Alfred Ely Beach was a good and decent man. Born in 1826 in Springfield Massachusetts, Alfred loved his family, he loved the opera and he loved inventing. In fact, he invented the world’s first practical typewriter. He was legit.
Hailing from a rich family in the newspaper business, Alfred made his way to New York where he learned the family trade. Heading up Scientific American Magazine, turning it into one of the most successful, powerful, and influential weeklies of its kind, Beach rubbed shoulders with the greats. Samuel F. B. Morse (inventor of Morse code), R. J. Gatling (inventor of the machine gun) and Thomas Edison himself called Beach friend.
New York inventor life in the mechanical age was riveting!
But there was one problem. The traffic… was horrendous. The hustle and bustle of Manhattan had become unbearable.
So Beach was determined to find a solution. Eureka... A New York Pneumatic Subway!
Beach had the brains, the money and the drive to make his idea work. Soon, all New Yorkers would travel via an underground tube in lavish style, sucked or blown to their destination of choice. No more arduous commutes. No more collisions with horse poo, rickety carts and polluted air.
But there was just one person standing in Beach’s way: Boss Tweed, Mr Corruption himself.
William Magar Tweed was the worst of the worst. Controlling the Democratic political machines of both city and state, Tweed had a monopoly on everything. He held everyone in the palm of his hand and nothing went under his nose without him getting a pretty penny from it.
Everyone was afraid to do business with Boss Tweed. And no one ever stood up to him, except our good and decent inventor, Alfred Beach.
Knowing Tweed would never grant permission for him to build his magnificent pneumatic subway, Beach decided to play Tweed at his own game. Applying for a building permit for an underground postal tube, Beach and his team dug in secret for 58 nights. But this was no postal tube.
After 2 years, spending the equivalent of $7m of his own money, Beach had built a full-blown, high-class New York Pneumatic Subway.
So where is it today?
What happened to this magnificent invention?
Was there a subway brawl between Alfred Beach and Boss Tweed?
SOURCES:
American Heritage - Alfred Ely Beach And His Wonderful Pneumatic Underground Railway
New York Times - The Broadway Tunnel
Damn Interesting - The Remarkable Pneumatic People-Mover
Scientific American - Scientific American’s owner built the first New York Subway
IMAGE CREDITS
New York Times images from The New York Times, 27 Feb 1870
Other images from the Illustrated Description of the Broadway Pneumatic Underground Railway
PRIOR EPISODES MENTIONED
Thou Art The Man! (Or, The Great Moon Hoax)
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[00:00:00] Rod: What's the weirdest thing you've ever done in secret? I would tell you what mine is, but I don't want to. I had a buddy who cut a little hole in his bedroom floor so he could get into the basement and he put a little trap door in there and he thought that was a pretty good effort and so did I until his mom was cleaning and she fell through it.
This story way bigger. So keep listening cuz you'll be amazed
[00:00:22] Will: We can start this one as the world did with the February 27th, 1870 edition of the New York Times.
[00:00:32] Rod: You know, I start most days with that. Because, you know, you can't read it just once.
[00:00:35] Will: certainly the most novel, if not the most successful enterprise that New York has seen for many a day was launched yesterday under Broadway.
A myth or a humbug has hitherto been called by everyone who's been excluded from its interior. But hereafter, the incredulous public can have the opportunity of examining the undertaking and judging of its merits. Yesterday it was thrown open to the inspection of visitors for the first time, and it must be said that every one of them came away surprised and gratified
[00:01:04] Rod: so many things that could be
[00:01:05] Will: Many expected to find a dismal, cavernous retreat under Broadway, but they opened their eyes at the elegant reception room, the light, the airy space, and the general appearance of taste and comfort in all the apartments.
[00:01:17] Rod: So we are Literally under Broadway.
[00:01:20] Will: Literally under Broadway. Yeah.
[00:01:21] Rod: I thought there was some kind of like, you know, lesser show we call it on Broadway. Off Broadway. Under Broadway.
[00:01:26] Will: Believe me, I would go first to the under Broadway plays. Love Broadway.
[00:01:30] Rod: Would you?
[00:01:31] Will: Maybe
[00:01:31] Rod: What are you hoping to find?
[00:01:32] Will: I'm expecting like, vampire plays or something. I don't know. Zombies? Oh no. Actually for Empire Morlocks. What? It's actually undergraduates,
[00:01:39] Rod: Harsh. I like undergraduates. Will's just too fancy.
[00:01:42] Will: And those who entered to pick out some scientific flaw in the project were silenced by the completeness of the machinery, the solidity of the work and the safety of the running apparatus. Other newspapers joined in. The Herald. The New York Herald, I guess, and they talked of the fashionable reception held in the bowels of [00:02:00] the earth.
The Sun. Bit of a conflict of interest, pointed to the fact that the waiting room is large and elegantly furnished. Department cheerful and attractive throughout the sci and Scientific American, again, super egregious Conflict of interest declared this means the end of street dust upon which uptown residents get not only their fill, but more than their fill, so that it runs over and collects on their hair, their beards, their eyebrows, and floats in their dresses like the vapor on a frosty morning. Such discomforts will never be found in the tunnel.
Welcome to the Wholesome Show
[00:02:40] Rod: Podcast that secretly digs into the hole of science
[00:02:43] Will: wholesome show is me Will Grant,
[00:02:45] Rod: and me Secret Digger Rod Lamberts
[00:02:47] Will: Just note on sources here. There's a few out there. But the original 1870 illustrated description, I won't give the full title now cause No is great. As are Robert Daley and Oliver Allen's articles in American Heritage. And of course, a whole bunch in Scientific American in particular by Doug Most.
Alfred Ely Beach came from a family of pretty damn rich inventor newspaper types.
Yes. Yes. Look there, there is family tradition here of both inventor and newspaper. His father, Moses Yale Beach, had invented a gunpowder engine for propelling balloon.
[00:03:22] Rod: Gum powder engine. Isn't that a bullet? ? There goes a balloon.
[00:03:25] Will: I think it's strapping a cannon to the edge of a hot air balloon.
[00:03:28] Rod: I'm in.
[00:03:28] Will: I apologize. I've got no more on the,
[00:03:30] Rod: don't apologize. My mind is going crazy.
[00:03:32] Will: He also invented a rag cutting machine for cutting up rags. And he also invented the Associated Press system of Prince syndication. One of these inventions made him fat stacks of cash. And sadly not the gunpowder balloon system.
[00:03:44] Rod: Well, you know, that's cuz he, you gotta give it time for people to really, you know, get on board.
[00:03:47] Will: Anyway, Moses, Yale Beach. Yeah. Papa Beach. He bought the New York Sun. And then through a reporting model that focused on crime, deaths, divorces, and hoaxes like the [00:04:00] Great Moon hoax of 1835.
And a business model that focused more on advertising. But yeah, he turned the business model around from previously you'd subscribe to a newspaper and he is like, well, what if we sold it cheap and got advertisers? Oh. And he turned it into the biggest newspaper in America. Cool. Like it was just, you know, and then syndication came along and they were a pretty rich family. Yep. Anyway, enough of mothers young Alfred followed in his dad's footsteps, doing a whole bunch of inventing and newspaper and knowing that while it was fine to dream big, it's important to respect an honest day's work.
[00:04:31] Rod: Did they have a lot of conflict because Rupert Murdoch was already alive and functioning at that point. Right.
[00:04:35] Will: Doesn't seem to have had a lot of conflict.
[00:04:37] Rod: Because he was already alive because he's always 204. Right. Not that he listens. We respect you, Rupert.
[00:04:44] Will: He might listen. Born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1826. , Alfred Beach. Went to a fancy private school called the Monson Academy. Ooh. But he also started working from a pretty young age. And some people reckon he, he never really had a youth. He just started working
[00:04:57] Rod: just like us.
[00:04:58] Will: Yeah, I know. Yeah. podcasting from the age of six.
[00:05:02] Rod: Came out of the womb with a microphone.
[00:05:03] Will: He started as a street news boy. I mean, his dad's got a newspaper and it's like, get out on the streets
[00:05:08] Rod: extra.
[00:05:08] Will: Yeah. Literally. Extra, like that guy. Which sounds like a fun job to me. From there he moved on into the press room. He moved up. He moved up. From the newspaper boy to the type setter kid, dropping all the letters in. All the letters in.
[00:05:19] Rod: Holy shit. What a horrible job.
[00:05:21] Will: Could you believe it? Oh and of course you need kids to do it cuz fine fingers like you want nice small text and so you've gotta type out the
[00:05:27] Rod: nice, small fingers.
[00:05:28] Will: Yeah, exactly. Well, so he imagined each day covered in ink and sweat, and I imagine it was a hard day's work. Then he worked up. He went up into the newsroom first. He's doing some menial accounting work and then to work as a reporter. So he's learning the family business.
[00:05:43] Rod: Okay. You can't, you can write, you can't write English, but fuck with the numbers, the money. That's fine. , where are you gonna start? Me emptying bins cleaning the desk?
[00:05:51] Will: No, I I assume he's looking after payments from advertisers or something like that. Like learn the family business.
[00:05:57] Rod: And I'm guessing he's what, eight years old at the time?
[00:05:58] Will: It's something like that. I [00:06:00] don't have a number on that.
[00:06:00] Rod: I just, I wouldn't have thought newsboy print type accountant, that's not the evolution I would've expected. I was sure there would've been a couple of steps in,
[00:06:10] Will: he's just working his way around the family business. So in 1845, when he was 19 he decided like, I feel like I wanna strike out on my own. Yep. I've learned the family business now I wanna have my own impact on the world.
[00:06:21] Rod: I'm 19, where's my empire?
[00:06:22] Will: And he ran into a young guy from Massachusetts called Rufus Porter. Now Rufus Porter, just a few months ago, I think like five or six months ago, had published the very first issue of a weekly magazine that is still going and is still considered an August part of our landscape, scientific American. So Scientific American was born 1845 ish. Okay. At the time it was four pages long.
[00:06:45] Rod: That's not a magazine. No. It's a front and back, but it's not a magazine. Most a piece of paper folded in half.
[00:06:50] Will: Just remember they have to have little kids to put all the letters in place here.
[00:06:54] Rod: And still not a magazine. Just cause it's difficult, it doesn't become a magazine. Like I can do a whole bunch of difficult things that doesn't make the magazine.
[00:07:01] Will: What's your criteria for magazine?
[00:07:02] Rod: Eight pages.
[00:07:03] Will: Eight pages? Well, okay. Well, Rufus was not very good at Scientific American. Oh. So four pages long and sold it a subscription of $2 a year. So you buy a year's worth and it doesn't all come at once.
The first edition that Rufus put out included a note from Rufus Porter explaining how useful he believed his publication could be. As a family newspaper, it will convey more useful intelligence to children and young people than five times its cost in school instruction.
[00:07:28] Rod: Now I've read Scientific American.
[00:07:30] Will: Do you think it's a youth educator?
[00:07:32] Rod: It is a bees dick off an actual journal the way it's written.
[00:07:35] Will: Oh, it is dense. It is learned. Anyway it was published every Thursday filled with original engravings of new inventions improvements or ideas. And look I, I gotta confess, I got to that moment of early scientific American new inventions. Maybe I just wanna do a deep dive there. That is for another episode. I promise you. I promise you'll
[00:07:51] Rod: I love that. It's engravings too. That's awesome.
[00:07:53] Will: Yeah, of course. Engravings delightful. Improvements are ideas, scientific essays, poems and also some moral and religious [00:08:00] musings.
[00:08:00] Rod: Welcome to Partially Scientific American. Pardon? Yes. Okay. Somewhat scientific American thems. They were different times, poems and religious musings.
[00:08:09] Will: Anyway, Rufus Porter he was keen on Scientific American, but he got to a point and he was like, actually, I just wanna get back to painting. He's a he's an artist. He's a portrait painter. And Scientific American wasn't wasn't doing
[00:08:20] Rod: why not Wack portrait are in there too next to the poems and the religious musings. I don't see a problem with that.
[00:08:24] Will: And then it would've become Portraiture America or something different. But anyway, Porter wanted out and Beach wanted in. Beach from, you know, he's from his family business.
He was like, okay, you can make a motza out of newspapers. Yes. But also he's a big believer, as I said before in the inventing thing. So Scientific American is ticking a whole bunch of boxes. Yeah. Makes sense. He didn't quite have the money to go it alone, so he hooked up with an old school friend called Orson Munn, very 19th century name there and the two of them paid 800 bucks. But they paid $800 for the magazine and it's subscription list of 200 names.
[00:08:57] Rod: 800. So one subscription for a year is two bucks. So for the price of 400 subscriptions, they bought the magazine.
[00:09:05] Will: Yeah, exactly.
[00:09:05] Rod: That sounds fucking cheap.
[00:09:07] Will: Yeah. Yes. I think Porter didn't wanna do it anymore, but it does sound like if you've got those names already you, you get payback in, in two years time.
[00:09:14] Rod: When we think about like, what is a, an annual subscription to a decent magazine's, what, A few hundred bucks now by 200, that's still not a shit ton of money comparatively too.
[00:09:22] Will: The idea of making a living off 200 subscriptions, that's well anyway. That purchase marked the beginning of a long friendship between Orsen Munn and Alfred Beach. The partnership at the magazine lasted at least 50 years.
Yeah. Or nearly 50 years. And and they would go on to produce what is still one of the, one of the key magazines in the science communication landscape. As soon as Beach and Munn took it over, they learned that the inventors of the day, Saw real value in the magazine. Okay. Inventors, they didn't want a portrait painter guy at the top. They wanted a dreamer who, I'll tell you about Beach in a second, like them to help them with their inventions, get in front of investors and people like that.
[00:09:59] Rod: Was this actually [00:10:00] said out loud, like, we hear he is a portraitist.
[00:10:02] Will: I don't know. I didn't see any critique of Rufus Porter. They might have been okay, but people saw in Beach, a fellow traveler and like absolutely 100% Beach was, he was the person for scientific American.
I mean, it says they, they were part of, this is the sort of official history of Scientific American. Beach and MUN had barely settled into their offices in 1846 when they were besieged with letters from inventors, sometimes with unannounced visits, like people would just come in with inventions and saying, I've got this thing, can you get it in front of people?
[00:10:30] Rod: Can you imagine the cue? Standing with things strapped to their heads, blowing smoke and steam and weird stuff on their bumps. It would be amazing.
[00:10:35] Will: And, you know, 19th century inventions, ah, are all contraptions steam. Like I, I would've called it contraption America. But that would've been beautiful sorts of whistling.
[00:10:44] Rod: Yeah. And made out of the finest metals and timbers. That'd be delicious.
[00:10:48] Will: Yeah. Everything's walnut. And brass. And a lot of brass,
[00:10:51] Rod: a little bit of gold if it's a really fancy one.
[00:10:52] Will: So they're all the same sort of thing. Help me apply for a patent and secure it and get me in front of the investors and I'll pay whatever it takes. And so inventors just loved him. So he always and every impression that I get out of Alfred Beach is he's a total good guy.
He is just a not a villain at all. He is super kind, super cautious, super helpful the whole time. Damn. There's a bit where it described the only things he did in life. He only, the only thing he did for pleasure was going to the opera and working out. He worked out and he went to the opera. Other than that, it was like all his time was for family and inventing and inventors. Like they, he did nothing.
[00:11:25] Rod: Not a little quiet time in the wc.
[00:11:27] Will: But he seems to have, he seems to have found what he liked in life. Yeah. And just devoted himself into it. Like he loved scientific American. He loved invention. Awesome. loved his family, and he loved working out and opera. And that's it. So, you know, don't do anything else . Anyway, a whole bunch of famous inventors came through his office. So the Samuel FB Morse, inventor of Samuels. Yes. RJ Gatling, Thomas Edison.
And I like this little story, it was out to Alfred Beach at Scientific American that Thomas Edison took his first photograph. Like he Oh wow, okay. He brought it into Alfred Beach [00:12:00] at scientific American. And he said and Beach is like, oh, what's that?
[00:12:02] Rod: Was it huge? Could he carry it or is it like, four donkey.
[00:12:05] Will: I don't have a physical description. I feel like it probably was huge ish. I don't know. And Edison's so Beach says, what's that? And Edison's like, it's my talking box. And for a moment, Edison grinned at him with pride. Beech gazed at the handle, which jutted from the box, Uhhuh, , and Edison's, like, well, cranks are made for cranking, and he began to turn the handle and the machine. And this is a great way of demonstrating your product. The machine straightaway says, good morning, sir. How do you like the talking box?
[00:12:32] Rod: I mind blown.
[00:12:33] Will: Yeah. You would've been. you've never seen anything like that before. And the idea of like, Edison has come in here, he's obviously recorded his voice before on whatever the disc is and you crank the handle and out comes your voice outta there. That 1846 or whatever it was, no, this is a bit later.
[00:12:48] Rod: So I assume the idea of recording, capturing sound did not exist.
[00:12:51] Will: Did not exist there, there is no Edison invented that. Like it, we know how many inventions and to just bring in a box and drop it on the editor of Scientific American's desk and go crank the handle, man
[00:13:01] Rod: That would've impressed me even more than the first time I saw the touchscreen iPod. And I wanted to lick that. So I can't imagine what I would've done now
[00:13:07] Will: You wouldn't have even thought that was a thing that you would do at all. Like, like voice goes. But there's no, yeah, there's no physicality to it.
[00:13:14] Rod: There's no, what do you mean? There's capture? Ah, yeah. It would've been, that's wild.
[00:13:18] Will: He also on behalf of struggling inventors he argued thousands of paton cases going up to Washington all the time when he, yeah. And in just a few years, Beach had turned scientific American into the most successful, powerful, and influential weekly of its kind. This is scientific American's history.
It was to become a beacon of light for an age, which otherwise might not have been ready for astounding scientific advances. So anyway, I said that he, he had that the family business. Yep. That's the newspaper in Yeah.
Scientific American. Yep. Also inventing, because while he's hearing other people's inventions he's doing his own. Possibly, patent lawyer was his third job. That's what I meant. He did some pretty good inventing himself. The first one was the world's first practical typewriter. Like this guy invented the typewriter. This is not, it's not a [00:14:00] small thing.
[00:14:00] Rod: So he sees the first iPod and goes, yay. And then he builds a typewriter.
[00:14:04] Will: It doesn't look like a modern typewriter. And I dunno where you put the paper, like it's sort of like a circle thing. It looks it looks like a giant piano type thing that you can type it. It's, it is big. It is big.
[00:14:13] Rod: Well, I remember back in the, what are you talking, late eighties, I think it was, my mother got one of the first word processes on the university campus, and it was a purpose-built desk built into it. And the disk, the floppy disks were the, what do you like, a 10 and quarter inch or something?
[00:14:27] Will: Diamond disc at Edison Diamond disc.
[00:14:28] Rod: Yeah. No, but they were literally they're like that big square and the big disc drive would be down near your legs and then you'd have the giant screen and it holds one letter per disc or something like that. And all it would do obviously is word processing. And if you wanted to know italicize, you gotta put in the little star shape, blah, blah.
[00:14:43] Will: It is mind blowing how far we have moved. This is a beautiful contraption though. I mean, they're teasing it here. They're saying it's as unattractive as a bushel basket, but I'm like, no, this is a beautiful thing made of, also, of walnut and brass.
Anyway, he won the gold medal at the Crystal Palace exposition. 1856. Typewriter exposition. No. Just general inventions. All inventions. All inventions of all inventions. All inventions. Winner. He won gold. He won gold. Nice typewriter. No he was like, no, he was 19 at the time. No, 21. And he knew full well what he had done. Someday, he predicted. Boys will be taught to write their names only all the rest will be played on this literary. Literary piano. Yeah, I know. It's a bit grandiose.
But small sidebar. Have you heard of like Crystal Palace in London? Yes. Yeah. Burnt down not long after Prince Albert. All that kinda stuff. Yeah. They have one in New York too and it burnt down as well.
[00:15:27] Rod: Also Crystal's not the first thing. Like I don't go Crystal. Probably pretty flammable. You better watch for that.
[00:15:35] Will: I don't know what, I think all buildings burnt down back those days.
[00:15:37] Rod: I assume that Crystal was held in timbers.
[00:15:40] Will: Yeah. Oiled timbers, oil timbers. Oils covered. Petrol timbers. Anyway, for the next 10 years as well as being obviously the publisher and the patent lawyer, he worked for the next 10 years trying to adapt his type writer to imprint raised letters, which the blind could read with their fingers.
[00:15:55] Rod: No way.
[00:15:55] Will: And he eventually got it. He got dies on both sides. So, a stamp on both sides. Yeah. That [00:16:00] would push out a raised letter. So originally raised letters like the letter A. Yeah. And then he realized, oh, we could use this to type braille. So he also invented,
[00:16:07] Rod: so braille already existed?
[00:16:08] Will: Yes. At the time Braille was written only by hand. So you could sort of stamp it through somehow. So, so look, I just wanted to establish he was like a solid inventory as well.
[00:16:18] Rod: Yeah. Hell yeah. He, He's doing. But he would've been highly motivated to invent the typewriter, having been a little boy with tiny fingers.
[00:16:23] Will: Yeah. Yeah. Like newsprint person. Yeah. He's like, fuck it. What if we could get the reporters to do this directly?
[00:16:28] Rod: What if I didn't have to do this? What if no one ever had to do this horrible thing again? Not a bad thing to want 12 hours a day overnight, cuz you gotta get it out in the morning.
[00:16:35] Will: And so it was in 1849 when Beach was only 23 years old that he first conceived the idea. , his office was right on Broadway in New York overlooked city hall, one of the busiest sections of the city. And at the time New York City was booming. It was like growing at rates that are shocking to people at the time.
I think I, I think it had gone from a hundred thousand to 700,000 people in the last few decades. And they were all crammed in a tiny bit down the end of Manhattan. Thousands more refugees and immigrants poured in every single day, and the streets were just clogged with horse-drawn vehicles that, and traffic moved just an inch at a time.
[00:17:11] Rod: What's changed? Cars don't poo, I suppose that's the difference.
[00:17:14] Will: That's probably it. And horses and horse carriage is bigger than a car. Like you put two horses and a carriage. Like they're taking up space, but also it's really dense and they, it's not like traffic was invented, you know, in the 21st century. No. It's tough to get around,
[00:17:30] Rod: but also for me, always in my head, I know we've done stories about it. You read things about it. It's a bit part in a lot of stories. The amount of shit. . Like unimaginably colossal amounts of shit, you know,
[00:17:39] Will: you know that there was a lot of people that their job was just to shovel volumes and volumes of manure.
[00:17:45] Rod: Yeah. And for once, we don't mean that as a metaphor. What's your job? We shovel shit all day. No. I literally shovel.
[00:17:49] Will: So they had public transport. Yep. And that was just more horses. Yep. On a big carriage. They have an, you have an omnibus or a street car and you drag along by big teams of draft horses and you get lots of axles [00:18:00] breaking horses doing horsey business. They're like winning and shying me. As well as taking up the size of a bus. Yeah. You know, a horse carriage and stuff like that. Horses are chaotic. Like they shit everywhere, but they're also fucking everywhere. And thinking for themselves, wi and shy and thinking for themselves. Harnesses get snarled. Competing drivers. Yeah. Just imagine New York in the, the 19th century.
[00:18:18] Rod: They don't reverse well
[00:18:19] Will: no they don't. They're terrible. Back it up. What are you talking about? No. Reversing camera on a horse. No, that's the hardest bit. Drivers got into fist fights, silks and broad cloths were ruined in the crush inside the cars. Watches and breast pins vanished into the hands of pick pockets.
Oh, the air was poisonous. It was said that dunno what it's poisonous with. It might just be horse shit and dust
[00:18:38] Rod: or maybe just bad attitudes. Morally poisonous air.
[00:18:42] Will: It was said that a healthy person could not ride a dozen blocks without a headache. Traffic was so dense serious, it might take an hour to move a few yards. It blows my mind that 19th century traffic could be that bad. I doubt there are following road rules like perfectly. So I've imagined there's people that are taking their horses onto the footpaths or whatever. Yeah. And it's just that clogged, that horrible, he just gets stuck.
Modern martyrdom, one person summed it up, may be sufficiently succinctly defined as riding in a New York omnibus. And I dunno what they mean by that, but they're saying it's bad.
[00:19:13] Rod: Look, calling it modern martyrdom. Yeah. Basically either killing yourself or putting yourself up for being killed is the same as riding on this bus.
[00:19:21] Will: I think they're just suggesting traffic is bad. So remember, this is 1850 something like that. And it's just we always think of traffic as cars. But you know, cities can get clogged regardless.
[00:19:32] Rod: So what I love is we've been fucking up cities for two centuries, nearly
[00:19:35] Will: possibly longer
[00:19:36] Rod: good for us
[00:19:38] Will: so day after day, the noise floated up to Beach, and then day after day he'd have to go into it and fight for an hour to get home to the only the middle bit of Manhattan now. But he's going uptown dude, walk. Possibly, I think there just weren't other po other possibilities.
Yeah. Yeah. The situation was desperate. What could be done to speed up public transportation in New York? The way Beach [00:20:00] saw it, there was two possibilities. You go up or you go down. Going up means building an elevated road on top of the existing road. And remember, rail is not a thing.
So you basically put a giant bridge structure over the top and so you can double the amount of traffic by having more and more people. And little bit of me wishes that 19th century New York had gone that insane. Well this is the thing, A horse on Ramp Beach didn't like elevated roads, but for a variety of reasons, they're noisy. They're unsightly but dangerous. He was worried about having horses going up on top of these sort of big viaduct type things.
[00:20:36] Rod: And you know what? He should be?
[00:20:37] Will: Yes. Yeah. I don't wanna be controlling a horse when you can fall off the side of something. On a trestle, 10 or more feet above the street, there will be no controlling them. Dozens of unlucky passengers would plunge to their deaths each year. It would be unlucky, but going down. Yeah. That's something that Excited Beach. He's like, all right. Alright.
[00:20:55] Rod: You can't fall down from down. You can't fall down. Gravity.
[00:20:59] Will: And this seems to be his description in Scientific American. The first description ever anywhere of a subway. The plan is to tunnel Broadway its entire length. He wrote in Scientific American. With openings at every corner, there'll be two tracks with a footpath running between them.
The hole to be brilliantly lighted with gas. The cars to be drawn by horses would stop 10 seconds at every corner and let people up to walk up the street. Yeah. Anyway he thought this would be good, but he was a little bit worried about the horses underground. but also just to remind that electric and gasoline engines hadn't been invented. So the only other alternative that was on the horizon was your steam train and, you know, you know, big belching, steam train full of smoke and dust coming up. Like, like insane. Perfect. And he's like, that's impossible. They people would never ride in a tunnel with those soot, belching monsters.
[00:21:47] Rod: No. They'd do it once and then be dead.
[00:21:49] Will: This is a very 19th century way of describing the problem. White shirts would be turned black by the smoke. Cinders would fly in the windows and set fire to the ladies'. Garments Mory further, too many boilers burst far too [00:22:00] frequently. An explosion could mean a cave. Those who weren't scolded to death by escaping team steam would be buried alive. One such disaster would mean the end of the subway for all time.
[00:22:10] Rod: He's not painting a nice picture.
[00:22:11] Will: No. He loved the idea of going underground, but he's like, how do you make it work horses? How do you make it work? So time passed. Beach looked for it. He passed the, he pushed the idea as much as he could in Scientific American. But then in the 1860s, he got an idea from England and a new plan began to take shape in his mind.
So the basic principles seems to have been laid out first by a London tinkerer called George Medhurst. In 1812. He put out a pamphlet with totally 1812 type title calculations and remarks, tending to prove the practicability effects and advantages of a plan for the rapid conveyance of goods and passengers upon an iron road through a tube of 30 feet in area by the power and velocity of air.
[00:22:53] Rod: So that's the title, and then the body of it says see title point, made.
So did
[00:22:58] Will: you catch the catch, the key bit in there? Through a tube, 30 feet in area by the power and velocity of air. Yeah.
[00:23:04] Rod: We're gonna put a horse in a pneumatic tube and let's see what happens.
[00:23:07] Will: Yes. So, okay. The underlying idea had been known since like the ancient Greeks, like the Greek mathematician, hero of Alexandria. But Medhurst, mapped it out first. a hollow tube or archway must be constructed the whole distance of iron, brick, timber, or any other material that can find the air and of such dimensions as to admit a four wheeled carriage to run through it.
the tube must be made airtight and of the same form and dimensions throughout. Having a pair of cast iron wheel tracks securely laid along the bottom and the carriage must be nearly the size and form of the tube so as to prevent a considerable, any considerable quantity of air from passing by it.
So basically they're making a, an old school carriage Yeah. In a tube. And the carriage has to have like a bum bit on it. That is the size of the tube.
[00:23:49] Rod: A big bustle. And we're talking what, iron, brick and timber. Yes. If someone says to me, build something airtight, those are definitely my three go-to materials.
[00:23:56] Will: Look, they're the materials they have at the time. Like, oh no, I get [00:24:00] that, but like really none. Brick, none.
[00:24:03] Rod: No I get that. I don't get brick cuz it's not porous at all. Timber? No breathing and iron.
[00:24:07] Will: If the air is forced into the mouth of the tube, behind the carriage by an engine of sufficient power, it'll be driven forward by the pressure against it.
[00:24:14] Rod: An engine of sufficient power. I'm gonna get that T-shirt. just says An engine of sufficient power. No context.
[00:24:20] Will: Just owning it. Just owning it that you are that engine. So in the 1850s, people began embracing this on a small scale. First being like a one and a half inch pipe, which is like not great for commuting. Three and a half centimeters. No. Not great for commuting at all. And they, and this was in London, designed to suck instructions between two buildings.
One to the stock exchange and one to light. Right, right. Another building. Yep. Something about 300 meters. So they'd suck it through by pneumatic pressure. That's awesome. I just gotta confess, I I worked a checkout when I was a kid. And you know, when you're making a lot of cash and you're like, all right, time to put it in the, and you roll up the cash and put it in a little thing and put it in the suction tube.
And I was like, God damn. That is the coolest thing in the world I love it so much. I am such a fan of the pneumatic suction device.
[00:25:04] Rod: I was mesmerized when I was a little munch going as well. They would do that, you know, you'd be at Coles or wherever and they'd be hang a minute. And I imagine they went into mysterious, distant places.
[00:25:14] Will: Well, this is what I'm also imagining. If you're a boss guy. Yeah. If you are like, you know, I'll tell you about a boss in a bit. There's a boss in this story. Okay. But if you're sitting in a little office and just every few minutes a little of bag of cash just comes to you , like, like that is the boss's dream.
[00:25:30] Rod: No, you'd wake up in the night hearing that in your sleep and screaming
[00:25:33] Will: No. Cuz every time is. It's your cash. It's your cash. There is never a little grenade or a little turd or a someone.
A lot of them were looking at sending mail around. . And now they still exist in various places. Usually in hospitals and things like that. But packages and mail that's small fry. It's people. It's people. Yes. That's what I care about. Yes. So the first heroes to get sucked through a tube were the Duke of Buckingham in and his chums. [00:26:00]
[00:26:01] Rod: Did it mess up the feathers on his helmet and the badges on his chests?
[00:26:05] Will: I couldn't find a photo. I couldn't confirm which Duke of Buckingham there were. That's the problem of these fancy names is like, you dunno which one it is?
[00:26:12] Rod: Like, Duke's just below like Monarch. Pop me in a tube and suck me along at
[00:26:17] Will: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And do you wanna guess how long his tube was? So the Duke of Bucking and his chums, they were the chair of the pneumatic dispatch company. So they were experimenting it. They had access to the technology. They said, all right, make us a tube four and a half feet high. Well, as they said, assume the recumbent posture. Oh, lie down. Sit down, lie down. I think they had some sort of vehicle made for them. Oh. And two miles long. Oh, really? They got into a little car. And we're sucked along. This is 1866. We're sucked along this this tube, this dark tube. It's gotta be dark.
[00:26:48] Rod: Of course it does. All five minutes it took.
[00:26:50] Will: Five minutes,
[00:26:51] Rod: Just remember this is a mile and two and a half minutes, which I can't possibly convert that to anything real. but that's fast. Like, there, there are speeds that they're achieving in pneumatic transport that are unheard of any other means at the moment. And so they were pretty impressed.
Are we gonna talk about the brakes later, or we'll get to that later. Is slowing down a strong suit?
[00:27:10] Will: No. The other people slow you down. No you don't have brakes. There are no breaks because, can I just little aside, So this is the, have you seen family crests?
[00:27:18] Rod: You know, they're, they are divided in four where you've got all the different bits of the family. This is the Duke of Buckingham's Family Crest. I'm like, that's a freaking patchwork quilt. Like, like it's got 700 different families represented on his, and many of them multiple times. It's like, okay, we came back into this one. It's like, what the fuck are you?
It's from a distance. You go, oh, red smudge. That must be Buckingham
[00:27:38] Will: Alfred Beach. Yep. Is like goddamn go that there is the solution. We don't need no horse. No, we don't need no stinking train. We gotta suck people through. In an 1868 article on the subject, he said, this is it A tube tuba car, a revolving fan. Little more is required. The ponderous locomotive with its various pers is dispensed [00:28:00] with, and the light aerial fluid that we breathe is substituted for the motor. Hence the roadway and cars may be very light. The whole pneumatic way being undercover, the road bed is preserved from, damaged by the elements.
And the transit of the cars is not impeded by snow, ice floods or falling rocks. The tube forms the bridges over small streams dives under broad waters and rests securely on marshes. So falling rocks were big problem in New York at the time. Anything that he's saying it solves everything.
[00:28:24] Rod: Oh, right. Not just in New York to solve everything. Not just in New York.
[00:28:26] Will: Yeah. He's saying other places might like this as well. Think is bigger. Okay. He set up a demonstration first at the American Institute Fair. Which is sort of like the, you know, it's like a expo. And he, in 1867, he made a demonstration, a six foot tube, and in it had a little car with seats for 10 passengers and it went the length of a building, so in an in sort of inside a building and it would suck people along.
[00:28:49] Rod: Summa didn't take long. Length of a building is a standard measure. I get that. So it's between and eh. Yep it works.
[00:28:55] Will: But not really. He's, that's not the demonstration he want, he wants a real demonstration. So he was determined to seek a charter from the legislature in New York. Right. To start building a subway for New York powered by pneumatic engines. Hell, yes, but there was a problem. Oh. And the problem, as I said before, was a boss. His name was Boss Tweed. Have you heard of, have you ever had a boss, Tweed?
[00:29:20] Rod: No. Well, I've heard of it as a fabric . What kind oft tweeted is that As Boss Tweed.
[00:29:24] Will: I'll show you a picture of like, there's boss Tweed boss Tweed, the only way to describe him is amongst the most corrupt people you have ever heard of. Wildly corrupt. Like, like he's in the charts. Like I don't, I Wow. I don't have a full ranking, but he is right up the top.
William Magar Tweed, he was a state senator, commissioner of Public Works, grand Setum of Tammany Hall . He stood at the top of the greatest concentration of civic power in New York's history. Wow. And he just used it all the time. I'll give you a little bit of history. He was born in 1823.
he'd started his career as the toughest brawler in the roughest fire company in the city. [00:30:00] So I think this was a time when fire companies were very different, they weren't civic minded. If you are insured, then they'd put out the fire for you. If they weren't then. And he was, he that was the rough company and he was the rough guy at the top of that. So when he's what are you talking? 28. 29, he ran for Alderman of the City and he won . And he was sent to, he went to Washington as a congressman, and then he started accumulating power in New York.
He took a variety of commissions and used them just for cash. Now here's a few examples. This is just, you go eruption title, dude. You're egregious. Yeah. Yeah. He controlled a furniture company, which mysteriously won the contract to provide sofas and desks for the city, like in, in official buildings.
Coincidence he'd buy them at 50 bucks and charge the city 5,000. 5,000. Oh, yeah. Yeah. His New York printing company. Printed the city's forms and those of every, you know, he, remember he's on the council. Yeah. And he owns the company that is printing the city's forms. And those of every insurance company too.
It absorbed three, three other companies larger than itself and four smaller ones because it cornered the market. All other companies were afraid to do business that would compete with tweets.
[00:31:01] Rod: So he's efficient he cuts corners. He streamlines he gets shit done.
[00:31:04] Will: He does, yeah. His manufacturing stationary company. It furnished the supplies for the city's schools. Uhhuh, each month it delivered six reams of paper, 24 ink, pen holders, ink bottles, sponges rubber bands, rulers, things like that. I don't know. I don't know why the schools are running outta rules so much. And then it would send a bill for $10,000 to the school commissioner who was himself.
[00:31:24] Rod: So, so there's accountability.
[00:31:27] Will: I like this one. He owned the street cleaning company and he was the street commissioner . And he would sign off the bills and the street cleaning company didn't even own a broom. It did no cleaning. It did literally no cleaning. And he's just paying for it all the time.
There was another story. He won a contract to build New York's County courthouse. . And remember he's the person that is deciding who gets the contract. Yeah. He said it'd be like 250. Three years later it was $8 million , 8 million over budget. In including like, outrageous amounts for carpets and plastering and furniture and things like that. So he's just charging everywhere.
[00:31:59] Rod: Oh, like [00:32:00] also the language, he won the contract.
[00:32:01] Will: Oh, I know. So he obviously, you know, had a ring like it was the Tammany ring. Tammany Hall, yeah. Yeah. And he obviously had a lot of people that were also benefiting from this of
[00:32:10] Rod: course. that's cuz he's civic minded.
[00:32:11] Will: thought that between 1869 and 1971, so like two or three years he stole something between 45 and 200 million in those monies. No, like, like it thought that in that two or three years he stole $5 billion in today's money from New York, like vast sums
He bribed everyone. , he controlled the Democratic party machine and his ring bribed people to count the votes. It bribed those aside to guard the ballot boxes. It brought gangs of bewildered immigrants and rounded them up, sworn them in. Sworn them in as citizens and hurted them to the polls. It bought the state assembly in 1866. Bought the mayor of the city. And it forced the election of the governor John Hoffman. So he owned everyone. Like he, he owned everyone in power.
[00:32:51] Rod: Well, there's a reason that his parents called him the boss.
[00:32:54] Will: But here, For Alfred Beach. He wants to build a subway. Yeah. And boss Tweed is like, I don't want no subway. I control the street cars. I get a kickback from them. And if we're gonna build anything, we're going up and I can control all of that.
Yeah. I'm gonna make a whole bunch of money. I've got no interest in letting a street a subway happen. So Beach. He had to play it smart. Instead of asking for permission to build a subway, he went sneaky. He, in 1868, he asked the legislator. Sure. Remember boss tweets, the boss here for a postal charter.
He says, look, I wanna do that thing like they're doing in London. Build those two little tubes. Ah, one's going out. One's coming back. Yeah. And and we're gonna just test, test the post. Yeah. Boss Tweed is like, I ain't got no quarry with the post. That sounds good. They're not my people. Go ahead and build it.
So he got approval and then pretty quickly Beach said, oh, can I just have an amendment? Instead of channeling two, can I just dig one hold that's a little bit bigger that can fit them both in. No one noticed. And it got approved
[00:33:50] Rod: and a little bit bitter. You mean human sized?
[00:33:53] Will: Human sized. It wasn't noticed. It was just saying, you know, it'd be easier to, rather than building two tunnels so Beach had done an investigation of New York, [00:34:00] found some nice easy soil to dig in.
And under Murray Street, off Broadway, he saw it was nice and Sandy, we could dig through that pretty easily. He rented the cellar of Devlin's clothing store. They went down into the bottom of the cellar and every night they started digging at Subway in secret . Over the next 58 nights his team secretly borrowed through the earth, under Broadway and Warren Street. So this is right in the middle of Wow. Right in the middle of New York,
[00:34:26] Rod: which is also Manhattan, as I understand it, is famous for its schist. I dunno what that means really.
[00:34:32] Will: Smaller side. He invented the, like a tunneling ram. Like it's imagine a barrel that you can put people in, they can dig at the front, put it out and they poop it out the back. Yeah. And brick it up behind them. So he invented that as well. So every night the team of diggers would go down in there, dig for a while, brick up around it and secretly bring the bags of dirt into wagons whose wheels had been muffled for silence. And they'd sneak out the dirt every night. And it's just all totally secrets.
[00:35:00] Rod: This freaking cold. It's like, it's a bizarre escape movie. That's incredible.
[00:35:03] Will: It is a weird, great escape thing that, that they're digging at night. They've kept it all super secret with slight permission but not real permission.
[00:35:12] Rod: And you said we could dig a hole. We are
[00:35:15] Will: they blocked anyone from coming in except for Yeah. Like the people who are working for them. Yeah. And some officials from one of the aqueduct departments that, that were checking the postal tubes. So they're all like, okay, this is what you're doing.
But they, they they block the new, the mayor, like the mayor is like, I want to know, what are you guys doing down there? They block the mayor and that's why it's a surprise, you know that, that story in the New York Times, you know, the myth and the humbug, like you could imagine a city going, we are hearing rumors of something weird being dug under Broadway. At one point they hit a wall the, that appeared to be like an old fort. So they're like really? They're like 10 meters underground sort of thing. Like 30 seconds.
[00:35:46] Rod: Even then there were these buried things.
[00:35:48] Will: Yeah. And I I dunno the age of the fort. So they tunneled up to it and then eventually this brick wall sort of filled, or a stonewall filled the whole face of the tunnel that they . Okay. His son is the foreman and he said, oh, quick, go get dad. [00:36:00] And Alfred comes down in his pajamas and he is like, oh god damn.
All right. Take it apart. But he was super worried. He was like, the street's gonna collapse on me and everyone's gonna see this tunnel that I've dug, and I'm gonna be like totally exposed to what's happening here. took the wall down and he was a bit panicked, but they keep going. Sure. They dug for 58 nights and then they got as far as he wanted.
But then he spent the next two years and 350,000 of his own money. Okay. It seems to be like 7 million. Wow. Making it fancy because he, you know, he knows being an inventor and a sort of chaperone of inventors. Yeah. If you want people to take it, you gotta sell the sizzle. You gotta make people wanna do it. Like, you don't wanna look like a weird dungeon or something like that. You've gotta make it exciting. Yeah he was like, it's gotta be both a thing that's practical, but also excites the imagination and makes the fancies like it.
So he built a huge waiting room. It's got a grand piano ornate wooden trimmings FreshCo walls, . Remember all of this is illegal. He's doing this all in secret paintings. A bubbling fountain filled with goldfish. The tunnels framed in handsome brickwork and two stately bronze efs of mercury stood alongside.
plackard above the tunnel hung the words Pneumatic 1870 Transit. Okay. Everything was brightly lit. Everything with the brightest gas lights that you can get.
[00:37:15] Rod: It sounds like he's done a spectacular job.
[00:37:17] Will: He did. He did. And he is got a small car, train car down there. sat 22 people and was richly upholstered. Now of course you need a fan blow people. The fan that he found was from the roots company that they used to ventilate mines. God damn huge fan. Makes sense. It's like, it's just, imagine a box that's the size of half a tennis court and. Cubic, like, it's huge. It's, oh, it is a huge really fan, really.
The ROEs patent Force rotary blower nicknamed the Western Tornado . But it's like a giant box, just blowing volumes and volumes. Oh, that's funny. Volumes of air. A western tornado apparent. It's got a an air intake valve up on the street level. And
[00:37:56] Rod: which would be easy to camouflage?
[00:37:57] Will: Well, it's just a grate and so I think New [00:38:00] Yorkers are very used to grates from the subways and things now. At the time, I don't think they had ever seen things like that. And so, apparently, Occasionally you'd walk past there and your hat would get sucked off onto the grate, or it'd get blown up in the air going,
[00:38:11] Rod: or Marilyn Munro dress.
Yes.
[00:38:13] Will: You, very Marilyn Monroe. Yes. It would've been the 1870s Marilyn Mun rowing.
[00:38:16] Rod: If it weren't for him, that famous scene would never have existed.
[00:38:19] Will: I think the problem is 1870s clothes were all like the, they're made of eight inch wool,
[00:38:23] Rod: like, and then nailed to your ankle. So there's no chance of anyone catching a glimpse.
[00:38:28] Will: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. When the fan was in blowing mode, the car, so this is the train carriage gently but swiftly flew down the track at about six miles per hour until it tripped to wire that caused a bell to ring at the other end at the other station.
And then the fan would go into suck mode and it would suck the the car back. Okay. For an equivalently smooth ride, there were brakes and then Beach sent out the invitations six miles. Okay. It's 10 kilometers now. It's not super fast. But no, he sent out the invitations for launch day. Yep. February 27th, 1870.
Yep. All the visitors came down, dignitaries the high minded of New York. They're like, what the hell is going on? But they were sneaking down, right? They went down into the basement of Devlin's clothing store, special doors that have been sealed to keep the pressure in. And the subway's waiting room alone astonished reporters. This is New York Times, it's fresco walls, elegant paintings, grand piano, bubbling fountain, goldfish tank, all were ecstatically described, but most of all, the press was overwhelmed by the great blowing machine that propelled the car. Yeah. But sent it, skimming along the track like a sail before the wind.
And once the car had reached the end of the track, calmly drew it back again. Cool. So people all wrote their own descriptions. Like everyone's doing the social media at. We took our seats in the pretty car, the gayest company of 20 that ever entered a vehicle. The conductor touched a telegraph wire on the wall of the tunnel, and before he knew it, so gentle was the start.
We were in motion moving from Warren Street down Broadway. In a few moments, the conductor opened the door and called out Murray Street with a business like air that made us all shout with laughter. The car came to a rest in the gentle as possible style and immediately [00:40:00] began to move back to Warren Street where it no sooner arrived.
And our atmospheric ride was most delightful and our party left the car satisfied by the actual experience.
[00:40:08] Rod: Yeah. So this is on rails, right?
[00:40:10] Will: There seems to be a sort of rail underneath it, but it sort of, it definitely seals in the tube. Yeah. So it's getting pushed along on, on a rail sort of thing, but there's no, no motor at all in the thing.
Another person went up to the blower after our ride. It's only natural, of course, that we should wish to explore the source from Wence came the pneumatic pressure. Yes. That had so mysteriously carried us along Broadway. Accordingly, under the guidance of one of the polite officials of the company provided with lanterns, we entered the air passage or duct, which opens into the waiting room, near the mouth of the tunnel.
. As we went in, we fem felt a gentle breeze. But after we arrived at the mouth of the great blower, and while we were gazing in wonder at the motions of the gigantic blowing wings, the engineer put on more steam and increase the speed. So the blast instantly became a hurricane of frightful power.
Ah, hats, bonnets, shawls, handkerchiefs and everything. Every loose thing was snatched away from our hands and swept into the tunnel. I do imagine there's it's blowing a lot of,
[00:41:04] Rod: well, it's got a move, what is it? 22 people in a fancy carriage. That's not nothing. Oh. Like, it's beautiful. Oh, it's cool as hell.
[00:41:12] Will: Boss Tweed was pissed. Was he? Boss Tweed is like what in Fuck I, what? What are you doing here? Ah, he was furious at this. So, of course, Beech had received permission to construct a small tube only. To see if, you know, you could send letters by building a whole subway in secret he had willfully divided, not only boss Tweed, but the whole legislature. There was talk of destroying the tunnel, throwing Beach in jail. But Beech knowing the power and determination of his opposition, he was like, no, I'm gonna fight it. He said, New York needs a subway. He'd go before the legislature up in Albany.
The state government. No one had stood up to Tweed before. Like he controlled everything. Boss Tweed. No one stood up to him,
[00:41:47] Rod: because he's called Boss Tweed. All I can think of is the old Dukes of Hazard and Boss Hong.
[00:41:50] Will: Oh no. Well, he, boss Hog would be based on Boss Tweed. Like Boss Tweed. It's a mythical level of tyranny, corruption, of someone who wasn't he. [00:42:00] Like a president or a governor himself. Right. He just controlled those people. Beach applied for a bill to build a subway for all of New York. He and his friends wrote a bill that would go before the legislature.
It's called the Beach Transit bill. And interestingly they put it to a vote in the state legislature in 1871, where they'd built a subway for all of New York. And it was overwhelmingly supported by the legislature. Okay. But os Tweed had put up a bill of his own, where they'd build a viaduct. He's like, I wanna build the other thing. I wanna build the other thing. And they approve both of them. Cool. What a good idea. Legislature approved both of them. Yeah. Great Beaches is a lot cheaper. He's saying mine's 5 million. And boss tweeted is like, mine's gonna be a hundred million. Beaches was cheaper, well, boss tweed's got a factor in corruption. Like
[00:42:39] Rod: Ah, yeah, good point. Corruption is expensive. That's true.
[00:42:42] Will: I got other bills to pay. I need some diamonds. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Both of them came to the governor and weirdly the governor was owned by Boss Tweed. Oh sure. And and
[00:42:51] Rod: so, which way did it go?
[00:42:52] Will: He vetoed Beaches. The newspapers were enraged. Ah. They were like, how how can the governor have read these things? It's like, it's too fast. You know, 24 hours. You've just vetoed it straight away. The veto said the Tribune was long since prepared. Of course it was to be expected that as long as Tammany, that's boss Tweed. Yeah. Had no hand in the scheme and saw no chance of converting it into a swindle, its influence could be used against it, but for the sake of decency, the tracks might have been covered up. So. He Beech was like, ah, god damn. Yeah.
But he said, all right, let's try again. Well, let's wait another year. It's been vetoed, but we can try again. And so another year they kept the train open the whole time. Okay. So people could come down, they'd pay 25 cents a go, and they'd get sucked back and forth along the along the tracks.
[00:43:36] Rod: Would you pay 25 cents to be sucked back and forth?
[00:43:39] Will: God damnit. Yes, I would. Yes, you would. But he earned, I think it earned like a hundred grand. He donated that all to charity.
[00:43:45] Rod: Well, that's not gonna help his legal defense.
[00:43:46] Will: Well, that's the problem. He's kind of expecting that at some point. So he went a second time. Yeah. And again governor Hoffman vetoed, huh. Then he went a third time. And this is where it gets interesting because in the me in the meantime [00:44:00] Tweed has fallen. Oh, like the New York Times a bookkeeper had found evidence of all of tweed's swindles, oops.
Put it before the New York Times. And the, and everyone was like, God damn. Like it's weird cuz he was super corrupt and he actually seems to have got his comeuppance. Like he okay. They published day after day, New York Times, published all of the lists of how much he's swindled. People are pissed.
[00:44:19] Rod: Is he one of these doofus villains in movies that like, oh, of course they kept the full accounting record book.
[00:44:24] Will: I think so. I think it's cause he's the commissioner he's signing off on, for example, on the street commissioner, he's $10,000 to clean the streets.
[00:44:31] Rod: So busy enough to go, oh, they didn't get cleaned.
[00:44:33] Will: Yeah, exactly. So something like that. Yeah. Right. Anyway, by 1872, boss Tweed has fallen, he's in jail. He ends up dying in jail. And so, for for Beach, he's like, all right, this is our third chance we can do it. His bill passes the legislature. Goes to the senate, goes to the governor. The governor signs it off. It's a new governor now. It's all good. And it's signed in 1873. Yeah. But he's lost a lot of his money. But more importantly, there's been a recession. Like there's not only a recession, like stock market had crashed in like 1873 prices had risen.
So it's like tens of million dollars more than he had expected. Yeah. He talked to all of his wealthy friends. But they're no longer interested in investing in it. There's just no money for anything of this. Yeah, right. Okay. So while it was approved in 1872 by 1873, There's no money.
There's no money for anything. So he proved that you could make a pneumatic subway, but by 1873, there's no money to do it. Eventually it all disappears and it's so annoying. Like he got to this point where he got past all the, he built this thing in secret.
Yeah. He got past all the political hurdles, and then the money just disappeared.
[00:45:39] Rod: and he built it out of like, like leather and shit, which, you know, when was it Elon Musk or the other bugger who wanted to build a pneumatic tube? You're probably gonna get to
[00:45:47] Will: Oh, Elon Musk will. Yeah.
[00:45:48] Rod: I haven't heard anything about bricks or leather.
[00:45:49] Will: No. And in secret, no less. Yeah. Beach was a crushed, heartbroken, man. people say that after it finally came out, he was a different person. Yeah. His friends' remark that his [00:46:00] conversations were less stimulating his observations less acute and rarely witty.
[00:46:04] Rod: Beach, you no longer stimulate me with your conversation.
[00:46:06] Will: But he seemed kinder and gentler particularly to the young men who arrived at his desk, he'd stopped inventing, but he was much more interested in publishing and helping other inventors. Oh, so he started new journals, one after the other, all sort of like weird spinoffs of Scientific American a whole bunch of them.
[00:46:21] Rod: Scientific, Arkansas Scientific,
[00:46:23] Will: well, south American, La America Scientific. In Spanish and distributed to Central and South America. Okay. He taught himself Spanish and he raised a whole bunch of money for different charities. One of his chief projects when he got his financial finances back was the Beach Institute in Savannah, which he endowed and furnished a free education for freed slaves.
[00:46:41] Rod: Oh damn.
[00:46:42] Will: Hey, I like this. He felt no bitterness toward any man, not even toward the convicted tweed who who went to Lidow Street Jail and died there. About six years later. Gradually the pneumatic subway was forgotten, and with it, Alfred Beach himself when he died of pneumonia, which is, it's just pneumatic pneumonia.
[00:46:59] Rod: It's a very pneumatic Yeah. Something yeah. It was written in the stars
[00:47:01] Will: in 1896, at the age of 69. He'd totally faded from public view. Yeah. While he was the editor and publisher of Scientific of American, he wasn't famous at doing things anymore. Okay. Obituary in the New York Times only ran for a few inches.
Two years later, the building in which the subway had started, dev. Clothing store was destroyed by a spectacular fire. Cool. And that destroyed all of the ornate trappings down in the bottom of the subway. When the building was rebuilt in 1900 everything was concreted up down in the cellar,
1912 new York had finally committed to building a subway and workers cutting through one of the new subway paths for the city hall station accidentally came into Beach's Tunnel, and people had totally forgotten that it was even there.
[00:47:38] Rod: So literally like holy 30, 40 years later. And it might've been bizarre.
[00:47:42] Will: You're like, that's, I'm digging in this brand new subway and fuck me. There's already a Here's the old one station down there. It would've been just, yeah, just while all of the wooden fixtures had rotten rotted a bit, but the air was dry and warm and the tunnel was in good condition. Huh. The train was still sitting there on the tracks.
ready to go. You can't move it [00:48:00] out. So was the blower. So it was all of this stuff, ah, that's warm. Even in, even the tunneling boar was at the end there just waiting to dig more because who moved this stuff out? Yeah. Yeah. Today all of his tube is part of the city hall station. Okay. And there's apparently, or some people say yes, some people say no, a small plaque marking that it was there, but all of it was just dug out when they were doing the city hall station
one of the giants of America's mechanical age. And I truly think, you know, an amazing inventor who, yeah. I just love the idea that he was just like, just go and do it and we'll make it ourselves. And sneaky, as you said, there are many people now who are interested in the idea of pneumatic tubes. Yeah.
Elon Musk doing Hyperloop. But there's a whole bunch of different teams in a bunch of countries around the world, and there's total reasons for doing this. You can make, it's like a train type system. Yeah. That has total low pressure. And for efficiencies, you can move people around super fast.
You know, you hear stories of even in Beach's day they made a theory that you could get up to 700 miles an hour.
[00:48:55] Rod: Oh God. Underground.
[00:48:57] Will: Which I like the idea that 700 miles an hour with a carriage is Yeah. It's some sort, but theory stance. You certainly can get up to super high velocities. Yeah. And in some situations we could be moving transport people around like that.
[00:49:11] Rod: Yeah. It's weird. So it's another example of where we had this thing and then it either got lost or forgotten or some shit face who had vested capital interest shat on something,
[00:49:21] Will: I was thinking about this, you know, there were some people that were saying, oh, there's no way that pneumatic transport, like they could have made enough engines and stuff like that.
And I was like, yeah. I mean, obviously it looks wacky now it looks super naive that you could put people into a tube and that would've blow, you know, like a little carriage. Well, that's cool. But it's also, that was a prototype. And he built a working prototype that literally moved 22 people plus a carriage.
And so we're talking like a ton of material or something, moving it around. And if you develop any technology for 150 years, you can get a lot better than that. So, yeah. I kind of feel like, ah, this is such a missed [00:50:00] opportunity for a beautiful little thing that they were so close to getting.
[00:50:03] Rod: And another one, like what original cars? There, there were electric cars. Yeah, totally. Before there were freaking petrol cars. You're like, ah,
[00:50:09] Will: how did we take the wrong one? And you can blame Boss Tweed, but there's thousands of these boss tweeds Yep. That are just like, I've got a vested interest. Yep. All the time. And instead, you know, I think everything I read about Alfred Beach, he seems like a totally good person. He helped people.
[00:50:23] Rod: That was his flaw.
[00:50:24] Will: I know. He didn't bribe. He didn't bribe. He didn't wanna bribe Boss Tweed. And New York could have had a pneumatic subway, but did know.
[00:50:31] Rod: That's annoying.
[00:50:33] Will: There you go.
[00:50:33] Rod: Thanks for an annoying story, but no it's another one on the list. It's another one on the list of quitter, shoulda, but didn't cause of dick.
