F- THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT BY BECKLES WILLSON * 3 , >" ' " ' ; . 1 . . WITH THIRTY-SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK D APPLETON AND COMPANY 1903 f , , . , ' c ' COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY All rights reserved Published October, 1903 PREFACE IT has been said that "when the nineteenth century takes its place with the other centuries in the chronological charts of the future, it will, if it need a symbol, almost inevitably have as that symbol, a steam-engine running upon a rail- way." * The characteristic material problem of the nine- teenth century was Rapid Transit, and it prom- ises to be one of the most prominent sciences of the twentieth. To it is consecrated to-day more capital, labor, and ingenuity than to all the other sciences together. It is an end to which the greatest inventors and most skilful engineers have consecrated their talents. Whether it be in the form of the railway steam or electric the steamship, the telegraph, with or without wires, the telephone, the automobile, ever great and still greater velocity of locomotion or communication is the goal in view. And what victories have been won over the sluggish forces of nature! what obstacles overcome! The whole story is so modern that, like Electricity and Photography, we can trace its beginnings not further back than the time of our grandsires. In this story of the rise and progress of the *H. G. Wells: "Anticipations." 5 PREFACE science of Rapid Transit, with its ever new de- vices, its monuments of engineering, and its bil- lions of capital, there is perceptible a kind of magic. The acceleration from decade to decade since the era of the mail-coaches may here be plainly noted; and the reader will doubtless find the comparison of the actual contemporary time- tables of the journeys between London and Edin- burgh, Paris and New York, with those of to-day, a source of interest and information. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. BEGINNINGS OF RAPID TRANSIT THE MAIL- COACH ii II. THE FIRST RAILWAYS ..... 25 III. STEAM NAVIGATION IV. DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY ... 64 V. THE TELEGRAPH WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY . 96 VI. AERIAL NAVIGATION HOMING PIGEONS . 114 VII. OCEAN TELEGRAPHY THE TELEPHONE PNEUMATIC TUBES POSTAL SYSTEMS . 136 VIII. THE BICYCLE MOTOR CYCLES . . . 148 IX. MOTOR CARRIAGES 161 X. STREET RAILWAYS 182 7 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE A Modern Motor Car ..... Frontispiece The Earliest Hackney Coach ..... 16 The Cabriolet ........ 20 An Early Stage-coach ...... 23 Old English Coach" The Flying Coach" . .27 Globular-shaped Mail-coach, Used in Continental Eu- rope a Century Ago ...... 29 One of Stephenson's Passenger Engines 35 The Experiment, the First Railway Passenger Coach, 1825 37 The Rocket ........ 39 The Royal George ....... 40 Liverpool and Manchester Railway First Class, 1830 42 Liverpool and Manchester Railway Second and Third Class, 1831 42 Steam versus Horses ....... 45 The Comet ........ 48 The Great Western . . . . . ^ . 51 The Deutschland ....... 63 Facsimile Time-table, 1839 ..... 67 A Diligence ........ 69 The Royal Train in 1843, London and Birmingham . 72 Great Western Railway The Flying Dtitchman. . 77 Interior of a Third-class Dining-car, Midland Rail- way 8 1 The First Electric Railway , . . . 93 Earliest Advertisement of the Electric Telegraph . 105 An Airship Designed by Francis Lana, of Barcelona, 1670 115 The First Aerial Voyage . . . . . .117 Santos-Dumont Rounding the Eiffel Tower in His Air- ship 134 The " Dandy-horse " 149 James's Steam-carriage ...... 165 Steam Road Coach, 1833 ...... 166 io LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE F. Hill's Steam-carriage Running between London and Birmingham, 1839-1843 ..... 168 An Early Gas-propelled Vehicle ..... 171 A Modern Motor Car (diagram) . . . . .175 The First Omnibus . . . . . . .183 New Patent Safety Cab 184 The Thames Tunnel ......, 187 Elevated Railway, New York . . . . .189 Moving Platform, Paris Exhibition, 1900 . . . 197 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT t >.>., - - * ' * > ' > , 1 CHAPTER I BEGINNINGS OF RAPID TRANSIT THE MAIL- COACH ECONOMY of time was a virtue but little prac- tised by our ancestors. The innovator who pro- posed to effect a saving of it was regarded as either a fool or a revolutionary. To a race which lived in the constant prospect of eternity this life at best was but a "fleeting show," and any at- tempt to multiply its moments was properly frowned upon as vanity. An idea of seventeenth century celerity may be gained from the fact that in 1609 to send a letter from York to Oxford and obtain a reply required a full month. Even after the establish- ment of the post in 1660, correspondence was but little expedited. When coaches were introduced it was roundly declared that they would ruin the country; and we find in one chronicler a eulogy of the old wagons of Master Stow's day, which did not jog along the highway at a speed of four miles an hour, but traveled easily, "without jolt- ing men's bodies or hurrying them along." The general advantages of rapid transit, on its com- ii 12 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT mercial side, were not even dimly perceived. The new stage-coaches were condemned by the coun- try towns because they would enable London to avail itself of a wider circle of supply and demand, and so injure their trade. In 1673, it took a full \vK-!< 'of, frivol to reach Exeter from London (the fare, by the way, being 40$. in summer and 455. in winter, which was also the tariff for the journey irom the capital to Chester or York). In 1678, six clays were required by a six-horse coach to perform the journey between Edinburgh and Glasgow and return. Before the close of the sev- enteenth century a similar vehicle demanded two days 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 daylight: when night journeys were first intro- duced in 1740, there were many who foreboded ruin to the proprietors on account of the innova- tion. One who thought of leaving by coach from Edinburgh for the British capital in the middle of the eighteenth century, planned the journey months in advance, consulted his lawyer and made his will. Such an adventure was not to be em- barked upon lightly, as is testified by an adver- tisement in the Edinburgh Conrant for 1758, which states that, "with God's permission," the coach would "go in ten days in summer and twelve in winter." This would now suffice to carry a traveler from Edinburgh to Chicago or to Cairo, with two or three days to spare. An idea of what the enterprising projectors meant by a "flying-coach" may be derived from an an- BEGINNINGS OF RAPID TRANSIT 13 nouncement in 1765 that such a vehicle, drawn by eight horses, would travel from London to Dover, seventy-one miles, in a single day. 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 with rude paving in the muddy places and 'Very noisome 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 Turnpike Act in 1633, which premised that por- tions of the Great 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 toll 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 7 and the roads of England and Scotland a century later w^ere but little bettered; indeed, some of them grew worse. We could hardly require bet- ter testimony as to their actual condition in 1770 than is furnished by the celebrated Arthur Young 14 THE STORY OF RAPID 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 whole counties, one would naturally conclude it to be at least decent; but let me most seriously caution all travelers who may accidentally 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 what, therefore, must it be after a winter? The only mending it re- ceives in places is the tumbling in some loose stones, which serve no other purpose but jolting a carriage 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 memory." Young found else- where in the north other roads equally bad, where two miles an hour would doubtless have been per- formed with difficulty. 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 in 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 1 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 system man- aged by the Government was finally settled by an Act passed in 1656. The preamble showed that "the erecting of one General Post Office 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- yond 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 people 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 1658 the first stage-coach between 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 foot. 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 TRANSIT thus forming the earliest idea of the "Hackney coach." In 1662 there were only six stage-coaches in the whole kingdom, and even this number was considered by some of the slow-going, conserva- tive citizens as just half-a-dozen too many. Matters were to be yet worse before they were bettered, for with the establishment of the Gen- The Earliest Hackney Coach. eral Post Office at the Restoration a lower stand- ard of despatch prevailed, and six days, instead of three, were consumed by the mails between London and Edinburgh. Such a retrogression aroused Nottingham, York, and other towns to protest, and as a consequence the King's post be- came accelerated to "three and a half or four days," which was a rate much slower than that which had prevailed thirty years before. Never- theless, it must be remembered that the volume BEGINNINGS OF RAPID TRANSIT 1 7 of mail business between the two capitals was very scanty, a hint of which truth we may obtain from the fact that, on one occasion in 1745, the mail brought only a single letter from the South for the British Linen Company. On another day in the same year only one was received in London for Sir William Pulteney, the banker. With Edinburgh four days from London it was on a par with Constantinople at the present day. Early in the eighteenth 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 1717, addressed "to the several postmasters between London and East Grinstead." It is headed, "Haste, haste, post haste!" from which the casual reader might gather that extraordinary expedi- tion would be observed. The mails, we learn, departed "from the letter-office in London, July 7th, 1717, at half-an-hour past two in the morn- ing," and reached East Grinstead, distant forty- six miles, at half-past three in the afternoon. The rate, including stoppages, was a trifle over four miles an hour. But even in 1766 four miles an hour was regarded as the height of postal celer- ity. "Letters are conveyed in so short a time, by night as well as by day, that every twenty-four hours the post goes 120 miles, and in five or six days an answer to a letter may be had from a place 300 miles from London." Letters were despatched from London, as well as received, at all hours of the day and night, there being no regularity in the service until 1784. 1 8 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT As a sample of speed in 1734 we may mention that in that year John Dale advertised that a coach would take the road from Edinburgh for London "towards the end of each week, to be performed in nine days, or three days sooner than any coach on the road." Twenty years later the pace, so far from having improved, was worse, inasmuch as it took ten days in summer and twelve in winter, and in 1763, the coach set out, it is stated, once a month, and "took a fortnight, if the weather was favorable." The cause of this degeneracy is doubtless to be found in the prac- tise of post-chaise traveling in parties by means of which a few travelers shared a vehicle together and secured greater speed and cheapness. A jour- ney to York was regularly done in four days ("if God permit"). In 1742 the Oxford stage-coach left London at seven in the morning and reached Uxbrldge at mid-day. It arrived at High Wycombe at five in the evening, resting there for the night, for there was no traveling in the dark hours, and proceed- ing on at the same rate on the following day. In 1758, however, there came an improvement. Up to that year the Great North Mail set out thrice a week occupying eighty-seven hours in its northward journey and not less than 131 hours on its return south. The cause of the latter ex- cess was the stoppages made at Berwick and Newcastle, ranging from three hours at the for- mer to twenty-four at the latter. An Edinburgh merchant, George Chalmers, a sufferer by these delays, entered into correspondence with the offi- cials, and after pointing out that the stoppages were quite superfluous, induced them to avoid BEGINNINGS OF RAPID TRANSIT 19 the old, long route via Thome and York for that by Boroughbridge, thereby shortening the jour- ney by twelve miles. This resulted in the time- table being amended, so that the journey was now achieved in eighty-two hours to and eighty-five from Edinburgh. Furthermore, Chalmers pre- vailed upon the Government to run the mails six times weekly. The Government recognized Chalmers's services by making him a grant of 600. It was about the same time (1767) that Henry Homer was congratulating his countrymen on the vast improvements which he had witnessed in his lifetime. To the condition of the roads and the difficulties of internal communication he at- tributed the backward state of the country in the reign of Queen Anne. *-W The trade of the kingdom languished for means of rapid transit. "Few People," he says, "cared to encounter the Difficulties which at- tended the Conveyance of Goods from the Places where they were manufactured to the Markets where they were to be disposed of. ... The Natural Produce of the Country was with Diffi- culty circulated to supply the Necessities of those Counties and Trading Towns which wanted, and to dispose of the Superfluity of others which abounded. . . . We are now released," he adds, "from treading the cautious steps of our Forefathers and our very Carriages travel with almost \vinged expedition between every Town of consequence in the Kingdom and the Metrop- olis. . . . Despatch, which is the very Life and Soul of Business, becomes daily more attain- able by the free Circulation opening in every 2O THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT Channel what is adapted to it. . . . There never was a more astonishing Revolution accom- plished in the internal System of any Country than has been within the Compass of a few years r steamers had been established on all the longer routes and worked at high rates of speed. In that year the Orient Steam Naviga- tion Company began a series of fortnightly sail- ings to Australia, one of their steamers, the Orient, astonishing the world by making the pas- sage from Plymouth to Adelaide, via Suez Canal, in thirty-five days, sixteen hours, and the same voyage via the Cape, in thirty-four days, one hour, steaming time. It was when the Australian liner Aberdeen was built in 1881 that the merits of the triple-expansion type of engine, now so universal, were first conclusively shown. The engines of this vessel worked with a boiler pres- sure of 125 Ibs. per square inch, and expansion took place in three cylinders. Her first voyage from Plymouth to Melbourne occupied forty-two days. In 1883 a New Zealand line was instituted, and voyages from England thence cut down from sixty-five to thirty-seven or forty days. But it was and is on the Atlantic that the great- est ocean speed triumphs have been won. In 1874 the White Star liners Britannic and Ger- manic were built at Belfast, and from that year a hotly waged contest for superiority in speed, STEAM NAVIGATION 6 1 size, and equipment has lasted to the present day. Each increase in speed nowadays represents in- numerable modifications some minor, some radical which engineering and shipbuilding sci- ence suggests. For a time the White Star liners maintained first place for speed, until they were ousted by the Inman liner, City of Berlin, which beat the Britannic' s record of eight and a quarter days across the Atlantic. Liner after liner ap- peared, each faster than its predecessor, until in 1886 the average time between Sandy Hook and Queenstown was about six days, fifteen hours, as compared with eleven days, nineteen hours in 1856. Since then the record has been lowered re- peatedly. The Campania achieved the journey in five days, twelve hours, fifteen minutes, which was supposed to be unsurpassable until it was broken first by one ocean greyhound and then another, the Lncania in 1894 doing the voyage in five days, eight hours from Queenstown to New York. ' The Lucanias record of 562 knots in a single day was soon to be beaten by the great North German Lloyd steamers sailing from Southamp- ton to New York, one of which, the Fiirst Bis- marck, had already done this longer journey in less than six and a half days. In July, 1901, the Deutschland lowered' all records by crossing the Atlantic in five days, eleven hours, five minutes, her average speed being 23.51 knots, whilst the best day's run was 557 miles. The distance traversed between Sandy Hook and the Eddystone on that occasion was 3,082 miles. In June, 1902, the Krvnprinz Wilhchn maintained a trifle higher average speed 62 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT than the Deutschland's record. As a matter of fact, the length of the voyage between New York and Plymouth was not reduced, as the Kronprins was five clays, eleven hours, thirty-two minutes running between Sandy Hook and the Eddystone, twenty-seven minutes longer than the Deutschland,but in those few minutes she steamed an additional thirteen miles, the log of the Kron- prinz showing that the total distance traveled was 3,095 miles. Thus, although the Krvnprins es- tablished a new record for average speed, the Deutschland's 557 miles remained the best day's run on the homeward voyage. The Kronprinz's average speed throughout her trip was 23.53 knots. In 1901 the new twin-screw steamer Arundcl made a record channel passage from New Haven to Dieppe in two hours, fifty-eight minutes, or at an average speed of twenty-two knots. The ab- sence of all vibration was secured to passengers by a patent balancing arrangement of the ma- chinery. What part electric traction will play in the future of navigation cannot easily be predicted. But even with steam, it is almost certain that the old piston and cylinder type of engine will be superseded. Another and fundamentally differ- ent type the turbine in which the impulse of the steam spins a wheel instead of pushing a pis- ton is making great headway. The antiquity of the idea is considerable it is even ascribed to Hero of Alexandria, who describes an elementary form of such an engine, and this rotary principle was certainly experimented with and abandoned by the seventeenth century experimenters. The a 3 64 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT reason was that it was not adapted to pumping, this being the end then, and until toward the close of the eighteenth century, in view. In the meantime the piston-engine became developed and the turbine principle rested dormant until only some twenty years ago the requirements of the dynamo-electric machine opened up fresh in- ducements for development. By 1894 so many details had been worked out, that capital was in- duced to venture upon the construction of an ex- perimental ship. This vessel, the Tnrbinia, after repeated trials and modifications, achieved the unprecedented speed of 34^ knots an hour. This was the high-water mark of marine travel- ing but it was to be surpassed. The Viper, a larger but similar vessel, constructed for the British Navy, as a torpedo destroyer, reached a velocity of forty-one miles an hour. The builder has stated his confidence that fifty and even sixty miles an hour will yet be achieved by such craft on the high seas. CHAPTER IV DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY IT was to be expected that foreign countries would eagerly avail themselves of the extraordi- nary advantages which railways had been shown to confer upon commerce and society in Great Britain. But the neighboring kingdom of France was very backward. English visitors to that country in 1845 were wont to complain of the slow pace DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY 65 of the diligence, not remembering that it was quite equal to that which at the beginning of the century was ordinarily accomplished in England. Posting in Germany was soon, after the down- fall of Napoleon, placed on a much improved footing in the matter of speed: but even in 1840 from fourteen to eighteen German miles was reckoned as the ordinary extent of a day's journey. "France," observes a writer in 1844, "has al- lowed herself to be outstripped by her neighbors, not only by England, but also by Belgium, Prussia, and Austria, in these means of extending national resources and civilization, which the country more especially stands in need of. She has, how- ever, for the present laid out her money in fortifi- cations, and has little to spare for lines of com- munication. This, however, is not the sole rea- son; it lies in the want of confidence between man and man, and in the absence of the spirit of association, by means of which all great public works are executed in England by private enter- prise, but which does not exist in France." Yet even at this time the use of steam in navigation was very general in France. All the great rivers being traversed by steamers. 'In almost all cases," we read, "the engineers employed on these vessels are Englishmen." Railway progress in France was certainly slow : and for some years lagged behind England, Bel- gium, and Germany. Although the introduction of the first tram-road dates from 1783, it was not until 1835 that the first modern railway was be- gun bv the authorization of the line from Paris ^j j ' to St. Germain, its completion following two 5 66 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT years later. In 1838 the Orleans line was under- taken and the railway from Paris to Rouen was opened in May, 1843, and soon afterward extended to Havre. Comprehensive measures at last fol- lowed on the part of the French Government, which proposed to form railways from the capital to all the frontiers of France, taking the principal towns and cities en route. By 1865 the plan was practically carried out, and between 8,000 and 9,000 miles were open for traffic. In Belgium, preparations for railways began in 1834, and thirty years later the network was nearly as close and intricate as in Great Britain. Germany early permitted railways to cross her frontiers, and soon numerous lines were stretch- ing far and wide throughout the Empire. Iron highways also began to be projected and built in Italy and Russia, Holland, Sweden, and the other European states. In Spain in 1851 there were only two railways, one of eighteen miles from Barcelona to Mataro; another forty-five miles, from Madrid to Aranjuez. It took some time to conquer the national aversion to rapid transit, and journeys were still made throughout the Penin- sula at the speed with which the immortal Gil Bias traveled from Madrid to Alcantara. The first line in Spain was inaugurated with the ceremony of ''blessing the engine" by the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, in presence of the Court, Cortes, distinguished nobles, troops and halberdiers, and three miles of spectators. The following day the peasants on the road, see- ing the trains traveling at the unheard-of velocity of fifteen miles an hour, involuntarily fell on their knees and crossed themselves until the monster Great "Western Railway. LONDON TO MAIDENHEAD. * ff 1*1} On and after the 1st of May, the SOUTH ALL STATION wiU be opened // J\t*st!H*/t;rsiaml Parctft, A* t-Atr* Train i Hlougli -.11 i--i> t'^dn, ,,.,-...,, Maafaj Hornlnif*, .t lialf-p.t^l 9 o'rfo, fn-ni uj |n(ff LvtMM It* I lie (ation ( at a tnottcrjt^ clurgc. TRAINS. From Maidenhead To Paddington. o'dudt dwcaiog^ nDjap ai . . fri&n.-s ( 4Ht -it tVcilnn4ay tternlKf at s....lK,lly do. Bloucb and \V1 Un>iln Muu,-l. u.J w 01 Un;Ma --!.. .-h aod Scull,.!: dlough -iuj \S(.t Drajrton Mou^h aiij >outtkAll Mouj;h and Kuin.^1 tloujh anj \,l llrarl. Mou B h aud ' ' From Paddington To Maidenhead. Soulliall unil sliiii^h *l o'clock ni'Tn railing .11 do. . 10 fl. 13 do. ' Wr-l l>rj>l..n in.l .-|...i_li ' \Vr.t 1 >| .< m .ind flou;:ll - \\ l.t L>ru\! u. .,.1,1 >:.,.; t 4 Id... ... M,,,.:;!, A da. - - llanMcll anil M..M h o'clock ' mrc: Kiling, \\'cl ! 'i i' ami .slouch 1 d... - - Sonl!niU uJ Sbiiish * loi L up Trala will rail at .Sonlhull on \\ rdnf*A*j moraloCB, for Iherooiralrocv orprmuttrndiux Ibr uiurbrt uu thai da). SHOUT TRAINS. From Paddington To West Drayton. * (vlkl tt Uv. L" i'i.'. * V. Moalhall, ) [ before 7 o'Clotk Evening ) (, K HlLaf . From West Drayton ToPaddlngton. '"" -u |Uj. (ty* 77icrc ar* He Itfutitt tttltt rluit rilfrittyn in llir tttort Train!. P-j*\cnRrr and Parcel, for Slouch and Maiilcnhcai] wifl l>c conrrjcd from all the nations (>y mrnni of ihf then Trjin>. Muling lo he taken on lit the .urr.-ttlin- lon^ 1 rain, as auo\i: ; and lu Ukc manner UiCT lU b Couvetrd Iroia Maidenhead ami Hoiiyli. lo vi-er\ station on tie Line. On si,\l> \ VS. From Paddington To Maidenhead. ft avkx-h Muri.nllincM lilii.B anrt >lm.;H |r.>iH Ho. O . 7 i.>. At t:. ;e.tl...il..,,. u d>l..,,;h Swutli J> and M..ii(;li From Maidenhead To Paddington. O M.K-r..l SlnraTlerh Morola v To West Drayton. cVlmt; Rl J 'ii'ft fjn^ffttiny lo Slotiyti I past 3 do. Kvcninp, /..'/<./. llannrll Of H..t,rlwlt ?e.eo... s d. *<. .. SHOUT TRAINS, TO SLOUGH. railing al baling, llanwtl Slou^b .ud Um l>r.yl. l , Saalhitllj and Dra 1 1*. From West Drayton. "' hcfore 8 o'clock Morning, { cjUi|) \ .Vl<<(/. ; before ^ do. [' irnu r . ^ ^ifftlff fait FARES. Paddinglon. To Eating Hanvell . . . Southoll West Drayton S!ouyti ' 1, 1 0;., I 1st I Maidenhead. \ : J cofr-h. I t*v* i OT. 201 6 2 G 1 3 C 2 4 6 3 09 To Slough . Maiden/ieaJ . 58 4 ! 3 6 2 I 1 ti West Droytfftt I 3 0(2 6 i 2 I i ' j 3 i 2 6 63 6 j 3 Kaliny 1.5 04 03 6 PaJdimjlon. | 5 6 I 4 | 3 6 llanwcil ... i 4 Oti Jn-i, Kl Facsimile Time-table, 1839. 68 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT was out of sight. This speed was not, however, regularly maintained; 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 Post 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 limiting the speed of trains to twelve miles an hour, and when thirty miles an hour \vas 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 u c 70 THE STORY 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 . 291 29^ By another route, via Brighton and Dieppe, the journey to the French capital was made as follows : Miles. Hours. London to Brighton . . . 50^ 2 Brighton to Shoreham . . 5 0^4 Shoreham to Havre . . . 94 9 Havre to Paris . . . .132 13 Total . 281^ 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 DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY 7 1 by water from three weeks to a month. So great were the difficulties 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, when "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 Times 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 started 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 had 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 London, and then I set off 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 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 I & 1 3 OS o -c o hJ CO fl '3 h 1) 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 mania that DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY 73 one express steamed up to London, 118 miles, in an hour and a half, nearly eighty miles an hour. In 1846 the distance between London and Exeter (193^4 miles) was regularly accomplished in four hours and a half. In the same year the distance between London and Liverpool (210 miles) occupied just six hours. In 1842 the Great Western Railway caused some interesting experiments to be made with regard to speed. On one occasion an expert driver ran his train over the eighteen miles be- tween London and Slough in fifteen minutes, which was at that time the maximum speed which had ever been attained on a railway. Six years later 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 Dutchman. 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 elapsed before it was found possible to diminish it. In 1885, however, 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, 186 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 road. 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 1901. 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 first running 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 miles 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. It may there- fore be considered as a huge projectile, subject to the same laws that govern projectiles, but 76 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT weighing 100 tons instead of 100 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 pace of the train is at the rate of 105 feet per second, so that 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 in 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, therefore, for any train wishing to be called "express" in England is not 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, if its journey-speed is as high as twenty-nine miles an hour, trains there which attain such speed form 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 thib 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 77 taining with unflagging uniformity this same high speed uphill, through suburbs and junctions, 0) ( ' h ci 'rt c OJ t/1 0) ^ rt a; t-i O persisting this 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 mildest of the trains we call "express" will arrive as soon as this imaginary one, though our actual train has had to labor slowly up the hills, to slack for bridges, curves, or junctions, besides con- suming precious time in four or five stoppages of as many minutes each. The feeblest 'express' is as smart as this; what then shall we say of trains which secure an 'inclusive 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 eight 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, 1880. It was conveying the Lord Mayor of London to Scarborough. The distance from London to York, 1 88 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 being level. Stoke, 100 miles, was passed in one hour and fifty-one minutes; while between Bark- stone and Tuxford, twenty-two and a quarter miles, the speed was at the rate of sixty-four miles an hour. At that period, the ordinary ex- press trains of the line occupied three hours and forty-eight minutes or twenty-one minutes more on the journey. In August took place the first of the exciting races to Edinburgh, when the daily performance of each of the rival expresses was wired in detail to the newspapers. The origin of the competi- tion was the action of the Great Northern Rail- way in announcing some months before, that it would carry third-class passengers in its night express to Edinburgh and Glasgow, which took nine hours to the former city and ten hours twenty minutes to the latter. This was throwing down the gauntlet to the North-Western, inas- much as it was in the one case nearly an hour quicker than that company's best third-class express. By the new arrangement, therefore, third-class passengers could arrive in Edinburgh one hour sooner by the Great Northern line. The doyen of railways quickly responded by lowering its time to nine hours between Glasgow and Edin- burgh and Euston. In addition, a new express was put on for Perth, leaving Euston at 10.30 and arriving in Perth at 9.35, twenty minutes quicker than before. Admirers of speed were delighted at these evidences of youthful enterprise on the part of an old-established line up to then content to work its trains at a velocity less brilliant than either of its two rivals. 80 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT Early in June the response of the Great North- ern came. It gave notice that it intended forth- with to shorten its Edinburgh 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 twenty-five minutes off 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-Western was not to be beaten: it felt its prestige at stake and abruptly gave three days' notice that from August 1st 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 issued its working notices all over the line announcing that from August ist by their route the journey 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 Si coolness and executive skill especially as the "accelerations" were wrought in the very busiest week of the railway year. An alarmist cry of ''Danger" went up from certain newspapers and excitable individuals, and all sorts of horrors were wildly predicted, as a result of this velocity. : Interior of a Third-class Dining-car, Midland Railway. During the first week the North-Western, finding they ran over Shap summit easily in the shortest time (at fifty-one and a half miles an hour), and the Caledonian still more easily (fifty miles an hour), gave notice that they would equal the speed of the Great Northern. Yet every day the rival expresses ran within the time, the West Coast train on the opening day actually saving fifteen minutes on the road, arriving at Edin- 6 82 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT burgh at 5.52. The ninety miles from Preston to Carlisle, a steep incline, was done in eighty- nine minutes. As the rival line had also been running under time, it decided that its express should arrive in the Scotch capital at 5.45, or seven and three-quarter hours, from London. The North-Western cheerfully followed suit, and got into Edinburgh in seven hours thirty-eight minutes. The Great Northern then did the jour- ney in seven hours thirty-two minutes, and with that achievement the contest suddenly came to an end. Negotiations took place and a compromise was effected, the West Coast relapsing to its pre- vious programme of eight hours, while the East Coast, being eight miles shorter, was permitted to make the transit in seven and three-quarter hours. But although "racing" ceased, phenome- nal speed was maintained to the end of the month, and on August 28th the East Coast express reached Edinburgh at 5.29, three minutes sooner than the best previous records. The North- Western responded with a farewell performance, beating this record by one minute in spite of the longer distance. On one day of this race of 1888, Crewe to Preston (fifty-one miles) was done in fifty minutes; Preston to Carlisle (ninety miles) in eighty-nine minutes; Carlisle to Edinburgh (lOO^ miles) in iO2 l / 2 minutes; and Newcastle to Edinburgh (124 miles) in 124 minutes. So smooth was the motion that the unsuspecting passengers were unaware they w 7 ere taking part in a feat that, on level ground, would have been without a precedent. The "race to the North" was resumed by the rival railways in 1895. In June of that year the DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY 83 best trains between London and Aberdeen took eleven hours thirty-five minutes by the East Coast route (523 miles), and eleven hours fifty minutes by the West Coast (540 miles). From July ist the latter accelerated their time by ten minutes, and their rivals, taking this as a chal- lenge, immediately lowered their time by twenty minutes. The West Coast responded a fortnight later by an acceleration of forty minutes, and a pitched' battle ensued, raging fiercely for a month. Although the West Coast maintained the lead in arrival at Aberdeen almost through- out, yet allowing for stoppages, weight of train, etc., there was not much to choose between the two competitors. On August 22d the 8 P.M. train from Euston reached Aberdeen at 4.32 A.M., an acceleration of no less than three hours eigh- teen minutes on its speed before the racing be- gan. This meant an average of 63.3 miles an hour, including stoppages. The expense, if not the risk, of these high-pressure speeds led to an agreement, and the rivalry suddenly ceased. Nevertheless, the September Bradshaw showed that ten and a half hours would be the future time between London and Aberdeen, a saving of more than one hour on the old time, besides a consid- erable improvement in the speed to Inverness, Perth, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. Moreover the contest restored to Great Britain the record for daily long-distance fast traveling which for three previous years had been held by the Empire State Express, which runs from New York to Buffalo (440 miles) in eight hours forty minutes. This now became beaten both by the West Coast time to Perth (450 miles) in eight hours forty 84 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT minutes, and by the East Coast time to Dundee (452 miles) in eight hours forty-seven minutes. As a rejoinder, on September nth the New York Central Railway ran a racing train from New York to Buffalo, which performed the jour- ney in six hours fifty-one minutes, an average speed (including stoppages) of 64.22 miles an hour. Another important acceleration of railway speed brought about in 1895 was on the Great Western Railway between London and Bristol, Bath and the west of England generally. It was accomplished by the purchase of the Swindon Junction Hotel property which was held by its owners under an extraordinary agreement which made it obligatory to stop all passenger trains passing through Swindon, ten minutes for re- freshments. This ridiculous arrangement dated from 1841 and was for ninety-nine years. In order to annul it the Great Western Company had to pay no less than 100,000. Since the "race to Edinburgh" of 1888, there had been an understanding that neither of the rival companies should time their day trains quicker than eight and a half hours. Twelve years later, however, in November, 1900, the East Coast route announced that thereafter it would accelerate its "Flying Scotsman" so as to do the journey in eight and a quarter hours. The West Coast Company did the same. It was believed that the first-named company were ex- tremely desirous of winning back to Great Britain the record for railway speed which, in the inter- val, had again passed first to the United States and then to France. For the title of the fastest DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY 85 train in the world, once belonging to the "Flying Scotsman," was in 1900 bestowed upon the "Sud Express" of the Orleans Company, which aver- aged fifty-four miles an hour, including stop- pages, for a journey of 486 miles. But this rate of speed is a remarkable exception for France. The accepted definition of an English or Amer- ican express train is one whose speed, inclusive of stops, is at least forty miles an hour. This figure, we are told, exhibits the relative efficiency and energy of the traffic administration, while the "running average," as it is called, may show a much higher degree of speed, excluding the stops. Very few Continental express trains attain a journey speed of forty miles an hour, the aver- age being considerably less. In 1888 the dis- tance between London and Brindisi, 1,455 miles, took fifty-two hours, which, fast as it would have seemed to our grandfathers, was yet only an average of twenty-six miles, or no faster than such ships as the Umbria, Etruria, and Express went on the Atlantic. The St. Gothard Tunnel was begun in 1872 and finished in 1880; it measures nine and a quarter miles in length, is twenty-six feet wide and twenty-one high, and cost 2,270,000 to build. In connection with the railway, which climbs up the lower slopes of the St. Gothard and descends on the other side, it is possible to cross the Alps from Lucerne to Bellinzona, 105 miles, in three and a half hours ; fifty years ago it required twenty-three hours. In the United States, the country perhaps where time and speed are most prized in the 86 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT affairs of life, rapid transit has, within the last twenty years, grown to be universal. Urban and local transit forms a feature of itself, but in the speed of the ordinary railways it is only lately that the American lines have equaled those of Great Britain. The best running in the United States is between New York (Jersey City) and Philadelphia, between New York and Buffalo, and between Boston and Providence. The journey from Camden to Atlantic City (SS 1 /^ miles) is done in fifty minutes. The first railway built in the United States was from the granite-quarries of Quincy, Mass., to tide-water, length five miles ; begun in 1826 and completed in 1827, it was built to supply the granite for the Bunker Hill Monument, and made of wooden rails laid on granite sills, with a strap- rail of rolled iron. The second road was begun in January, 1827, and completed in May of the same year, extending from the coal-mines to the Le- high River at Mauch Chunk, Pa. a distance of nine miles. The loaded cars passed down the inclined planes by gravity, and the empty cars were drawn up by mules. The rails were of timber, covered with a strap of iron. In 1828 the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company con- structed a railway, sixteen miles long, from its coal-mines to Honesdale, the termination of the canal, to transport the anthracite coal to tide- water. These were followed rapidly by the Baltimore and Ohio, the Mohawk and Hudson, the South Carolina, the Camden and Amboy, the Ithaca and Owego, and the Lexington and Ohio, which at the close of the year 1830 had DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY 87 92 miles built and 463 miles projected or under construction. All of these roads, with the single exception of the Delaware and Hudson, \vere built for and operated by horse-power. In January, 1828, Horatio Allen, of the Dela- ware and Hudson Canal Company, went to Eng- land to procure the iron rails for that company's road, and also, at his discretion, to order three locomotive engines. He accordingly ordered one engine from the works of Foster, Rastrick & Co., of Stourbridge, and two engines from the works of Robert Stephenson at Newcastle. These orders were given in the early summer of 1828, and the engines were received in New York in the following winter (1828-29). The burning of anthracite coal in the furnaces of engines was the point to be demonstrated by the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, whose extensive mines were waiting a demand on the part of the public, the total consumption of an- thracite coal having reached but about 80,000 tons yearly. In the spring of 1829 one of these three engines was ordered to be sent by river and canal to Honesdale, Pa., the initial point of the company's railway. The accident which sent the Stourbridge engine rather than either of the other two had not been accounted for. The other two engines were precise counterparts, and identical in boiler, engine, plan, and appur- tenances with the Rocket, by the same maker, which subsequently startled the world by its performances at Liverpool. The Stourbridge Lion, as the engine was named, was put upon the track built of hemlock timbers and strap-rails, THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT with timber trestles thirty-five feet in height, and curves of 720 feet radius and on August 8, 1829, Mr. Allen ran the engine himself for six miles at good speed amid the cheers of the incredulous spectators. No load was attached, as it was feared that it would prove too severe for the road, but it was the first trip ever made on a railway by a locomotive engine in America. The first locomotive built in the United States was made by the West Point Foundry for the South Carolina Railroad Company, after plans by the chief engineer, Horatio Allen, and was first put upon the road November 2, 1830. Thus began an industry that in the hands of Baldwin, Campbell, Rogers, and other masters has grown to be one of the most important in the United States. In speed, durability, and in its adapt- ability to every kind of condition and service the American locomotive is unequaled, and stands to-day one of the most perfect monu- ments of human skill and ingenuity. The flat rail was soon abandoned in the United States, the New Orleans and Lake Pontchar- train Railroad adopting the T-rail in its construc- tion in 1830-31. In 1840 there were 2,816 miles of railroads in the United States; in 1850, 9,015 miles; in 1860, 30,600 miles; in 1870, 52,856 miles; in 1880, 93,526 miles; in 1890, 161,397 miles; in 1900, 193,304. In the old days it took a whole day, with relay of horses, to travel from Baltimore to Washington, a distance of only forty miles ; when railways were introduced it was accom- plished in two hours ; in President Lincoln's DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY 89 time it was done in a little more than an hour. It now regularly takes forty-five minutes, and has been done in less. The ninety miles between New York and Philadelphia is now covered in ninety minutes. The journey to Chicago, 911 miles, takes less than twenty-four hours, by one line ; and al- though sixty miles longer by another route, the New York Central, is accomplished in the same time, at an average speed for nearly 1,000 miles of forty miles an hour. And both the Pennsyl- vania and New York Central now have trains covering the distance from New York to Chi- cago in twenty hours. Chicago to San Fran- cisco takes eighty-nine hours and to cross the entire continent from New York, four days, eight hours. In 1902 in Great Britain the three northern companies had together forty expresses between London and Scotland. In 1883 there were six- teen; in 1885 there were 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 increased. On the Great Western there are four ex- press trains (led by the Dutchman and Zulu) which have an average speed, including stops, of fifty miles an hour between London and Exeter. The distance between London and Penzance was covered in eight hours fifty-five minutes in 1889 ; it is now done in eight and a half hours. 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, including and excluding stops, respectively :- England. . London to Birmingham . 53.4 58 United States . Camden to Atlantic City . ... 61.3 France . . Paris to Calais . . 5^ 66.6 Germany . Berlin to Hamburg . . 393 43.5. As to the average rate for express trains we may 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 France " 32.8 " 36.2 Holland " 32.5 35 Germany 31.7 34.3 Belgium 31.7 33-5 Austria " 30 32 Denmark " 30 32 Italy " 29> 31.2 Sweden " 29 " 31.5 Russia " 29 " 31.6 United States " 41.4 " 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 the 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 miles ; the Scandinavian, twenty-one miles ; the Italian, twenty-seven miles ; the Indian, thirty- three miles; and the Russian thirty-four miles an hour. The journey from Berlin to St. Petersburg, 1,028 miles, takes forty-six hours, or an average of thirty-two and a half miles an hour. Com- pare this with an express on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway which did the jour- ney between Buffalo and Cleveland, 183 miles, in 187 minutes, exclusive of stops. Allowing for time consumed in slowing down, 172 miles of the distance was run in 161 minutes, averag- ing 64.26 miles an hour. Short distances were covered at the rate of seventy-five miles an hour. The Orient Express leaves Paris and Constan- 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 5.50 the following evening ; Budapest at 1 1 P.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 fifty-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 (536 miles) was in 1888 done in fourteen hours nineteen minutes. The speed has since been raised to fifty-seven miles an hour. The fastest train in France is that between Paris and Calais (185^2 miles), doing the journey in three hours 92 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT fifteen minutes. This excels the time of any fast train in England. Germany and Belgium, while not as bad as some other countries in this respect, such as Italy and Spain, are yet far behind England and America in the matter of rapid railway transit, perhaps owing to the fact of state-owned lines and the consequent lack of competition. In 1891, on the Canadian Pacific line, a special train conveyed the Japanese mail from Vancou- ver to Brockville, 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 Grand Trunk Railwav of Canada the best service / is 36.8 miles, including stops, and 39.2 excluding stops. The best service in India is from Bombay to Calcutta, about twenty-five miles an hour. In Australia from Melbourne to Sydney is run at thirty-three 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 1873 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-nine days, the main obstacle being to trav- erse speedily the mighty tract of Asia. Eastern Siberia, which a few years ago was one of the most remote districts on the face of the globe, will soon be as accessible as Canada. , o 'C -*- o (U w (U r^ h 94 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT The connection between Russia and Siberia forms the greatest railway scheme in the world. The first sod was cut at Vladivostock May 24, 1891 ; and to facilitate the work of construction the line was divided into three parts. When the whole is completed in 1904 it will be possible for a traveler to circumnavigate the globe in thirty days! The distance from Moscow to Kaidalovo is 4,146 miles. Even in the incomplete state of the line, by means of the lakes and rivers, unin- terrupted steam communication between the rail- way system of Europe and Vladivostock on the Pacific was rendered possible in 1901. From Cheliabinski, the first station in Western Siberia, to Stretensk via Omsk, Tomsk, and Irkutsk is a distance of 2,762 miles. This section of the journey comprises the passage of Lake Baikal, just beyond the Irkutsk. For this passage ice- breaker ferries have been specially built, capable of transporting a complete railway train across the lake. From Stretensk a steamer travels 1,443 miles to Khabarovsk, and from the latter place to Vladivostock by rail is 485^/2 miles. The en- tire journey takes seventeen days. From Paris to Vladivostock was timed in 1901 at twenty-four and a half days, and a further reduction of time will be secured now that the railway round the south end of Lake Baikal is completed. At present there is no direct fast train from Paris or Berlin to Moscow, but as soon as the Siberian Railway begins to run through trains, this gap between West and East will be bridged. Yet, strange to say, it takes even now less time to reach London from St. Petersburg than from DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILWAY 95 Naples. The traveler leaves by the Nord Ex- press at 10 A.M 1 ., Monday, and by 3 P.M. on Wednesday he is on the banks of the Neva fifty-three hours. By this same express Berlin is twenty-one hours from London. Quite recently the Siberian (or Eastern China) Railway has come to an arrangement with the International Sleeping" Car Company for im- proving the facilities of travel on the line. To this end 100 sleeping-cars are supplied by the company, which will be attached to the express trains running between Irkutsk, Vladivostock, and Port Arthur. These through trains will be made up once a week exactly on the same lines as the through trains which run no\v between Moscow and Irkutsk, and one car will perform the entire journey from Moscow to Peking. 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 \veeks. / The first attempt to apply 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 hour was attained and the project was aban- doned. Electricity was employed in 1881 by Messrs. Siemens & Halske on an electric rail- way in Berlin ; a line being subsequently built one and a half miles long from Charlottenburg to the Spandauer Bock. They also applied the system to a short railway at Amsterdam and to another in Zankerode in Saxony. Great atten- tion was attracted in that year to an electric line operated at the International Electrical Exhibi- 96 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT tion in Paris by the Siemens system. It carried an average of 13,000 passengers per week, few amongst whom did not perceive the possibilities which electricity offered to the future of rapid transit. Two years later an electric railway, six miles long, was opened in Ireland, between Port- rush and Bushmills in the north of Ireland. The conductor employed was a third 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 made Robin Gooclfellow 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. THE TELEGRAPH 97 The idea of annihilating time and space in communication by distant signals is sufficiently ancient to have occurred even to the most un- civilized tribes. The North American aborigi- nes were wont to convey intelligence thus from hill to hill, and the Hottentots communicated with each other by means of hill-top fires. It is not requisite to mention the various means of conveying information to a distance by means of sound known to our ancestors, but it might be profitable to glance at the origin of Telegraphs, before electricity came to be em- ployed. The first practical telegraph dates from 1684, and was that of Dr. Hooke, the mathematician, an inventor of many ingenious instruments. His method consisted in exposing successively as many different shaped figures or signs as there are letters in the alphabet. If used in the daytime, they might be squares, circles, tri- angles, etc., and at night torches or other lights disposed in a certain order. These characters or signs were to be brought forward from be- hind a screen attached to a movable rod. Of this "telegraph'' the stations were to be at such convenient distances as to enable the signals to be seen with a moderately powerful telescope. It is obvious that such a plan, although clever, was also very complicated, owing to the number of signals. But its inventor was so confident of its practical utility that he declared that "the 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 98 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 was wished to a very great distance for example, from Paris to Rome in a very short time, three or four hours, and 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 their orders to the frontiers and receive an answer back during the continuance of a sitting." THE TELEGRAPH 99 After much vexatious delay the authorities approved of the scheme, and Chappe, with the title of Ingenieur 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 November, 1794, Carnot entered the As- sembly with the news, "Conde is given up 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 \vere informed that their orders had been transmitted 150 miles to Lille and acknowledged by the commander there. Such 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 line. 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 IOO THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT could be sent from one extremity to the other in three minutes ; to Stfasburg, 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 IOI 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. In 1816 the telegraph or; semaphore, long familiar to the public, on .the root of the Admiralty, was erected. It was inveytecj^lby 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 it proved simple and effective and the angu- lar position was easily seen at a distance. The time between London and Dover was reduced for long messages, and Popham's telegraph continued in use until it, and all its kind, was superseded by the wonder-work- ing magnetic flash. It was, of course, useless at night, or in fogs and dull weather ; and for three quarters of the year the telegraph from the capital to Portsmouth stood idle. As an 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 utmost disappointment and depression prevailed, until the arrival of the royal messenger with the despatches, when it was found that the fog had delayed the rest of the message, which should have been "Wellington defeated the French at Salamanca." But the era of electro-telegraphy was now at hand, 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 than 100 feet in length, the electric current could be transmitted to a considerable distance. In France, two other experimenters, Dufay and , Npllet, * sent a current along a wet cord i, 390^, feet. ' 'Dr. Watson carried a wire across the Thames at, Westminster Bridge, one end bjeirig.ir, 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: : T shall amuse you, perhaps, in telling 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 all 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, THE TELEGRAPH 103 Lesage, 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 electrometer, 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 w r ere 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- IO4 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. Frictional 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 sent 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-conversation offices, communicating with 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 telegraph while on a passage from Havre to New York in 1832. But no account of this per- Prince Albert ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH, GT.VVESTERN RAILWAY. The Public are respectfully informed that this interesting & most extraordinary Apparatus, by which upwards of SO SIGNALS can be transmitted to a Distance of 280,000 MILES in ONE MINUTE, i May be seen in operation, daily, (Sunday* xcepted,) from 9 11 8, at tie Office, J*ddinfftm, This xhtl>it* if *# **<* a rtsK /TO ail who bvt to seeiht vtondkrt oftcienee." MOKHTSO POST. Ifep8tch instantaneously sent to and fro with tb most confiding secrecj. Past Hors^ and CmtnroSc*ti< ;rce*ved by Telegraph, ol4 be forssrasld, if required, to any parr of ^ London, Windsor, J&OB* *c. THOMAS HOME, O. KURTON, Pv -i H 3rtet, PortiuAn Market. Earliest Advertisement of the Electric Telegraph. Queen Victoria made use of the \\ires mentioned in these handbills for her first telegraphic communication with her Ministers in London. formance was published until 1837, when Schil ling, Gauss and Weber, Steinheil, and Wheat 106 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT stone had achieved considerable success in the construction of electric telegraphs. The first message by the Wheatstone-Cooke system was sent between the Euston and Camden Town stations of the London 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. Wheatstone (whose first patent was taken out in 1837) soon made improvements which greatly simplified his first methods ; the number of wires was reduced to two, and 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 a second, it could be employed in measuring the 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 Parliament 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 IO? electro-magnetic apparatus, placed at each of the five intermediate stations. Two years later, the system had been adopted on the London and North-Western, South- western and other lines. It had not been long completed on the Great Western when a striking instance occurred of the service which the new invention was to render to society. A man of respectable exterior took his seat in a first-class carriage at Slough, eighteen miles from Pad- dington he was a murderer fleeing from the yet warm body of his victim. The hurrying engine neared the terminus : the desperate man felt certain of his escape ; but he had not reck- oned on the speed of the telegraph. An alarm had been given at the scene of his crime ; quick as a flash the wires bore it to London, describ- ing the man's flight and personal appearance. In three minutes an answer announced the ar- rival of the train, the identification of the fugi- tive, and the certainty of his capture. This, and other similar incidents, naturally created a deep impression on the public mind. On the birth of the new year (1845) a telegram transmitted from Paddington was received at Slough before the old year had expired, there being a sufficient difference of longitude to be marked by the velocity of the mysterious new agent. We are now so accustomed to the rapid public record of passing events by the newspapers as hardly to understand the patience of the reading world prior to the era of the telegraph. The first newspaper report received by wire appears to have been of a public meeting at IO8 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT Portsmouth, during the railway mania of 1845, which created such interest in London that the Morning Chronicle printed it an hour or so after the meeting broke up. The other newspapers, receiving their reports 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 waiting for the railway. The report was trans- mitted, letter by letter, and the 3,600 letters were set up in type 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 in Lothbury. The premises were amply equipped with all the necessaries of telegraph service ; 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 by 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 TELEGRAPH pany." A proviso is also made in favor of the Home Secretary of State, who may, on extraor- dinary occasions, take possession of all the tele- graph stations and hold them for a week, with power to continue the occupation, should the commonweal demand it. There were established in Edinburgh, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Hull, Newcastle, and other towns, subscription news rooms, for the accommodation of the mer- cantile and professional interests, to which was transmitted by electric telegraph the latest intelli- gence, including domestic and foreign news ; shipping news ; the stock, share, corn and other markets; parliamentary intelligence; London Gazette ; state of the wind and weather from nu- merous places in England ; and the earliest possi- ble news of all important occurrences. Other companies soon followed, to the number of seven or eight ; a period of competition set in, and in 1 86 1 the United Kingdom Company established shilling telegrams, without reference to distance. For some years this charge double what it is at present was found unremunerative, and at length an agitation sprang up for the acquisition of the whole telegraph system by the Govern- ment. The rise of electric telegraphs in France was at first remarkably sluggish. The reason for this was that the Government had spent a great deal of time and money in developing their system of semaphore telegraphs ; and even when they were induced to avail themselves of electricity, it was stipulated that the signals should still be pro- duced by small instruments, similar in principle and construction to Chappe's apparatus. At IIO THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT length, however, this absurd stipulation was with- drawn, instruments and equipments similar to those in use in England were acquired by the French Government, and by 1847 telegraphs from Paris to Orleans, to Rouen, Lille and Calais were brought into operation. A curious economical advantage resulting from the new system in France was the saving of locomotive power on the railways ; for in accor- dance with the practice on the French lines, whenever a train was twenty minutes late, an auxiliary engine was despatched to its relief from one station after another along the route. By 1850, 1,500 miles of telegraphs were complete and in progress in France. It was not long before every country in Europe began gradually to feel the benefit of this won- derful medium of communication. Already in 1850, the ramifications of telegraphs extended from Calais to Moscow, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. "Already," said one writer, "there is talk of introducing the thought-flasher into that land of wonders Egypt ; to stretch a wire from Cairo to Suez for the service of the overland mail. Who shall say that before the present generation passes away, Downing Street may not be placed in telegraphic rapport with Calcutta?" After this suggestion appeared, progress was so rapid that in 1861 Europe boasted 100,000 miles of telegraphic wire; and in 1865, Downing Street actually was "placed in telegraphic rapport with Calcutta." In the United States, it need hardly be said, the telegraph was from the first most extensively WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY III developed and applied. The lines were in many cases carried across country, regardless of traveled highways, over tracts of sand and swamp, and through the wild primeval wilder- ness. "Away it stretches the metallic indicator of intellectual supremacy, traversing regions haunted by the rattlesnake and the alligator solitudes that re-echo with nocturnal bowlings of the wolf and bear.'' Rapid communication was thus made possible from North to South, East and West, through all the length and breadth of the Republic with a frequency and cheapness long exceeding any other nation. This superiority has, since the establishment of sixpenny tele- grams, been transferred to the United Kingdom. And now we come to telegraphing without wires. It was conjectured by Faraday, Helm- holtz and others that light from the sun and electricity were of the same order, only differing in degree, i.e. in the lengths of their respective waves. Their velocity through space was the same, namely 186,400 miles a second. Light waves, heat waves and electric waves in traveling from the sun to the earth a distance so great that an express train traveling sixty miles an hour would take 175 years to accomplish it reach our earth in eight minutes. These waves cannot travel along nothing : they must have an elastic medium which will transmit them. If the ether be capable of conveying electrical energy from the sun without loss and without interven- ing wires, it was reasonable to ask : Why cannot some form of instrument be devised which will also send out along the terrestrial ether electrical currents, even in a small way? Air must not 112 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT be confounded with ether. One set of vibrations 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 rapidity 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 syritony 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. In the follow- ing year he patented his invention and conducted experiments in London and Portsmouth, where WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY 11$ he successfully telegraphed without wires across 500 yards of water. After a lapse of thirty-four years, in 1887-88, other experiments were made through the air by direction of Sir W. Preece, who some years later successfully sent messages across a distance of four and a half miles by 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 in sufficient strength to repeat their pulsa- tions and record their 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 the signal success of telegraphing without 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. Slaby and Count d'Arco in Germany, 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 illustrated: The S.S. Umbria, like all the boats of the Cunard line, is fitted with the Marconi system of wireless telegraphy. She set out from New York May 31, 1902, and was soon in mid- ocean. The 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 the Atlantic boats, at whatever distance from land, to see, as in a London club, the servants carrying 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 locomotion 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 niore 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 become of economic value until the safety of the machine and its occupants is better insured than it is at present. AERIAL NAVIGATION i, Franklin said of the science of aerostation : It is an infant, but it will grow." The discoveries and inventions relating to the uses which have hitherto been made of the at j An Airship Designed by Francis Lana, of Barcelona, 1760. mosphere and the mathematical deductions which so clearly teach us to hope for the practicability of aerial 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. The earliest recorded instance appears in the Il6 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT Ministre'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 people to ascend in an aerostat. This descended in the town of Lyons, where they were immediately hurried 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." When the good prelate had heard their tale of the singular manner in which they had traveled so far in so incredibly 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. Nearly ten months had elapsed since this first aerostatic experiment, when a young chemist, 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. IlS THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT for speed, as it occupied two hours and a quarter, including a stoppage at South Minima. 'The departure was most exciting." "Perhaps," ob- served the Morning Post of the following day, "the English nation never witnessed upon any 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 rate 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 I2th 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. Jeffries, 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- AERIAL NAVIGATION 119 past one. Exactly at three o'clock, after an exciting voyage, during which they had been obliged to throw overboard their very clothes, they passed over the high ground midway be- tween Cape Blanc Nez and Calais. They de- scended in the Forest of Guines ; the freedom of Calais was bestowed upon Blanchard, and a monument erected to mark the spot where the pair alighted. It was in an attempt to emulate this exploit that a few months later Pilatre de Rozier and his friend Romaine lost their lives. The maximum of speed had not yet been at- tained and Lunardi, October 5, 1785, was to surpass his own record and all of his contem- poraries. Rising, at 3.45 P.M., from Heriot's Gardens, Edinburgh, he says : 'The city of Glasgow I could plainly distinguish, also the town of Paisley, and both shores of the Forth ; but my attention was now diverted by finding myself immediately over the Firth of Forth, at an altitude of 2,000 feet. ... At 4.20 I descended at Ceres, after a voyage of forty-six miles, thirty-six being over water, and was con- veyed in triumph to the town of Cupar." Thus Lunardi had accomplished forty-six miles in thirty-five minutes, which is a speed almost equaling the fastest that has ever been done on a railway. A longer journey was subsequently done by Lunardi, leaving Glasgow at 1.55 P.M., and in precisely two hours arriving at Alemoor, Selkirkshire, no miles, including a halt of some minutes in the hills. A voyage notable for its remarkable rapidity was executed by Garnerin, June 28, 1802, in 120 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT company with Captain Snowdon, R.N. They departed from Chelsea Gardens and came down near Colchester, sixty miles in forty-five minutes. On July 5th Garnerin ascended from Mary- lebone and descended at Chingford, seventeen miles, in fifteen minutes, and attained also during this interval a height of 7,800 feet. But a more notable voyage was to be made by 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. Twenty hours later it had passed through France and Italy, over St. Peter's at Rome and the Vatican, to descend into Lake Bracciano. 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, 1811, 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, via 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 en route, the feat not being accomplished until 1817, when the same aeronaut's son, Windham Sadler, traveled from Portobello Barracks, Dub- lin, at i. 20 P.M'. on June 22d, and at 6.45 alighted a mile south of Holyhead. AERIAL NAVIGATION 121 Soon after this the famous Charles Green be- gan his long series of intrepid aerial journeys, many of which were remarkable for distance and speed. One of these was undertaken in a storm, from Newbury, Berkshire, to Crawley, Surrey, fifty-eight miles, in an hour and a half, which was rapid time for 1827, considering that the one railway then in England could only boast of twenty miles an hour. But by far the greater portion of Green's fame must rest upon his voyage from London to Weilburg in the great Nassau balloon. This took place in 1836, the start being from the Vauxhall Gardens at 1.30 P.M., November I7th. At twelve minutes to three the Medway was crossed, and Canterbury at five minutes past four. A curious circumstance is that the aerostat passed several coaches en route, going at the fastest rate possible and was cheered by their occupants. The railway was not then opened, and the fast time to Canterbury by coach was five and a half hours. At 4.48, Green (who was accompanied by Monck Mason) gained the Channel, and at ten minutes to six o'clock had effected a crossing in safety, two miles from Calais. As the night progressed they were, of course, totally without landmarks and so could not judge of their speed. "In this manner," writes Mason, "did we traverse with rapid strides a large and interesting portion of the European continent, embracing within our horizon an im- mense succession of towns and villages, whereof those which occurred during the earlier part of the night, the presence of their artificial lights alone enabled us to distinguish." It was at 7.30 on the following morning that 122 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT the descent took place, so that the duration of the voyage was exactly eighteen hours. 'The first question, 'Where are we?' was speedily answered, 'In the Duchy of Nassau, about two leagues from the town of Weilburg.' The second was theirs, 'Where do you come from?' 'From London, which we left yesterday morning.' The aston- ishment of the inhabitants at this declaration may be imagined." To reach Weilburg from the British capital in the year 1836 by the fastest coaches and steamer would have taken three days. Green and Mason had done it by balloon a distance of more than 500 miles in eighteen hours. A considerable portion of five kingdoms, England, France, Bel- gium, Prussia, and the Duchy of Nassau; a long succession of cities, including London, Rochester, Canterbury, Dover, Calais, Cassel, Ypres, Cour- tray, Lille, Oudenarde, Tournay, Brussels, with Waterloo and Jenmapes, Namur, Liege, Spa and Coblentz were all brought 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 NAVIGATION 123 Berlin to Dantzig, 170 miles, in three hours and ten minutes. A remarkable instance of speed in aerial transit was afforded in 1849 by M. Arban, who crossed the Alps from Marseilles to Turin, a distance of 400 miles in eight hours. This record between the two cities never has been broken. The speed, however, was equaled in Coxwell's journey in 1857 from North Woolwich to Tavistock, Devon, 250 miles, in five hours. "It was some time be- fore the particulars of the journey obtained cre- dence. At Sidmouth the alarm-bell was rung by the night watchman ; but before the inhab- itants were astir the balloon was out of sight and the man laughed at, until the Devonshire papers were published with an account of the voyage." The aeronauts walked into the town of Tavistock, and put up at the Queen's Hotel, where they had difficulty in persuading the worthy 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 Depot Battalion, ac- companied by Coxwell. For most of the voy- 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 Nienburg, Hanover. This famous journey was preceded by a brief one on October 4th, in which no fewer 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 124 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT constructed. It descended on this occasion two leagues from Neaux, and a fortnight later, with nine passengers, reascended at 5 P.M. from the Champ de Mars. At half-past eight it was over Compeigne, seventy-eight miles from Paris. Nothing more was heard of the balloon until a second telegram was received in Paris stating that Nadar's giant balloon passed over Erque- lines, on the Belgian frontier, at midnight on Sunday. The airship was moving not far from the ground, and the customs officer called out to know if there was anything on which duty should be paid! No attention was paid to the question, and the balloon kept on its way toward the Ger- man frontier. At midnight the travelers were over Holland, and later crossed the Zuyder Zee. At 7.15 they were journeying through West- phalia, crossing the river Ems, and at length returning to Hanover, a little above Osnaburgh. The balloon was on its way toward Hamburg and the Baltic when it was thought wise to effect a descent. The descent was of a most exciting and des- perate character, for the wind was blowing at a high rate, and the balloon was moving through the air at sixty miles an hour. The car grazed the earth and began dragging over walls, fences, houses, stones, and ponds. One of the passen- gers, Jules Godard, then tried to accomplish an act of sublime heroism. He clambered up into the netting, and although three times falling, reached the cord of the valve, opened it, and the gas having a way of escape the monster ceased to rise, but it still shot along in a horizontal line with prodigious rapidity. One after another the AERIAL NAVIGATION 12$ passengers jumped, not without injury, from the car, and soon found that they had arrived in the vicinity of Rethern in Hanover. In seventeen hours they had traveled 250 leagues, while for a single hour they had sustained a speed of at least ninety miles. The siege of Paris offered to the professors of aerial navigation a signal opportunity to apply their system. At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in July, 1870, there were in Paris many experienced aeronauts, including Tissandier, de Touvielle, Nadar, Jules Durouf (about whom \ve shall speak later) and Eugene Godard who had made no fewer than 800 ascents. The subject of military ballooning was naturally raised, and received a lukewarm support from the Imperial Govern- ment, which w T as far too disturbed seriously to consider any scientific matter, even the true sci- ence of the commissariat in war-time. Before any- thing could be arranged, there came the disaster of Sedan, which was followed in a few days by the close investment of Paris. The new Govern- ment at once addressed themselves to the aero- nauts, with a view to opening up aerial communi- cation with the exterior country. Six balloons were overhauled, all in indifferent condition, the worst being the one Napoleon III. had intended for Solferino, but which had arrived on the scene of the battle a day too late. M. Tissandier tells us that nobody seems to have kno\vn how to repair this balloon, known as U Imperial. However, they were all got together, the besieged Parisians hailing the prospect with the joy of children. Here at last was a noteworthy chance of putting 126 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT into execution the very idea for which Mont- golfier, the inventor of the balloon, had really in- tended his invention. The first ascent of the siege was made by M. Durouf on September 23d. He carried a large number of despatches, and after a three hours' journey landed safely near Evreux. He was fol- lowed on the 2ist by M. Mangin; on the 2Qth by Godard, jun., and on the 3Oth by Gaston Tissan- dier, who has given us a spirited account of his voyage. The success of these aeronauts in escaping from the capital and the hands of the Prussians encouraged the Government to establish a bal- loon post on a regular system. Immediate steps were taken for the manufacture of a large num- ber of balloons, under specific conditions, as rap- idly as possible. Making the vessels proved, how- ever, an easier task than finding captains for them. Experienced aeronauts were few, and it must be remembered that when once they left Paris there was no returning. That was the radical fault of balloons; one could not elect the place of one's descent. In this emergency it was decided to in- vite the assistance of such sailors as there were in the capital, as belonging to a class whose train- ing had rendered them familiar with operations and dangers not dissimilar from ballooning. The appeal met with a satisfactory response; many excellent mariners offered their services, they were given all possible instructions and a large number of successful ascents were carried out by these brave French tars. The remark of one of them deserves to be memorable: "Our topsail is high, sir, and difficult to reef; but we can sail, AERIAL NAVIGATION 1 27 all the same, and, please God, we'll arrive in port." The plan of employing acrobats from the Hip- podrome was attended with less success. In sev- eral instances we are told they directed their skill, when in a tight place, to slipping down the guide- rope to earth, leaving the passengers and de- spatches to look after themselves. But on the whole the balloon service was distinguished by singular ability and precision. From September to January sixty-four balloons were sent off, and of these fifty-seven fulfilled their mission, and the despatches reached their destination. The total number of persons who left Paris was 155, the weight of the despatches was nine tons, and the number of letters 3,000,000. As for the speed of transit, it varied from twenty to fifty miles an hour, and in one instance as high as eighty miles. Gambetta left by the Armand Barbcs (every balloon had of course a name) on October 7th. When at too low an altitude he was imme- diately fired on by the Prussians and narrowly escaped being hit by a bullet. On October 27th the Brctagnc fell, owing to bad management, into the hands of the enemy near Verdun ; on November 4th the Galilee had a similar fate near Chartres; and on the I2th the Dagncrre was shot at, brought down and seized a few leagues from Paris. The loss of three balloons within a little more than a fort- night alarmed the Government. It was 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. The 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. For these reasons the Government 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 Ville d'Orleans rose from Paris with an aeronaut and one passenger. The wind blew from the north and it was hoped the balloon would descend near Tours. But 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 AERIAL NAVIGATION 1 29 covered with snow, they saw no inhabitants, and being overcome with fatigue and hunger, both fainted on getting out of the car. On recovering they walked through the snow with great exer- tion, and after a painful journey of several hours passed the night in a shed. In the morning a couple of woodmen informed them, by means of signs and a box of matches marked Christiania, that they were in Norway. Their speed was over fifty miles an hour for a number of hours. A week later, on November 3Oth, two fate- ful ascents from beleaguered Paris were made. The Jacquard rose at n P.M. in charge of a sailor named Prince, whose new-found aeronautic zeal was so great that as the ropes parted he cried out : 'Je veux faire un immense voyage; on parlera de mon ascension." He was not, alas, to be balked of his ambition. Driven by a southeast- erly wind he passed over the English Channel, where he was seen by some English vessels. While over the vicinity of the Lizard he dropped his despatches, some of which were aftenvard picked up on the rocks. Thus lightened the bal- loon rose to a great height, disappeared over the Atlantic billows and was never heard of again. The second balloon, the Jules Fairc, started at half-past eleven w r ith two passengers. Only by a miracle did it escape the fate of the Jacquard. The wind blew from the north and the aeronauts fancied they were on their way to Lyons. Long enveloped in fog, they emerged at daybreak and saw beneath them an island which they supposed to be in a river. They were grossly deceived; it was Hoedic, in the Atlantic! They were driv- ing furiously out to sea; but in front of them lay, 9 I3O 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 I5th the Villc de Paris was so unlucky as to fall at Wertzlar, in Prussia; and four days later the General Chansy 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 sack of ballast, rose to a great height and soon disappeared in the western hori- zon. Doubtless, the poor fellow 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 NAVIGATION 13! other problem of communication inward from the Provinces was hardly less important and much more difficult. It required a particular di- rection of current, and although M. Tissandier made several attempts he failed, and the return of the balloons was abandoned 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 out some trained dogs, which, it was hoped, would find their way back again, but they never reappeared. The actual method by which the difficulty was solved deserves, we think, a place in a work dealing with modern locomotion. The return post was effected by means of carrier pigeons, which, having been taken out of Paris in bal- loons, were let loose in the Provinces to find their way home. There existed in Paris a "So- ciete Colombophile," and after the departure of the first balloon the leading spirits of this body approached General Trochu, and proposed that an attempt should be made to combine the out- ward balloon post with a return service by pigeons. The second balloon carried three birds, which came safely back six hours later, with news from the aeronauts. The return of eighteen more despatched in following days confirmed the practicability of the scheme. Thereupon, the service was regularly organized and was carried on with a fair amount of success throughout the investment of the capital by the enemy. As the despatches were required to be very small and light, recourse was had to mi- 132 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT croscopic photography. By this means sixteen folio pages of print (32,000 words) were reduced to a pellicule two inches 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 DISTRIBUER AUX DESTINATAIRES. Pan y 26 Janvier, A Tocher, Rue Chausee d'Antin. Ma- deleine accouche heureusement hier, Bien beau gar$on. Biarritz, i Fevrier. A. Martin 68 Rue Petites Ecuries. Sommes a Biarritz, bebe completcment remis, embrasse papa, doloureusement impassiones evenements. A. Tant. Besoin d'argent, demande Masquier. A, Perier. Tout parlaitement 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 volume, 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. The 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 AERIAL NAVIGATION 133 of prey ; but dense fogs and severe cold played havoc with the birds. There were sent out of Paris 363 pigeons, of which only fifty-seven re- turned, some having been absent a long time. Such 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. The idea that fast homing pigeons cover a mile a minute for a considerable distance must, like the tradition that Eclipse once accomplished that feat, be finally abandoned. In no part of Great Britain are the breeding and training of these birds brought to greater perfection than at Sheffield, and if its champions cannot travel at the pace of express trains, or approaching such speed, it is not probable other localities are better supplied. In a competition early in 1902 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 would be exceptionally fast. Whether that was the case is not recorded, but the official timing 134 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT gave the leading bird an average velocity of only about two-thirds of a mile per minute, with sev- eral others in pretty close attendance. Some time was lost, no doubt, after the start before Santos-Dumont Rounding the Eiffel Tower in His Airship. 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- AERIAL NAVIGATION 135 post presents the additional advantage of a large degree of security. We have seen that when several of these birds were entrusted in war- time with the same 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 speedily narrated. On the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War, M. Du- puy de Lome, naval architect to the French Government, produced an elongated balloon, 120 feet in length and fifty feet in diameter, con- taining 120,000 cubic feet of hydrogen. It was actuated by a screw propeller, and with it the inventor made a journey of some ninety miles, but without being able 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, however, 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 Eiffel 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 136 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT exhausted, and that the future locomotion through the air will only be made possible by flying machines constructed on the kite or aero- plane principle. CHAPTER VII OCEAN TELEGRAPHY THE TELEPHONE PNEUMATIC TUBES POSTAL SYSTEMS restless spirit of modern invention, not content with guiding the mysterious power of electricity, both above and beneath the surface of the earth, proposes next to join the shores of England and France by means of a submarine telegraph. That such an undertaking is possible there is but little doubt; but the question is, would it be worth 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 being car- ried out on a large scale." As yet we have seen that the speediest com- munication between any points separated by the sea was by means of the fast steamers, which had now replaced the fast sailing ships of the beginning of the century. Dover and Calais, 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 hang. In 1845 an American newspaper boldly pre- OCEAN TELEGRAPHY 137 dieted that the Atlantic would one day be spanned by an electric wire, to interchange thought between the two great English-speak- ing nations. The idea was derided as extrava- gant, but many inventors had been experiment- ing in submarine telegraphy, and in 1847 there came the actual submarine line in Portsmouth Harbor. The success of this led to projects for similar wires or cables, and three years later, on August 28th, after certain preliminaries, the GoliaJi steamer started from Dover with a huge reel on her deck, containing twenty-five miles of wire, coated with gutta percha, which was slow- ly and gradually unwound and submerged in the water of the Channel. That same evening a message flashed from under the sea to the horse- box which served as a temporary office on the English coast : "We are all safe at Cape Grisnez : how are you?" Thus international communica- tion by electricity was achieved ; and although it was soon interrupted by the frailty of the cable, which broke against the rocks, yet another year saw it partake of a solid and permanent character. At the outset the new method of communication was only used for the trans- mission of Stock Exchange intelligence ; but on November 21, 1851, the political news from Paris published by the Times demonstrated in striking fashion what a valuable power had now been developed. Private messages (at a fixed rate of charge) began to be sent, and early in 1852 London was placed in direct telegraphic communication with nearly all the chief cities of the Continent, via this single cable. Prior to this year the an- 138 THE STORY OF RAPID TRANSIT nouncement of the death of a monarch or prime minister, the overthrow of a State or army, might have been transmitted under exception- ally favorable circumstances from the English to the French capital by means of the signaling telegraph in a comparatively short space of time say, in a few hours. But to the public gen- erally, and for the despatch of messages of mere- ly private moment, the only agent was steam and the post, and this agent required in 1850, 21 hours to travel between London and Paris, 52 hours between London and Berlin, and six days between London and St. Petersburg. In 1853 a private message from Windsor was de- livered in Paris in two and a half minutes. In the previous year Ireland had been linked to England by a marine cable between Holyhead and Howth ; submarine cable companies began to spring up in all directions in that year, and lines were soon laid in great number all over Europe, even as far as the Black Sea and the Red Sea. Many of these were at work when the magnificent idea presented itself of a cable across the vast stretch of the Atlantic Ocean. Already, in 1851, a plan was formed for connect- ing Newfoundland and the Canadian Maritime Provinces with America, and two years later the work was begun. Financial difficulties, how- ever, overtook the project, and it was not until Mr. Cyrus W. Field lent his energy, his coun- sels, and his wealth to the major task of span- ning the ocean that this part of the work was completed. On August 7, 1857, the two ships carry- ing the great Atlantic cable left the harbor of OCEAN TELEGRAPHY 139 Valentia, Ireland. There was no ship in the world at that time (for the Great Eastern was unfinished) capable of carrying the whole 2,500 miles of cable, which was to stretch to Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. The British Government, therefore, lent the Agamemnon, and the United States Government the Niagara, to divide the work. The shore-end was landed and received with ceremony by the Lord-Lieutenant of Ire- land on the Valentia beach, he expatiating on the fervent hope of establishing "a new material link between the Old World and the New." But the enterprise was destined to temporary failure : the cable broke and the ships returned. After a disheartening delay, a new plan was de- cided upon. The two ships steamed out togeth- er into mid-ocean, where the two cables were spliced and submerged, and then each ship be- gan steaming, one east and the other west. But they had not proceeded far when the cable snapped again ; again it was spliced, and once more w r as it broken, this time in two places. Thus there lay at the bottom of the ocean 144 miles of cable and the whole rendered worse than useless. Nevertheless, the projectors were plucky men ; they resolved to try again, and the third Atlantic cable-laying expedition met with success a temporary success, it is true and the first lightning message sped across the At- lantic on August 6, 1858. Ten days later Queen Victoria cabled the following message, which took but sixty-seven minutes in trans- mission over 4,000 miles from London to Washington : "To the President of the L^nited States. The ITY I4O 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 join 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 more 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 HI to an accidental strain, and after a futile attempt to recover it from the bottom of the sea, it was abandoned for the season. In the following' year, another line w r as at last successfully laid by the Great Eastern, the former cable recovered, and thus the Old World and the New were perma- nently joined together in an intellectual bond. Its success led to other cable systems. In 1869 a French company laid a line from Brest to St. Pierre, an island off Newfoundland; in 1873 a cable was laid from Lisbon to Pernambuco, in South America. Two other Atlantic cables were laid in 1874 and 1875 ; and several others since. The Pacific Ocean had to wait longer for a cable. The British Pacific cable from Vancouver, Brit- ish Columbia, to Sydney, Australia, via Fan- ning Island and the Fijis, was opened in 1902. The new cable to connect San Francisco with Manila, via Hawaii, the Midway Islands, and Guam, was completed as far as Honolulu in De- cember of the same 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 ware. As a means of rapid communication rivaling even the telegraph a place must be found in these pages for the telephone, whose introduction into Europe dates only from 1877. The idea of transmitting sound to a distance may be traced back to remote antiquity; its first practical expression was found in the speaking- tube, and, in more modern times, in the string telephone. In 1667 Robert Hooke relates how by the aid of a tightly drawn wire, bent in many angles, 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 been 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, by 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