13 !!! i;i- 178 THR StORV OP RAPID TRANSIT on a par with the bicycle in the matter of speed over common roads. The Paris-Amsterdam race in 1898 showed 27. y miles an hour; in 1899 the V ersailles-Bordeaux race, 344 miles without a single stop, at an average of 30.2 miles for the whole journey, occasionally its speed reaching fifty miles an hour. This was accomplished on a Panhard motor car carrying two persons, weigh- ing one ton, and fitted with a twelve- to fifteen- horse motor. In the Unhed Kingdom, in 1896, after much agitation, the old restrictions were to a large extent removed, and the adoption of the motor and its constructiort in England instantly fol- lowed. The Daimler motor was employed to propel every form of luxuriously fitted carriage, private omnibus, sporting car, light delivery van or lorry. A glance at the frontispiece and at the dia- gram on page 175, to which the following key is given, will show the reader the modern petrol car in its most perfect form : B, B, cylinders ; C, crank chamber ; E, shaft ; F, change-speed gear case : H, transverse casing; G*, sliding spur wheels — low speed ; G*, sliding spur wheels — intermediate speed: G*. sliding spur wheels— top speed; H. H', H*. H», spur wheels; K, hand lever; K*, rods; K*. slotted quadrant; K', slot; J, water-jacketed brake drum; p, connecting rods; J-. foot pedal; L, hand levfr; L'. adjustable rod; L^ bell crank lever ; L', parallel lever ; L\ pivot : L", horizon- tal lever : L", ends of levers ; L^ pivots ; L", oper- ating rods : L», side brakes ; M, inclined pillar of steering gear; M', steering wheel; N, water MOTOR CARRIAGES 179 tank; O, circulating pump; V, startinjf han- dle^ H, petrol tank ; K^ cxi.aust box ; k'. escape . There is certainly one objectionable feature in the type of motors just described— speed is only attained by a change of gear in transit : that IS to say It is necessary to push the teeth of spur wheels into the gear while running in order to change the degree of speed, by aflfecting the St. '■^^^"•"^•""s per minute of the mmor- shaft Thus to change from three miles per hour to SIX miles, a pair of spur wheels had to be throvyn out of gear and another pair thrown in by a stroke of the hand, which would raise the speed of the counter-shaft from 220 to 440 revo' utions and so on. Of course a skilful motorist th/t th "'^^ """ clumsy mechanism so adroitly that the occupants of the car hardly became aware that its acceleration in feet per second underwent a change. On the otheM and ^he shocks and strains inflicted upon gear by less experienced drivers often wrought more ^dam! a ear ^ """"*^ ^"'"''^ running would do in As a method of avoiding all these drawbacks belt gear has been introduced. In the United States a very light and useful steam-carnage has been produced. The" are of simple construction, and carry fifteen trallons of water, which is sufficient for'a r un of a Im, wenty-fiye miles. A gallon of petroHs ? l8o THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT !iii( M i! i that the weight of the storajje batteries does not permit them to be employed except for short distances. In i8y8-yy a number of electrically driven cabs were tried in London ; but the experiment failed, and it was not until iy02 that the an- nouncement of Mr. Edison's improved storage battery opened up new possibilities for the elec- tric motor car. Very few of the present electrical motors run over forty miles without recharging, and that operation takes several hours. For the new battery, however, is claimed that it can be charged for a twenty-mile run in forty minutes The proportion of weight to power is said to be 53 lbs. to one horse-power. The Edison battery does not depreciate, there being no acid to eat away the metal, and it "will wear out several automobiles before succumb- ing itself." Moreover, "the cost of recharging the batteries will be about the same as gasoline, but there will be a great saving in the cost of maintenance, and also freedom from the annoy- ance of frequent stoppage of power." The cells are composed of tiny bricks of specially pre- pared iron and nickel. In charging and dis- charging oxvgen is driven from one metal to the other, and then back again through the action of a potash solution, and without corro- sion or waste. Experiments have been rnade with one consisting of twenty-one cells, weigh- ing altogether 332 lbs., and this propelled a "runabout" car Vixty-two miles over roads of varying quality and' grade. The run on com- paratively level ground with the same battery II ■; MOTOR CARRIAGES I8l was continued for cifrhtv-five miles before the vehicle came to a standstill. Renewal of the water supply is all that is needed to keep the cells in j^-ood condition, and a process of recharginjr has been improved, so that less time is consumed than for the rechare- niff of other batteries. Electric vehicles for city work, delivery wagons, etc., will soon supersede all other kinds of vehicles, and with a hundred- nnle battery a vehicle should have little trouble in making a run almost over the wIkjIc country. Mr. Edison believes that the application of storage batteries will ultimately be extended to trains and ships, and if all be triie that is claimed for the invention, it will certainly prove a boon to motorists, and will provide a' means of pro- pulsion for airships that will make such a catas- trophe as that which overtook the airship Pav an impossibility. The motor car is already largely influencing our social life. It has greatly extended the ra- dius of action of every one who can afford to keep a carriage, because bv its use Brighton is brought withm a day's drive from London, and Bath IS within the limits of a veek-end excur- sion by road. It will largely afTect the surburban traffic of our railways, and improve the delivery of goods and parcels in the country. It has already begun to be used by the Post Office and will soon be generally adopted. The roads of Europe promise to be as busy again, if not busier than in the old posting days, and. as one writer remarks, "instead of post horses the cry wdl be for petrol." 1 82 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT ll I I I f I CHAPTER X STREET RAILWAYS Rapid transit between tlie business quarters of great cities and their suburbs is entirely a modern problem, and mostly a very recent one. The brilliant achievements' of street railway engineers in the present generation have onlv kept pace with urgent necessities. The growth of many great cities, in Great Liritain and the Lmted States has been wonderful, and has been maintained at a constant rate. Such a growth means increase in the peopled area of each city, and thus the distances to be traversed from the residential suburbs to the business district are perpetually increasing. As it is in cities that the multiplicitv of traffic occasions the most inconvenience, it is also where the need for the rapid transit of goods and passengers is most marked. Yet so eflfectually had public enterprise and capital in Great Britain centred in the steam locomotive and the railroads in connection therewith, that for thirty or forty years following urban transportation was sadly neglected, and, particularly in London, facilities for rapid move- ment left much to seek. Prior to the construc- tion of the Underground Railway, rapid transit in London was represented bv' the omnibus, first started July, 1829, and the hackney coach or cab. But in the interval the Americans had long STREET RAILWAYS 183 perceived the merits of the street railwav system in accelerating: the movements of the urban' pop- ulation. In New York, the Fourth Avenue (Har- lem) Street Railway was chartered in 183 1, and for twenty years maintained a monopoly' of the street railway traffic, after which a general ex- The First Omnibus. tension of the system followed in the large cities. Philadelphia and Boston opened street railways in 1857, and from that period to the present the growth of street railways in America has been so \vide-spread that more than 500 towns and cities are equipped with this means of rapid locomotion. As we shall see, although horse traction was in the first instance resorted to, l84 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT yet this was, in many instances, succeeded by the cable system, and latterly by electricity. In 1858-59 an enterprising American. Gt orjje Francis Train, obtained \v -Mssion to establish several short street raihv<». in England. But the rails were of a most objectionable and incon- venient form, their projecting flanges making it difficult and even dangerous for ordinary vehi- cles to cross the line save at right angles' to the New Patent Salety Cab. line. The result was that they were soon de- creed a nuisance by the several local authorities, and those in London having been laid without special Parliamentary sanction, their summarv removal was ordered. But ten years later, an agitation having been vigorously carried on meanwhile, and the Met- ropolitan toll-bar system abolished, street rail- STREET RAILWAYS 185 ways reappeared in force. Several companies were incorporated for London in 1869-70, and in the course of the next decade the larger pro- vincial towns had followed the example of the capital. At present fully 1,000 mdes of street railways are built and in operation in the United Kingdom, with a capital of some four- teen mdlions sterling, and carrying annually about 600 million passengers. The growing development of street railways, which made it possible for the industrial clas.ses to avail themselves for the first time of the ad- vantages of rapid locomotion, naturally led to still further efforts on the part of the projectors to lessen the cost of working, as well as to in- crease the speed. Various patents had been taken out for cable traction, i.e., in which a rope should travel enclosed in an underground pipe, with a grip attachment on the cars capable of clutching or releasing the moving cable. The first practical application of this plan was made m San Francisco in 1873 bv the building of the Clay Street cable line. The road, which is about a mile long, has, in parts, a gradient of one in SIX, and rises to a height of 300 feet above its low-level terminus. Animal traction was. of course, impracticable over such a route, and the success of the new cable system being ascer- tained, it was applied to other lines. San Fran- cisco alone having 100 miles of cable lines in operation. Ten years afterward Chicago built its first cable line, and it was also about the same time adopted for the Rrooklvn Bridge Railway, which convey? an average of 35.000 people in the single hour between 5 and 6 p.m. daily. It 1 86 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT was also ipplicd to the great Broadway line, now operated by electricity. England was somewhat tardy in using cable traction, and, when adopted, it was only on a very limited scale, one great reason being the relative narrowness and crookedness of the streets. The Highgate Hill cable line was opened in 1884, and other lines have been built in Edinburgh, Hirminghan), Bristol, and Mat- lock. The Brixton tramway has superseded horse-power by a cable. Australia and New Zealand have also largely adopted the cable sys- tem. But the greater advantages of electricity were not long in becoming manifest, especially in the United States. In New York, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia, and hundreds of smaller cities the electric trolley system has grown almost universal, whereby speed has been doubled, and the heart of the city made accessible at slight cost to the dwellers in the suburbs. After a considerable interval electric street railways se- cured a footing in Great Britain, such tovvns as Glasgow, Nottingham, and Norwich preceding the capital, which did not enjoy such a service until 1901, when the Shepherd's Bush and Kew to Southall lines were opened. There can be no question, however, that no matter how conservative London may have been as regards speed in transit, the 'stablishment of some system partially effecting ti)is for the mass of the population would have previously taken place but for the building of the underground Metropolitan Railway. When the idea was first proposed of a railway for human beings to travel No. 1. Show! owing construction. No. a. Iron shie'.ds. with a workman in each com- partnient. Thb Thamks Tunnbu 188 THE STORY O' RAPID TRANSIT along iindtr the stn-cts and anionj^' the sowers it was regarded with contemptuous aimisenient. But London's stupendtjus growth demanded new and improved means of conuuunication; the streets were already too conj^ested with traftic; thi -hoice lay between a railway over the top of i..e houses or beneath the pavement, and »'ie latter alternative was the one chc.-en. Of course, the onmibus and cab intt -sts unconsciously fol- lowing the exam;>le of their predecessors, the stage-coachmen, were fiercely opposed to the scheme, but when powerless to prevent it, wreaked their spleen in bitter jests and sarcas'^i. In 1854 the first Act of I'ariiament was passed authorizing the line, and the works began in i860. Three years later the first section of the line— Paddington to I^'arringdon Street— was opened, in which year the Lords' Committee recommended that the inner circle of the further projected lines should abut upon, if not actually join, most of the pnncipal railwav termini in the metropolis. The total length of "the inner circle is 13 miles 176 yards, two miles of which length is laid with four lines of rails, and the total length of the two underground .ystems is over forty miles. Even when the utmost precautions are taken, tunneling through a town is a risky opera- tion. Settlements -nay occur years after the com- pletion of the works; water mains may be broken in the streets and in the houses; stone staircases may fall down; and other unpleasant symptoms of unstability may show themselves. " JJut rapid vransit was the goal in view; in the case of Lon- don, and, indeed, all large cities, railways de- signed for local service must of necessity be either 190 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT sunk below or raisoj. Alia, steamship, transatlantic record, 54. Atlantic, steamship, 53. Atlantic cable, 136. Atlantic ocean, first steamship to cross, 47. Australia, discovery of gold in, 57 i express trains in, 92. Austria, railways of, 65, 90. Automobiles, 161. Baldwin, Matthias W., locomo- tive builder, 88. Ballooning, 114. Baltimore & Ohio Ry., 86. liatfories, storage, 180. Behr s mono-rail, 196. Belgium, railways of, 65, 66, 9«. 199 Bell, Alexander Craham, claim to invention of the telephone, 144* llell's Comet, steamship, 47, 48 Bern s motorcar, 167, 169, 173, 1 74* ^<^r/i«. City of. steamship, 61. .'!?"'","'■'• . C'^Periments with the electric telegraph, 104. Bicycle, the, 148; opposition to „."•«• >55; records, early, 151. Bivector, the, primitive form of bicycle, m. Blackwell ft., Jr.. bicyclist, 157. Blanchard, aeronaut, 118. iJoIlees steam-carriage, 167, Bourstul. Charles, experiments Willi the telephone, 143. Kouton s steam-carriage, 167, Braithwaite, inventor, ig. Bretcigne. balloon, 127. Britannia, steamship, 52. Bntanmc, steamship, 60. Buchanan, James, and Atlantic came, 140. Burcham, aeronaut, ijc. Cable system of street railways, 185. Cabriolet, the, 20, 21 Cam{'!i, jH, jj, 15. <;ray. Ste|>htn, -xperiiiHiUs with flivfricily, 101. Orcit HnliiiH, !«ieam!il''|i, ... iireitt Hastirn, lay* the Atlantic cable, iju, 140. <>reat Northern Ky., 7H. Oreat \i efti'rn, , teamshiii, cros.^. _ e» the Atlantic, so. (ireat Western Railway, 73, 77, JIT'"', Charles, aeronaut, \2i. |irifliths steam carriage, i6i. <.urney's steam-carriage, la'j. H. Hackney coach, 16, i8j. Jiackworth, Thomas, inventor, Hancock's stcam-.arriage, i6t, 164. )Iawaii, steamship communica- tion with, 60; telegraph cable to, !4I. Herald, the, mail-coach, .>6. Hertz s experiments with wire. XI n" ♦f'^raphy. 1 1 J. Hills steam-carriage, 167, 168. Hobby-horse, the, 148. Ijolland, railways of, 66, go ilomer, Henry, on improved transit in 1767, 19. Hooke, Dr. Roliert, experiments with the telegraph, 97; with the telephone, 141. Hughes, improvement of the telephone, 144. Huskisson, Mr., death of, 17. 40. I. India, express trains in, 92; mail service to, 55. Infant, The. steam-coach, 164. erial. balloon, 1... H^lh''- • •'.■ "-, '"■'■^riments with wireless telegrapiv. lu Liverpool & Manchester Ry ,7 42. ' • •"• Locomotives the first, 33; first in I'nited .state*. 87; Anieri- •-an, , value of, 88; Hraith- waites, 38; Cugnofs, ij- Kricson's, 38; T. Hact- *".^(i. Munt l"eni» lunni't opfiied, 58. MontKoltif-r, lirotlicrii, invent balloon, lib. Mome, I'rof. .S. F. »., invent* the electric telcRraiin, 104. Motor carriages, fnmtisfui,; 161, 171; iliagram, 175, 17H; rec- ord*, 176. Motor cycles, 160, 17a. Municipal 'yl. the, l(K,t>motive, 41, I latforms, moving, 19b. the mail- '74- uy, rail- 36; 56. I'neumatic tube, the, Hi. '95 of in in- 43. ipham. Sir flowe, invenio the semaphore, 10 1. I'ostal service, in ibog, u '^iS, 14; improvement by Iroduction of railways, 14U; lndi.in. S5. j'ost Oftke Act, ib^6, 15. I'reece, Sir William, experi- ments with wireless telcgra- phy. 113. rropclU-r, the, first boat to adopt the screw principle, 54. Race to the North," the, 78. Kails, iron, 30, jb, 88; wooden. 30. Railways, the first, 25; develop- ment of, b4; electric, 93, 95, 186, igi; speed of, in i84<, ?■• Reis, I'hilin. experiments with the telejihone. 14J. Renard, Irench aeronaut, 114. Roads, condition of, in England in eighteenth century, i?; improvements in, 26; freedom of the, 168. Robert, brothers, aeronauts, 117. Robison, Dr., inventor, y\ Kocket, the. Stephenson's loco- niotive, 38, 87. if INDEX jJoBCrii. I.Kroni..tivr l.iiiM.r. 8M Kunaltl,, .xiM-n. „..„H w.th ||,c 'Icvtric irftBrai,!,, ,„^. '^•'^^' i^'-orgf. Ihf. UonioJivc, K"^y«l Mail Steam l'ai|„.t t „.. Koy^l I j .//.,,», , v..am,i,i,,, cr..»»e, ,|,c Atlantic. 4,,. '* s. Sadler, aeronaut. 18, ,10. .•»tj^^(.„thar«<; hxpreis. 85. Suez, mail route across the. «<• railway to Alexanurrey Katlwa/, jj Sweden, railways of, 66, 90. Swindon Junction llotel, 84. lally-ho, stage-coach, M. leakinn. tea-ship, 46. lea-ships, annual race of. tf, I'letrarh, //,.., mail-coa^h. ,4 109. n (.reat T lUin, ,08; ,n the ITnited Statis, no. I-elegraphy, ocean. ,j6; wire- IcSSf III. ,j>'^f>hone, the, 141. lei ford, Thomas, engineer, 26 bii early fiicyclist. 'iharp, H. .S fime-table, early railway, 67 Jissandier, aeronaut, i,,c, ,",, loll-pte, institution of the. t\' r-raiT, first used, 88. ' "'• ?J''' /'S"'*" '-rancis, attempt to introduce street railways n London, 184. ' Tramwrays, jo, ,82. Trevethick. Richard, inventor, ^4. 163. Irivector, the. primitive form of bicycle, 15,. Turbine, the steam, 6i. I urhinia experimental steamer, 64. turbine 304 THE STORY OP RAPID TRANSIT Turnpike Act, i6jj, ij. In'tnh*th Cfniury LtmiltJ, tK- pr«w train*, 89. U. Undcrgroynd railwtyt, IkMton, tqj; Berlin, 194; London, lii, 186, igj; New York, 19J. Union Loath, tta(e- experiment* elfctrii ytt. Watt, jatii. nventor, <)4- Weber, c»|>crimeni* with electric tclei^raph, 103. I JO. with Iht Weat Indie*, imitroved commu- nication with tnCf 59. Whcatatonr, experiment* with the telephone, \ai\ ext>cri- ment* with the el'<'tric tele- graph, I OS. White Star Line, 6«. Wireless Telegraphy, ill. Wi*e, American aeronaut, \2M. Wulfmuller mot^ir cycle, 161, Wridgway, early bicycliat, IS4> «$9. Y. Young, Arthur, on the condl. ti(m of the public roada, ij; on the clecti.c telegraph, loj. 0) THE END an. lie. lis wlih 11^ ibt comma- i» with cxpcri- ric ul«- I. ul, liJ. , i6i. i Condi* ■di, ij; pb, 103. 0) ("V n