Talk:Sky Ride

message: I have a family heirloom, a U.S.Patent granted to William Lindsay Hamilton, his heirs relating to "Ropeways and the like". I understand that William Hamilton designed the Transporter Bridge. The Patent number is 1501333 and was granted in Washington on 15th July, 1924
Signed
Archie Hamilton
Glasgow, Scotland, U.K
81.102.38.183 20:23, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Patent details 

message: I have found the smoking gun and it has shot me. I am reverting the edit made by Lar to insert the language which I requested. As it turns out, I was right that the Sky Ride was a aerial tramway, but I was wrong, too, in that it is both an aerial tramway and a transporter bridge. I have now found two or three authoritative references, written during the heyday of transporter bridges, which clearly indicate that some, or all, aerial tramways were considered to be transporter bridges. They are:
* Transporter Bridges by Henry Grattan Tyrrell, 1912, p. 5. The author of this monograph, which is only about transporter bridges, says without further comment, "During the year 1894, two important passenger cableways were erected, one near Knoxville, Tennessee, and the other at Brighton Dyke [sic], England, the car on the former one moving on a cable with steep incline." He goes on to say that the English one is the one at Devil's Dyke designed by W.J. Brewer. Photos of that cableway can be seen here and here, and clearly show it to be an aerial tramway. The Knoxville one is fully described in American Engineer and Railroad Journal, 1894, Vol. 68, p. 283 (and illustrated on p. 282) and is clearly an aerial tramway. (It must be also noted, however, that Tyrrell later, at page 9, after describing the Portugalete, Bizerta, Rouen, Nantes, and Marselle classic-style transporter bridges, says, "up to this time, transporter bridges had not been used in America ... but in 1905, the first and only one on this side of the Atlantic, was completed, over the ship canal from Lake Avenue, Duluth, to Minnesota Point" (emphasis added) thus implying that the Knoxville cableway was not a transporter bridge [see additional discussion below].) On page 11 the author also describes and includes a sketch for a proposed design for a "modified type of transporter bridge" which is clearly an aerial tramway (and one on which, I would hope, they would distribute brown pants at the beginning of the ride).
* Bridge Engineering, Volume 1, by John Alexander Low Waddell, 1916, p. 671 in his section on transporter bridges has a list of "other bridges of this type" and includes in that list, a reference to a "Cableway at Brighton, England," obviously being the Devil's Dyke cableway described above.
* The Theory and Practice of Bridge Construction by Morgan William Davies, 1908, p. 433 has a sketch of an aerial tramway and says that it "represents in a crude form the principle of the transporter bridge."
It is thus clear that contemporary sources clearly considered at least some aerial tramways to be transporter bridges. What's not clear at this remove is whether they considered all, or just some, aerial tramways to be transporter bridges. It's not that aerial tramways were new or novel at this time (see this history). A clue might be found in Tyrrell's comment that the car on the Knoxville cableway moved at a steep incline. It may be that the engineers and architects of the day only considered near-horizontal aerial tramways, such as that at Devil's Dyke, as transporter bridges, but considered those which scaled heights to be a structure type unto themselves. (As can be seen from the American Engineer and Railroad Journal description, the fact that the Knoxville cableway not only scaled a height but also served to cross a river probably added to its ambiguity.) 
Whatever the explanation, it is indisputably clear that the architects and engineers of the time considered some aerial tramways to be transporter bridges. I and Die Welt der Schwebefähren are, therefore, clearly wrong about the Sky Ride not being a transporter bridge and I am boldly reverting Lar's inclusion of the language I previously requested because it is misleading. I apologize to Lar and ¢Spender1983 for the trouble I've put them to (and also for this talk page edit being non-concise). TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 16:47, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It has been an interesting discussion, at the very least, and therefore enjoyable to me. I have been thinking that the lead should change to:The Sky Ride was an attraction built for the Century of Progress Exposition (or World's Fair) in Chicago, Illinois (located near what became Meigs Field) in 1933. It was a transporter bridge (or aerial tramway), designed by the bridge engineering firm Robinson & Steinman, that ferried people across the lagoon in the center of the fair. It was demolished after carrying X,XXX,XXX riders during the run of the fair. The Sky Ride had an 1,850-foot (564 m) span and two XXX-feet tall towers, making it the most prominent structure at the fair. Suspended from the span, 215 feet (66 m) above the ground, were rocket-shaped cars, each carrying 36 passengers.Text about the number of transporter bridges in the US can then be moved to the history section. I think this is more engaging than the current lead. It also explains why the article is in both the amusement ride category as well as the transporter bridge category. Thoughts? - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 20:06, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought I tried to say that I'm Ok with the text added by me, the thing DOES have aspects of aerial trams, but I like your wording even better. No one needs to feel badly about this episode, the article is better now than it was before due to us all digging around and adding bits we found. ++Lar: t/c 22:08, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: So did you make that change or no? I think that's a great new lead. ++Lar: t/c 22:45, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Moved the extra text from the lead (along with some other text) to a new section called Design. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 20:32, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Another time around