Elon Musk is back in the news today for his recent Twitter and Instagram posts in which he is saying that the first Boring Company tunnel underneath L.A. is almost complete.
He even released a short 30-second video demonstrating the progress so far.
Check it out.
Hmm, still a long way to go before this thing is ready for everyday use. But Elon did say that he will be offering free rides on this first stretch "in a few months."
Pending government approval, of course.
This short tunnel and his work on Hyperloop One remind me of a much older, but similar, attempt at public transportation. An attempt that very few people have ever even heard of, but one that is very interesting and relevant to current events.
New York’s Subway in use today was first opened in 1904, but did you know there was one forgotten line created 35 years before? This initial attempt can even be considered the precursor to Musk's Hyperloop One!
Mr. Beach, along with partner Orson Munn, bought the poorly run Scientific American magazine in 1846. Soon after they created a business called Munn and Co., a patent filing assistance company. Since many inventors were naturally interested in their magazine, they always had their ad for patent assisting in the best places. Soon they were making tons of cash and filing more than 3,000 patents per year in the 1860’s.
Editing the magazine also kept him in the loop on the latest technological theories and ideas.
One day he read about a proposed Pneumatic Despatch system in London, England. That got his mind working and he thought about how he could create a system like this to move people. Beach demonstrated his model at the American Institute Exhibition in New York City in 1867. It was the most popular exhibit of the event, winning two ‘first premium’ prizes.
The Times reported on the Exhibition: “some startling novelties, among them a great pneumatic tube, through which the adventurous will be carried north and south according to the fancy or advice of their physicians.”
Because of the amount of interest in the project Beach put out $350,000 of his own money to begin the transportation company, Beach Pneumatic Transit Company.
He had to be sneaky though, “Boss Tweed” was a crooked politician that ran NYC back in those days, and Tweed got a lot of his legal money by passenger transportation, and the rest from his corruption. So when Beach put his plans in for approval by the city he stated that it was for mail delivery, with no mention of passengers.
The plans were approved and Beach got work started.
Beach Pneumatic Transit Company
Beach and his team would work at night digging a tunnel beneath Broadway. He wanted to keep it a secret as long as he could, so he stored the dirt in the basement of an entire building he bought just to do so. It only took them 58 days, or should I say nights, to finish the first tunnel – a 312ft stretch from Warren Street to Murray Street.
The system was officially opened on February 26th, 1870 and passengers had to enter the basement of Devlin’s Clothing Store to get on it! The subway car held 22 people, a ticket cost 25 cents and the ride lasted 55 seconds each way. It was more of an attraction than anything else, as the station at the other end only had a ladder to climb out from!
Still, during the first two weeks they sold 11,000 tickets and 400,000 in the first year.
Unfortunately, Boss Tweed (who was later arrested for corruption and died in jail) now knew what Beach was doing and blocked any further expansion.
Without any real reason to ride it, the public lost interest. It was closed in 1873 and converted into a shooting gallery, and later a storage vault.
The whole thing was demolished with the expansion of the current subway infrastructure in 1912. You can see what remains in the tourist stop of City Hall Station, as that is what was built from the platform that was in the basement of Devlin’s Clothing Store.
Could we even be using Futurama or Jetson’s style tubes for personal transport? How much more could have been possible had 150 years of intellectual effort been focused on this branch of technology?
If it wasn’t for dirty politics the 600+ MPH Hyperloop wouldn’t be experimental and the refined technology would already be available for it!
Maybe we could have been living it 50 years ago.