thanks for coming happy to be here i've done a lot of these talks in the last since this book came out this book came out in hardcover first and then in paperback about a year ago and i've really had a great time going around the greater boston area and also the new york area talking about it meeting people one of the fun things about going out doing talks of different communities is that you occasionally bump into people that you used to work with that you see people came out to see that was the case tonight richard pennington is here in the back it's appropriate that richard is here because richard was a librarian at the boston globe and one of the things that i've often enjoyed talking about when i've gone around talking about this book is the value of libraries and librarians and researchers like you really come to appreciate one of the very greatest friends and contacts i made in my journalism career was back when i was in new jersey as a as a reporter there and i was researching a number of different stories and i went to the library in morristown new jersey which is where i lived at the time and i befriended a woman there who was a reference librarian there and i was just amazed that every time i would go there and tell her what i was working on she couldn't be more excited to help me she's i mean she lived to do research and to just dig up things and to look for things that i was trying to find and she loved doing that and i really enjoyed having someone who i could turn to so i really enjoyed having a researcher who i could turn to all the time to get me to look at different places where i'd never think to look for something to find things for me that i would never have found on my own and to this day fifteen years after i work with her she's still a friend of mine and someone i stay in contact with because i just again i've really come to appreciate the role  librarians and libraries play and sort of our society and our role as someone who values that as a historian so anyway it was fun to see richard just reminded me of how important valuable librarian are so i thought what i would do tonight is a couple things i'm going to the book is about two cities the book tells the story of sort of the period between eight hundred fifty and roughly one thousand nine hundred which was a remarkable time in american history there was so much innovation that happened around that time if you think about the greatest inventions that we owe our lives to our society to today so many of them were born during that fifty year period that was the period of alexander gra and thomas edison so the same year morris so the great inventors of our time all made their biggest breakthroughs in that fifty year period but there were also as i came to discover some inventors from that time we knew very little about  they sort of lived in the shadow of the giants you know if you think about athletes who maybe never win a championship because they play at a time when a superstar dominates the league and you sort of don't they don't get the appreciation maybe because they played at the wrong time well that was certainly the case for a couple of key people who play big roles in my book they had huge accomplishments and were really important people in our society and yet they're often overlooked because well they did their thing and the time when thomas edison was doing his thing so if you're going to remember someone you're going to remember thomas edison and that other person and in this case that other person invented something that was vital to society and ultimately the birth of the subway to america i would tell a little bit of a story about that i'll tell some of the history of the boston subway i won't go as much to the new york subway just because we're here but if there are questions about new york i'll certainly leave time for questions at the end or about boston or whatever else you are talk about so i can tell a few stories so the first i want to tell is about a gentleman by the name of frank julian sprague so frank's break is that person i told you about he was the guy who nobody knows because he did his thing when thomas edison was doing but he's really a fascinating character and i was really taken by his story so frank julian sprague born in connecticut an eight hundred fifty seven and he was a bright kid and eager to learn and always tinkering with things and frank sprague went on to join the navy and when he was in the navy he was constantly tinkering with his hands looking for different things that he could sort of work on and improve and invent and one of the things that he was struck by was that in the eighteenth seventies in the early eighteenth eighties the way people got around back then was quite simple it was a horse pulled carriage that was however got around that was the motive transportation a less you were going a long distance and in that case you got onto a steam train there was one subway in the world during that time anybody know who open the world's first subway london love that london eight hundred sixty three open the world's first subway one of things i was struck by when i was doing my research were little things like this so london opened the world's first subway eight hundred sixty three and immediately the streets of london are transformed traffic is reduced people are riding on the same millions of people every year riding in the london underground you would think that other cities would have looked at the london underground and said well look what they did they built this beautiful to be underground and train taking people underground reduce traffic on the streets the streets were overwhelmingly congested in big cities across america and yet eight hundred sixty three the next subway in the world not just america the next up in the world but not opened for thirty years thirty years i was struck by that like why did it take so long for other cities to build a subway well there's a very good reason for that the london subway as i just talked about was powered by a steam train it was a steam train underground coal powered steam farag so smoke and sparks into the air through the tunnel so the next time you want to complain about how dirty the tea is just think twice ok so there's a reason why other cities looked at the london underground and as impressed as they were with the marvel of the engineering and the technology and the success that it had they all sort of looked at it and said you know we think we're going to wait for something better got a log so it would take time for that something better to come along so frank sprague i was in london in the  early eighty's his boat had his his navy ship a dock there he was in london and he rode on the london subway and when he rode on it he had the same reaction everybody else did which is it's good and it works but there has to be something better than this there has to be a better way to move people and at that time in the early today that was when thomas edison had already made his big breakthrough the light bulb was a thing that happened edison was now a giant growing continuing to invent and take care but he was already a real real tight so frank sprague was over in london riding in the subway and sort of looking at it and trying to think about things he could do he was introduced to a guy by the and worked for thomas edison back in menlo park new jersey and johnson was really taken by spirit he was impressed with him but he was super smart sprague was judging a particular electrical competition as brave as an engineer himself was a bright engineer he was judging the competition at this convention and johnson was really sort of struck by sprigg and he wrote a letter to edison and he said i've met someone over here name is frank sprague and you should hire him you should hire him to come work with you in new jersey and edison was distracted he was doing a lot of different things and he had a lot of things on his mind and he didn't reply the job to ijaz and right away johnson wrote  again because he knew what was going to happen he knew that as engineering and his inventions were becoming more and more of a big deal that someone like sprague was going to get snapped up maybe by a big company westinghouse general electric or some are going to snap is brilliant up and he thought that edison should be the one to snap him up for road it is now again hire him so edison finally wrote back and said fine fine fine have him come to me so he johnson basically goes to sprague and says  want you to come work with thomas edison in menlo park new jersey sprague is of course delighted it's a chance to work with this brilliant mind in this great man so he gets on a ship and he goes back to new york one of these they did in my research which was interesting just a quick little side note here when i was doing my research i built a timeline every time that i came across a date any of the amount or what it was a birthday a date in history just a date that something happened i entered into an exile spreadsheet i created this giant working document a living breathing i get it every time in my research i found a date i entered it by the end of my research that timeline was about three thousand lines long and three thousand different dates on it the reason i did that it was sort of a suggestion another reporter had given to me that i now of course and like i was brilliant you know and i will do that with every project i do  on the reason i did it is because what it allows you to do is start to see a narrative take shape you start to see a story unfold and the other thing it allowed me to do is occasionally in my research you know this book took me two years to sort of report and write occasionally i'd be researching something on one day and then another day bridge or do something completely different another subject for another chapter completely unrelated and yet as i went to enter the date from that into my timeline i discovered the oh  it's the same date that this thing happened so suddenly start to see sort of moments that happen in history that happened on the same day never occurred never would have occurred to you unless you had this document to sort of see that so  going to tell you that story is because in the day thomas edison i'm sorry the day frank sprague came back to new york city to go work in new jersey for thomas edison that day was may twenty third eighteen eighty three big date in american history i sort of looked at that on my timeline as i was entering it i had something else on that same day i was like whoa that's sort of cool and as i dig dug more into it i discovered there was a big deal and i mean any ideas or guesses what happened on that day in new york city something big opened really big and the brooklyn bridge the opening of the brooklyn bridge the day thomas edison steps off this boat there's a parade of people streaming toward the harbor in new york songs in bandon just millions of people going through the harbor to celebrate the opening of the brooklyn bridge he doesn't know it at the time he just sees all these people going to walk in one direction he's his mind in another place and he would talk about this  diary later about how he wanted to find out where they were all going into inquired leave turns out it was the day the brooklyn bridge was opening but he admitted that he was only focused on going to new jersey and joining thomas edison so so he goes to new jersey new joint thomas edison and this is one of those moments in history where you often wonder if history had gone differently what would have happened things had turned out differently how would we be different as a society today and i wonder that because i've wondered if frank sprague on this you know moment of going to work for thomas edison and that relationship between these two brilliant sort of aggressive eager excited engineers and brilliant minded guys if they had found a way to work together for say a decade who knows what might have come out of menlo park new jersey one can only imagine because they were both just brilliant and they had so many ideas and things they wanted to do and they were big thinkers these guys were not they were looking to make a little change a lightbulb a phonograph these are things that change lives change society so they were looking to change the world and certainly frank sprigg wanted to do that but it was meant to be frank spray goes to work for thomas edison and it's pretty quickly becomes apparent to him that edison wanted to work only on edison projects and sprigg has his own dreams his own visions about what he wants work and he wants to work on the electric motor because he written on this sub the subway in london and he's seen the overcrowding in cities and street trolleys are all pulled by these horses that don't work in the wintertime that get beaten down after two years he thinks that there's a motor some contraption that could be built that could be put onto trains and trolleys that could motor along and could really change things and then again this is before henry ford right to the no cars back so frank spirit wants to work on that that's his dream and in fact he would say later in one of his diaries that he wanted to achieve the same fame with the electric motor that edison achieved with the light bulb that was how big he was thinking so spray ghost work bredesen and get frustrated as i'm sending him off to pittsburgh to work on a project and sending him off to the pennsylvania mountains to work on something else and sing about to the rural new jersey do something for sprague is only getting to work on his thing like at night and on weekends and just sort of barely scraping by frustrated and after just one year working together sprigg write a note to edison and said that i as much as i see the value in working with you would want to work with you i see greater value in wanting to achieve my own fame than my own fortune and i want to pursue my dreams and it's not possible to do that as long as i'm working for you and to be tendered his resignation in this letter to thomas edison and edison writes back quickly and says essentially i agree with you you do want to do your own thing and it's not going to work and i accept your resignation after just one year working together so again for those momentary wonder what would happen if they had somehow managed to find a way to work together they never did so spread frank's bread goes off borrows money from banks from family from friends his own money and pours a fortune into just nothing but inventing the electric motor and for three years it's all he does three years his energy goes into it he gets married but his marriage sort of struggles because he's just he's slowly singleminded just on perfecting this motor he's got a crew of people working with him he's working with these different companies that are helping him one in providence that helping him build these motors finally takes him about three years to where he gets a motor that he thinks is powerful enough smooth enough and then seems to work he actually gets to test it briefly on of flatbed railcar in new york city this is sort of an interesting story he takes it to new york city put it on the bottom of a flatbed car there because he's hoping to show it to a guy by the name of jay gould is a big extremely wealthy banker new york city who invests a lot of money in crazy things but he's willing to sort of put his money into something that he thinks is the next big thing so if some engineer says i've got the next big thing jiggle get up and stand next to spread and spread starts to push the motor so the tracks of the train go down this little track sprague is a little anxious maybe a little too anxious because he pushes the motor a little too hard and while jay gould is standing right next to him sparks shoot out from the engine and giggle as you try to jump off the car terrified even though it's like four feet down he's terrified and thinks you know what two things are going to explode and spread stops him and says no no no it's just a little malfunction but that single little blip that happened was all it took for jay gould to say that's it never will i invest any money in this crazy contraption that's going to go nowhere and you're good luck to you sir and he says goodbye frank sprague is of course heartbroken this was his moment the chance for him to get a huge investment from a extremely wealthy guy that could sort of push him forward and he lost it so he goes back to continuing to tinker with his motor mak better and better and better now what he knows he needs is he needs a client he needs someone one to get the motor perfect he needs a client he needs a city someone that willing to take a chance but at this time in the mid eighty's all the cities in this country are sort of just completely overrun with people the streets are just it's impossible to sort of explain what they look like i have a picture of two in a little bit but you could walk in boston on tremont street in boston you could walk from rooftop to rooftop of the street cars at rush hour and never set foot on the ground they were just lined up crawling along and enjoy the time it was just it was gridlock to walk through the city than it was to get onto a streetcar so the cities were all like that new york boston they're overrun with immigrants who are coming into this country from the boatloads republican candidate would not be happy with that right now but that's what was happening there are a lot of it we're going to we're just coming in today we're going to the cities and they were flocking to the cities and so frank sprague saw that overcrowding and said i need to sort of help solve that problem that overcrowding cities were desperate for relief so there was one city at the time that decided that it wanted to electrify it street trolley system it had a street trolley system the street drugs worked they were successful but they were pulled by horses and they were on tracks it was ok but they wanted to try this electricity thing they heard about it but it had some potential so they contacted frank's pregnant by them to come down and city richmond virginia says to frank's brag here's the deal we're going to make for you we want you to electrify our trolley system i want you to build ninety motors we're going to give you one year to do it and we're going to pay your nothing until you prove that it works and then you will have fulfilled your contract when you sign that contract was a very good deal for frank sprague but you have to remember at this point in time sprague had poured his life and his soul and everything he wanted to succeed he wanted that fame he craved it and so he signed that contract he was desperate he knew that this was the only way he was going to succeed was by proving his thing had real value it worked so he signed that contract and then immediately he was struck with type word fever and for three months he was back so for those three months while he was out his crew continued to work on the motor and tinkering and getting it ready and trying to perfect it and building the tracks getting the tracks ready all those things he got better and eventually he came back and he worked on it some more and over the course of about a year didn't quite make it dead and became pretty close in the course of about a year he was ready to show it and richmond became the first city in america to have sort of a paid electric trolley system it was a big deal it's a big deal for frank sprague was a big city big deal for richmond but here's the thing it was richmond no disrespect to richmond but it's a small city and back in eighteen eighty seven when he did this it was a really small city is down south it wasn't one of the big metropolises of our country was in new york was in boston was in chicago you know that's where everyone was living it was richmond so sprague still wanted that fame but richmond wasn't going to give him that fame richmond was giving him richmond that was it so it's going to take me to another character in my book and i'm go circle back and tell you a little bit more about brick so there's a family that grew up in western massachusetts town of conway massachusetts which is allowed by springfield if you know your massachusetts geography and  said it was a family name of whitney and the whitney family would play a huge role in the birth of the subway not only in boston but in new york as well so there were two brothers one is born eighteen thirty nine one of born eighteen forty one one born in eighteen thirty nine was henry whitney and his younger brother born one hundred forty one was william whitney so if i say the name whitney to you i'm guessing that it rings a couple of bells so the first  another inventor perhaps the cotton gin eli whitney so he was a distant cousin of this family related but sort of distant another name that might come to mind is the whitney museum in new york city when he was  course play or draw in the birth of the whitney museum and that's because of the vanderbilt's such a good birth of the museum in the greenwich village area of new york and then it moved to the upper west side so that we need a name in american history plays a major role a lot of different areas it was another member of the same family better than on the new york mets the trivia so the whitney name is a lot of places but these two brothers were very interesting i talk mostly about henry i mean we did the older brother was sort of a slacker he dropped out of school could never figure out what he wanted to do with his life struggled sort of hung on to his father's coattails for a while other for a while a spa there was a politician his father was a big democrat and in circles up in boston and sort of henry really railed on his father's coattails for a while sort of went off and did a bunch of crazy ideas he pursued but none of them with ever any sort of real purpose in life and when i was around forty he moved to brookl he actually met a woman who was twenty years younger than him got married and settled down in brookline he was working for his father's steamship company his father ran something called the metropolitan steamship company which ran steamships up and down between new york and boston and cape cod was a big business back as you can imagine and so he was working with that with his father and sort of not really having any purpose in life anyway he was a lot of things but he was not well you would call book smart but he was street smart and in his mid eighty's henry when he looked around when he was living in brookline and he saw something here's what he saw here's all those conditions i described in boston those streets teeming with people those horse pulled carriages not being able to move anywhere overcrowding everything the city was just overrun with people and he had a feeling that what was going to happen was that the city was going to have to expand its boundaries more people were going to move out to jamaica plain west roxbury brookline all those different neighborhoods and as they started to move out that way what was going to happen well those trolley companies were going to follow them they were going to have to go out there to more people to live down brookline are going to be more trolleys out there to take them there west roxbury jamaica plain all the brighton all those different neighborhoods and so he said you know as those people start to push out to the suburbs which is what those were then and the trolley companies start to come out there they're going to put know of as beacon street and brookline the boulevard back then it was just a dirt road with you know there are occasional fourfold carriages would go up it but it was not really anything there were some beautiful estates on it you know there were very wealthy people lived out there  brookline but that was sort of it there was a little neighborhood in coolidge corner but not much else he bought a ton of parcels right along beacon street and sure enough eighty six eighty seven these trolley companies started to push out into brookline and those other neighborhoods and they came out to brooklyn and they said we'd like to lay tracks down the middle of this boulevard so we could bring our trolleys out here and they went to the town of brooklyn and they said can we lay tracks  said well we're happy to help you but we don't own the land who owns that land and you really resent it hello and they said well mr whitney like to purchase your land and he said sure that's fine how much would you like and he sold a lot of his land back to the town of brooklyn and to these trolley companies so that they could lay tracks down that made he really a very wealthy man and a pretty powerful man too suddenly you know i was getting attention henry we need then have an idea and he went and sort of formulated his game plan again like i said he may not have been book smart but he was street smart and he said ah there are seven different street car companies in boston right now seven different companies operating in complete chaos no systems no route no fares aside everyone could go wherever they wanted to go if you wanted to get onto a streetcar you raise your hand in three different street cars might race for you and they might knock each other over trying to get to you and even when you got on board you weren't sure where that car was going to take you live it was going to go where you wanted to go how much you were going to pay it was chaos but that's what it was back in seven different companies no oversight so  now sort of a powerful businessman now a guy who's got some respect he went before the state legislature went down into boston when his state ousmane before the state legislature and he said i have two proposals he made a speech so the big day for harry reid he was hard of hearing when he was a young boy he contracted scarlet fever and he almost lost all of that hearing in one ear and so he would often take a finger and dip it into a glass of water and poke it into his ear try to help his hearing a little bit so he went before the state legislature on this day and he said i have two proposals for you this is on march fourth eight hundred eighty seven number one i will take all of your street car companies the seven different companies that you have here and i will consolidate them into one company one smooth operating company that has assigned route and assigned fares and clearly assigned rules and we all know where they're going to go and it will be a system that boston can be proud of instead of what we have today that's number one and number two i will build you a tunnel under boston common a tunnel under boston common no one had ever said those words before no ever thought of that a tunnel subway tunnel under the common the state legislature the law makers they listen to this guy and they said you know those are two pretty good ideas mr witt and they granted him both of his wishes just like that overnight henry whitney remembered i told you about him slacker dropped out of school tongue in his father's coattails for a whole life overnight and he really became the owner of the world's largest streetcar eight thousand horses four thousand employees two hundred miles of track just like that bigger than london bigger than new york bigger than any system street cars he was now the king of boston if you want to think of it that way and he did do is first thing he consolidated those seven companies and he created the west end street railway company and that company has a rich legacy in this city it creates sort of created a system that we now look at today color coded lines that was henry readies idea transfer affairs between different it so his legacy in boston is pretty good he never built that subway tunnel though and that's a whole other story but maybe whitney now owned this street car company giant street car company and the one thing he recognizes these horses they got to go that's not the future these horses good horse last maybe two years doesn't really work well in the winter struggles  that's got to go so now he really started looking around for what else is out there i want to replace these horses what else is out there there are a couple options form san francisco experimenting with something with a cable car that had been expanded to the san francisco and it worked and it was sort of a neat thing it's pretty cool the cable car had a lot of problems the biggest problems were number one really only worked on long straight street it was good for that it was a long straight boulevard cable was great as soon as you have to start wrapping it around sharp corners twisting and turning all these different directions cable not so good and then it was a cable breaks which happened all the time the entire system shuts down right ok stop going to fix the cables no one can move so the cable work for certain cities and certain locations but boston as we know as city with a lot of that wasn't good for the city so he sort of looked at the cable and said not for us there were some quirky battery inventions that were out there you could put a battery in the bottom of a car and maybe that would make it go battery didn't last very long needless to say so that wasn't good but then there was another idea that was starting to gain some attention just puts this electricity thing in this electric motor thing he heard about that he started to do some investigating in that he heard about what was going on in richmond and eight hundred eighty seven frank sprague had done this cool thing th richmond and really get wind of it sprigg needs a bigger client sprague wants that payment so suddenly frank sprague sent a note to henry really and the next thing you know a heavyweight in his general manager this guy named daniel longstreet from providence are on a train a steam train down to richmond so that takes us to the beginning at eight hundred eighty eight the beginning of eighty eighty eight you have henry rainey getting off a train in richmond virginia to come see what frank sprague has done so i want you to picture this moment as the big moment in american history july tenth of eighty eight richmond you can imagine richmond is like in july a little hot it's a steamy night and the city is now asleep it's close to midnight ok so the city is black frank sprigg has lined up the bottom of a steep hill called court street he lined up twenty two street cars in a row all in a row at the bottom of the cells each of them with their own electric motor on it there's a knock on henry with his hotel room door just before midnight he's told to come out we have something we want to show you so he and his man is general manager and a couple o ther investors he's brought down with him there because he's got people who want to see this as well they all are brought out to the bottom of this hill and frank spray with a wave of a lantern in the air sort of signals to someone in his central power station to start the motors the motors all fire up and those street cars they all have lights inside of them the little lights inside of them the lights start to dim because so much power is being used to to just to power them all but frank spirit doesn't care at this point this is his moment and he orders full power from his central power station basically says give it everything you've got and slowly those twenty two street cars start to climb that hill in inch they get going they get little momentum and they get up that hill and again this is one of those moments in american history right where you wonder what would have happened if the street cars didn't get over that hill what might have happened to history how much longer would we have waited for some of the inventions that would eventually come fortunately in this case they did climb that hill and you get up over that hill and in that moment henry radio centrally turn to frank sprague and said i've seen the future and the future is this electric motor and he goes back to boston and he starts to invest in the electric motor with sprague with some other people as well it was a big race in the eighty's a lot of people working on the electric motor sprague is the one who got there first and best but there was a lot of attention on this really goes back to boston and within two years that system here inherited it had eight thousand horses has less than a thousand horses now it's a powered by electric tropfest and that's a big deal because the electric motor allowed cities to start thinking about other ways that they could move their trolley systems and there was another big thing that happened in eight hundred eighty eight are not going to go into detail but it's a pivotal moment and i devote a whole chapter to it in the book mediate the same year that frank sprague and he really came together there was a massive blizzard that paralyzed the entire east coast mostly pennsylvania new york new jersey but it reached up to boston dumped ten feet of snow it's estimated that anywhere between four hundred thousand people died in this blizzard people walked out their door fell down into the snow their bodies were found three weeks later it was an unbelievable storm worst natural disaster in american history so that storm forced every city to sort of look at the way they moved about and to say the surface transportation this thinks when it snows and when it rains or when a any bad weather happens it's really bad grinds to a halt no one can move and so that's when they started looking underground because now you had london london and proving that tunnels could be dug and trains could move through them and now you had this electric motor trolleys so that's the combination we needed we had the tunneling technology now we have the motor technology and so now you could have subways so boston opened its first subway boston broke ground on its subway in eighty ninety five to two and a half years to build the first leg of the subway the first leg of the subway very short one little more than a mile went from arlington street where we sort of know arlington and boylston that intersection right there at the wrong street church is up to the corner of boylston and tremont street where the movie theater is today turn left onto trauma down to the park street church a big white steeple and then just turned around and came back that was the first leg of the subway so it took two and half years to build and it came in under budget it was supposed to cost five million dollars and came in at four point two million dollars just like the big dig i'm sorry can so that first day september first eight hundred ninety seven but i'm going to do it i'm going to read you just two pages from that day the first day of the boston seven the first subway to america and then we stop talking and open it up to questions ok so this chapter in the book it's toward the end the name of the chapter is first car off the earth because that's what the headline was in the paper that day so i just read you a couple a little snippet here when jimmy reed walked into the austin shed looking matter than usual in a new tr fitting uniform a single breasted dark blue coat with seven gold buttons and a cap with a straight bizer into bands of gold he greeted his passengers and confessed with no hesitation that he was tired after a night of restless sleep dreams of his trolley rushing to reach the subway tunnel first and on time kept him awake he said one of the last passengers to arrive was the chief inspector for the west end street railway company fred stearns he took up a spot on the course put forth so he could warn boarding passengers to keep their hands on edge inside to avoid bumping any poster trees after one final inspection to make sure the car was ready the doors to the garage opened and the passenger let out a hearty cheer as the electric motor sent the trolley on its way the nine rows of benches were not filled yet but they would be soon enough an the unusual number of passengers at this hour delayed if you have to second each stop by the time the car reached pearl street in cambridge just across from the charles river just across the river from boston an older gentleman wanted to get on board for there were no seats left and he was told he'd have to wait  the next car not a chance he shouted back he announces his name was steve have you davis steve come all the way from dickerson street in somerville to enjoy this privilege and he deserved to make history with the rest of them he said the back an eight hundred fifty six he'd written on the first horse pulled car of the metropolitan railway line and that he wanted to achieve another first today the running schedule called for a car every half hour those days he said that was thought to be fast running people have learned to live and move a lot faster these days the passengers on board could not refuse the charming mr davis and so they scurried to clear a spot for him as he climbed up and hung on to a pole when a photographer a hollered at jimmy reed to let the historic trolley sit for a minute so we could photograph it the motorman refused to nervous about falling b schedule as the car got closer to boston the crowd along the street growing numbers with men and women and children waiting and waving their hands flower bouquets that read had been handed were visible up front but their being crushed more with each stop the car was brimming over its edges by now with passengers standing on the foot board dangling off the side limits visible out of the windows despite the pleas of stern to give all body parts inside as reed steered his car down boylston both sides of the street were lined with a sea of people and the roar became louder up ahead could barely make out the entrance to the tunnel a black hole surrounded by a sea of people dressed in black at the final stop before the tunnel entrance on boylston between arlington and charles when it seemed there was not a single inch of room left inside two more people reached up from the sidewalk and grabbed hold of an arm that was being held onto by another arm and they were pulled up on board and swallowed up by the excitable mass the spaces between the seats were filled with standees the boston evening record rode of the car the platforms were packed like sardines boxes each running board was too deep with humanity well both vendors were loaded down until there was not enough room for a fly to cling to a car with seats for forty five passengers and standing room for a few dozen more one hundred forty passengers with reid at the controls the public are not as left on the clock in arlington street church pointing at six o'clock car number seven hundred fifty two crap to the summit of the subway tunnels downward slope if ever there was a time to stop it involves the on time in two and a half years and came in a four point two million dollars under the five million dollars projected cost along with the ten people who had been killed in the gas explosion four others died in the building of the subway and it was constructed without as much disruption to the street as had been anticipated municipal governments as new yorkers would surely agree at the time were notorious for being small minded underachieving bureaucracies too easily intimidated by business interests and susceptible to corruption boston had defied all of those labels and even managed to preserve the one piece of land its people cherish the most boston common the own covering of nine hundred ten bodies in the path of the subway route well known fortunate finding but dr green's delicate handling of it had mitigated the public's worries and the subway was a success by every measure before it even opened and a small flags waved in the deafening cheers the crowd seemed to be clamoring for someone to stop and recognize the achievement it's been ten years since two men heavyweight in boston hewitt in new york first made series overtures about tunneling with their cities a decade later one of those stood at the brink of history while the other city had yet to put a shovel into the ground for boston that was satisfaction enough by now forward crested the hill dipped down the incline and disappeared beneath boylston street the passengers in the front stood up on their tiptoes and leaned forward peering ad to see what sights awaited them and from the rear a shot rang out down in front so that the moment the first subway serving america took its ride and just a stop with one final personal story about halfway through writing this book i got to go to new york with my family for a weekend at the time i had two little kids my kids are still little but they're not as little as they were then at the time they're probably five and three i used to live in new york and i lived in the upper west side so we were staying in the upper west side and we went downstairs to ride  subway to take the seventy ninth street station the subway from there the number one train downtown and as you can imagine for kids riding on a subway it's a big deal it's like of an amusement park ride so as we were down the station and we were waiting for the train to pull into the station my two kids sort of would run up to the yellow line and sort of peer down the track and they'd run back to my wife and i and then they'd run of the aisle and they had done back in work that you were back and forth and it was a funny moment they were giggling it was a sweet moment and i took out my phone at one point just reason that picture sort of means a lot to me is because i read and i reference at the end of the book i like to think if i can to use my own imagination for a minute i'd like to think that sort of that excitement and that that they were feeling on that day these two kids first subway ride in new york city what's going to be like had to feel what it must have been like on september first eight hundred ninety seven in boston and on october twenty seventh one thousand and four in new york city imagine riding on a subway for the very first time what that must have been like scary underground train underground going to get on a dark train going to whisk me through a dark tunnel is it safe is it clean is the air clean can i breathe down there all these questions people didn't know until they rode on the subway they were never going to find out so i sort of like that picture just because i'd like to think that there was just a little bit of that excitement and that internship asian back then for people who are riding in the sun with that i will stop and i will open it up for questions i think i'll talk about so briefly here just a couple pictures so i just have a paragraph or talk about the early days of tunneling and i didn't get into this in the book but there's a whole chapter in the book right talk about the history of public and the history of sort of m going underground have to remember that we were terrified of going underground for a long time the idea of going underground was terrifying to people no one wanted to go there the only reason you went underground if you were dead that was it so there's a picture of the of an early tunnel in london pedestrian tunnel eight hundred forty one and that was the engineer who designed the london tunnel mark brunell famous engineer this is an early picture nine hundred sixty three of london's tunneling shield that bore through the ground and dug the tunnel that's eight hundred sixty three in london i didn't tell this story but this is the first chapter in the book it's a great chapter is my favorite story the book about their secret subway those both in new york city and the eight hundred sixty s by this kind of alfred beecher took on boss tweed it's a great story it's a funny interesting story in american history i mentioned briefly in that last reading i did there was an explosion ten people died it happened six months before the subway opened a gas line explosion was devastating so that's a picture from that explosion there's that first day i described some time verse eighteen ninety seven william parsons who's the engineering genius who built the new york subway you might know that name parsons parsons brinckerhoff famous engineering firm that was him he designed and built a new york city subway designed and built the cape cod canal one thousand nine hundred new york breaks ground after a decade of debate that literally is breaking ground right there the cut and cover method was used basically exactly what it says cut that's how trench in the road lay the tracks feel it covered over that's what cut and cover was the new york subway took about four years it was much more dangerous they did a lot more boring through the ground than boston did with a much bigger project boston opened about a mile and a half and into first day new york open twenty months much bigger project that was there tunneling shield  quick picture there of new york i will explain and i told twenty seventh one thousand zero four new york subway office and one hundred ten years later new york is still digging subways that's the second avenue subway project which i got to go down and see about a year ago take some great pictures and videos is an amazing thing to see what a ton of how a tunnel is dug today is unbelievable that's the tunnel  tunneling essentially you can almost think of it like a giant screwdriver turned and pushes through the earth and there are men who are sort of inside of it sort of steering it and guiding it and it literally just bores through the ground giant shield it's to understand how big these things are it's unfathomable how enormous they are and just ask re seattle about tunneling shields because they are experiencing what can only be described as a comical disaster what happens when one of these tunneling shields and when i say they're big and mean they're the size of buildings they weigh hundreds of tons and they are built specifically to tunnel that tunnel ok what happens when all those things get stuck literally just stuck well two years of delays and still stuck because it's not like you can to bring a crane in to lift it out this thing weighs a thousand times more than any crane you're going to bring in so these tunneling machines are amazing inventions but they're not perfect either question things you want to talk about that that the i mean if you know right if you walk down the stairs they're not that big fifty feet some of them you know some of the deeper than that but they're not that deep they were deep just enough to lay the tracks to get the train into covered over you know boston the topography of boston was very sort of friendly toward the cut and cover method new york was not new york as you know is an island to rock the island of manhattan is a giant rock to dig a tunnel in new york so if you want to if you know the system at all it's sort of i guess it would be the ac any line if you think of that route because it started city all went up to the bottom of central park veered left and went right up along central park on the west side the east side did not get a subway the beginning when new york opened that would come later but the first subway sort of went straight up and then up into harlem crossed over the river did a better job of celebrating this because this is a big deal i mean if anyone been to new york the transit museum in new york city in brooklyn it's unbelievable so cool took my kids there is an amazing place and we were now because the subway tunnels are so narrow people out there wonder why can't they have more trolleys on the green line well the answer is because the tunnels are built in such a way you can have long trains they can't make the turns doesn't really work well but sprague after he invented the actual electric motor his perhaps next greatest invention was right at the same time right after that was multiple unit control which was where like you said you could have multiple cars together each with their own sort of power system and pulling each other along so you didn't have to mostly mostly there's a few spots where especially over where boiled the boys appreciation is where if you're on the trolley you can look off to the side and you can actually see an original tunnel that is there and so there's a new trial has been created so there are some spots where they're using the original some spots where it's a new one but a lot of them are some of the originals  beginning is very similar to the way it operates today was small trains it was a third rail it was all the electricity was powered from a central station and that sort of provides the power frankfurt also invented the trolley the  the street pole the power lines that we see today that was another of his inventions so a lot of the things that we use today for electricity came out of this particular time has it improved of course and been refined and gotten better but the guts of it right it's true you know one of the about the electoral college frank henry really had this dream that the electric motor was actually going to reduce congestion and in the city sort of you know going to be an easier ride and in fact the opposite happened because what happened is by allowing these trains to go out to the suburbs more people were moved out there the trolleys would come in and they would immediately sort of hit this you know gridlock as they got into the city so it didn't really get that much better in the city the only difference was that it was all underground instead of above ground which was better certainly but it was different so the system certainly needed to continue to grow and get better and expand in order to improve towards now just operating like