Alfred Ely Beach
Alfred Ely Beach (born September 1, 1826 in Springfield (Massachusetts) , † January 1, 1896 in New York City ) was an American inventor , publisher and patent attorney . He edited Scientific American magazine. He also developed the Beach Pneumatic Transit . It was the first (unsuccessful) attempt to build a subway in New York .
biography
Beach initially worked at his father's Moses Yale Beach publishing house. In 1846 he and his partner Orson D. Munn acquired the popular science journal Scientific American, founded the year before by Rufus Porter . Both published the magazine for the rest of their lives. Their descendants continued this tradition until 1948. Munn and Beach also set up a successful patent agency . Beach patented some of his inventions, including a forerunner of today's blind typewriter . After the Civil War , he ran the Beach Institute in Savannah, a school for freed slaves that is now the seat of the King-Tisdell Cottage Foundation.
In order to relieve Broadway from the steadily increasing volume of traffic, Beach proposed the construction of a subway. In contrast to others, he preferred pneumatics as a drive, not steam locomotives , as they were successfully used on the Metropolitan Railway in London, which opened in 1863 . After receiving a concession from New York State in 1869, he began building a 95-meter-long pneumatic tube under Broadway, between Warren Street and Murray Street.
During the construction work, he decided without further ado to set up a demonstration route for passenger transport instead of a pneumatic tube. The Beach Pneumatic Transit opened on February 26, 1870. Beach planned to extend the tunnel and turn it into a real subway. But political resistance and an economic crisis forced him to give up the project in 1874. In addition, the inherently comfortable principle of locomotion turned out to be impractical and technically too complex. The tunnel was forgotten and was finally destroyed in 1912 when the BMT Broadway Line was built .
Beach died of pneumonia on New Year's Day 1896 at the age of 69.
Web links
- Beach Pneumatic Transit - Article by Joseph Brennan
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Beach, Alfred Ely |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American inventor, publisher and patent attorney |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 1, 1826 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Springfield, Massachusetts |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 1, 1896 |
| Place of death | New York City |