The Carbon advocate. [volume] (Lehighton, Pa.) 1872-1924, 1891-07-11
400 MILES AN Hour.
How We Shall Soon He Able 20 Travel
~ That Marvellous Rate.

How We Shall Soon Re Able 10 Travel
~ That Marvellous Rate.
Doesn't it begin to look as IL the nine
tcenth century, even in its last decade,
might outdo all the famous "seven won
ders of the world" that astonished the
ancientsg In the first place there is a
likelihood that we shall see, before the
century closes, a means of transit that
will whisk us from New York to Phila-
delphia in less than an hour and from
Philadelphia to Chicago between break
fast and supper time. Experiments
have lately been made near Baltimore,
which gives good promise that such re-
suits will be obtained in the not distant
future.
Electric power, on an ordinary railway,
with motors and cars of peculiar con.
struction, is the means with which we
may hope to travel at a speed Of more
than hundred miles an hour. In fact,
it is confidently believed by some COM
petent witnesses of the experiments that
it will be possible TO reach a speed Of 250
miles an hour. However it may be as to
maximum velocity, we have the indorse-
ment Of experts as to the feasibility Of
running trains more than a hundred
miles an hour under the proposed system,
without greater risk of derailment than
is now experienced at less than half that
speed.
While experiments in this line are ap-
preaching fruition we hear some aston
ishing reports of experiments for adapt
ing the principle of the pneumatic tube
to passenger transit. This principle is
utilized in nearly all our large cities for
the transmission Of small packets, such
as news messages, money, small parcels
in the shipping marts, and 80 on, and it
would seem possible, from such results,
to reach the acme Of passenger transit,
In fact it is rather strange that this con-
summation has been so long delayed.
! The idea is not a new one. The writer
of these lines travelled in a pneuma tic
car 25 years ago in the heart of the city
of New York. Moses s. Beach, at that
time proprietor of the New York 81
and his brother Alfred, then end now
one of the proprietors of the Scientific
American, constructed a pneumatic rail-
way under the surface of Broadway,
running from Murray to Warren street.
The road, or rather the tube, was only
about 100 yards long, but the object was
to demonstrate the feasibility of pneu-
matte railways to do the work that after
ward fell to the elevated railroads.
The experiment of the Beaches was
interesting and costly, but practically
nothing more. Cars were run from one
end of the tube to the other filled with
passengers. 1t was proved beyond doubt
that the pneumatic principle was broad
enough to cover passenger transit But
the whole plan was crude and the results
unsatisfactory. Many years of expert
ment were needed to bring the system up
to the level Of practical usefulness. The
Broadway hole, as it was called by
some Of the newspapers, was visited by
thousands of people, who indulged in the
novelty Of short pneumatic excursion,
but the scheme was finally abandoned
and now nothing but the @hole" is left.
Recent accounts of experiments in
Europe, however, give strong hope that
the dream of the Messrs. Beach will soon
be realized.