Amazing feat. Yet it's not the first time that I've also felt bitterness pondering such past achievements.
I can't escape the feeling that we used to be so much bolder and unconstrained in setting goals for ourselves and actually pursuing them. I feel like 1900 people would have fixed global warming, unaffordable housing, universal healthcare etc.
Engineers in the 19th century would be amazed that we can build mechanisms with thousands of moving parts — functions, classes, packages — just by typing on a keyboard. Not only that but they also spin around in the order of millions to billions of times a second and every computer in the world can talk to any other computer. Most of these machines are the size of a bar of chocolate and a huge amount of the software is given away for free in an ecosystem of OSS, applications, and programming languages thriving on competition.
I see your point about a lack of modern day gumption in the physical world but I sleep at night knowing that what we do with software more than makes up for it.
People in 1900 effectively had two world wars that lead to a massive number of deaths, thinking it was some golden age of unlimited accomplishment without terrible costs would be a mistake.
If we combined 1900 attitudes toward health and safety and 2000 birth rates, we might fix global warming and ecological damage (by drastically reducing the number of us).
Didn't say they were perfect, but when it comes to the speed of scientific and technological progress, nothing beats the late 19th- mid 20th century era.
If anything, the fact that they could keep the economy and innovation going while a large portion of the population was fighting a war makes it even more impressive.
My great grandparents fled Mussolini's Italy, despite the trains running on time. And I daresay, many if not all of our environmental problems are due to the bold and unconstrained development of technology.
I think this is accurate, a cynical comment mentioned the two wars, but more practically, those wars and pandemics killed a lot of people, ending design trends before they could take hold. people from all walks of life as both civilians and military patriots and conscripts, from so many countries across Europe all at once
cities that werent firebombed were on somebody’s list to firebomb. Vienna could have met the same fate as Dresden, Dresden could have the charm of a Vienna or Paris. when you put it in perspective there are plenty more trends that are just lost through that dark age.
there are a lot of things from the 1890s to 1910s that I think would be appreciated today if people knew of them.
This is somewhat still this way in China, as we can see in architecture and infrastructure projects that are often bold, ambitious, and which happen rather quickly once decided.
In Europe, especially, it is very difficult nowadays for good and bad reasons.
Note, though, that this was for a temporary exhibition so being bold and forward-looking, with a level of showing off, what the whole point.
And all kinds of mayhem is being done in Paris these years, in the name of the next Olympic games. Also a show-off event as a pretext to accelerated large changes.
i drive on the interstate highway system way more than i like, and i'm often struck with the thought that, if we didn't have our interstate highway system now, we wouldn't build one.
Rail network too. We should have high speed rail all over the country - instead, witness e.g. the molasses-speed design and construction of the California High Speed Rail project.
> fixed global warming
Sir, the correct term du jour is "climate emergency". "warming" is not to be used anymore since expected natural developments started to contradict the yearly proclamations made by Gore et al.
Well this is actually still very common in Paris!
A number of subway stations have adopted them for long corridors connecting platforms of different lines within the same station.
They move people at 4km/h on average, but the one in Montparnasse station goes up to 9km/h (used to be 11!).
They’re mighty useful to hurried Parisian commuters.
I was especially impressed to see that this was rolled out on an entire 3.5km-long loop, rather than some small localized attraction.
It's interesting not just because of the engineering that was done, but because it shows what 1900 people thought "the future" would be like. I'm guessing they expected moving sidewalks to become common around cities by now.
I suspect the scale was necessary because the mechanism only works as a loop, and only allows limited curvature unless you make it a perfect circle, in which case it's just a rotating platform.
Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll" posits a network of very fast, very long moving walkways which could be used for mass transit (you'd ramp up speed on slower ones then hop over to a fast one). Wikipedia says that moving walkways had been in sf for decades by that point, but Heinlein also almost incidentally invents the Segway in the story -- just a little treat.
I love peoplemovers (like the Hong Kong Central-Mid Level escalators and the delightfully bouncy SFO walkways) and always wondered what would have to be different for us to get super-fast ones for transit.
In Boston, IMO they would be at least as good as the Green Line :)
Moving walkways have a big power efficiency problem over a distance. While you can make a train track longer without decreasing the efficiency of the train, a moving walkway has to move that whole walkway. Can you imagine the friction on a 10 mile long moving walkway? You would need massive motors just to budge it.
If, like in the design seen here, the slide movement and propulsion is decoupled, and motors add impulse to the platforms at constant intervals, doesn't sound like that would be a problem. These wood platforms must have weighed tons by the way.
Mid level escalators have a very definite purpose as people wouldn't walk up that steep slope before.
Moving walkways along flat surfaces though? Its very hard to make them attractive. Most people like to walk a little, certainly we are built for it genetically and most people don't walk as much as they should in any case. In terms of mass transit nobody has ever got the safety and space issues to work. They only really have tended to work in airports where there are sometimes very large distances to traverse, and you need an (actually pretty slow moving for safety) solution for the elderly etc. who aren't as mobile. Even at an airport unless distances are massive and people have giant luggage most will prefer to walk, or only take the moving walkway for novelty value.
People would walk more if they could get to where they were going fast. If you could walk to the store as quickly as you could drive, why would you get in the car? No traffic jams on a sidewalk.
I'd never heard of the mid-level escalators before. Apparently they're on a slope with an elevation gain of 135m over 800m, which is pretty serious for someone who's out to do some shopping: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central%E2%80%93Mid-Levels_e...
Just from my rusty memory, the roads were after the Crazy Years and before the Prophet. So yes, before the theocracy.
EDIT: I found a link to the chart.
I seem to recall this is also a thing in "the city and the stars" by Clarke (1956), including the fact that it's faster towards the middle. I imagined a river of asphalt and it was kinda cool.
I love the concept of moving walkways on large airports and always wondered why there are non with multiple speeds like this one. Is it a security aspect?
There is however an accelerating one at YYZ in Toronto [0].
« Le TRR fonctionna d'abord à la vitesse de 11 km/h (3 m/s), mais en raison de fréquentes chutes de voyageurs et de divers accidents, la vitesse fut réduite à 9 km/h (2,5 m/s) »
From your Wikipedia page, it says it initially went at 11 km/h but was reduced to 9 km/h because of “frequent falls of passengers and various accidents”.
I've walked on the ones at Toronto Pearson before. I was a bit surprised the first time that it wasn't moving at full speed like I expected when I stepped on, but after that the second time I knew what to expect and it worked well.
I actually found it better when disembarking because it gives a better transition to the stationary surface when stepping off.
Anybody here go through the DFW airport about 20 years ago? That airport has had moving walkways for 30+ years that I’m aware of.
In 200X, there was an IR sensor at the end of each walkway that would trigger a male voiceover warning about the end of the “moving walk”.
There was a Starbucks in one of the terminals, right at a dogleg where a section of the walk ended. I had to listen to that announcement fifty to 100 times in a dozen or so minutes, and between recording, playback, and audio compression quality, my partner and I both swore he was saying “the wooing walk”. Like a ventriloquist trying to not get caught subbing out consonants - and failing. The Wooing/Mooing Walk was a running joke the rest of our relationship.
Hubs for sure, and for quite some time. The ones in DFW in ‘94 seemed to have been there for some time. The inclined ones in Charles de Gaul are just bizarre.
All I recall from the first hub I remember, Denver (85?) was the water stains on the ceiling tiles. I feel like moving walks would have been novel to me but I have no memory of them.
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I can't escape the feeling that we used to be so much bolder and unconstrained in setting goals for ourselves and actually pursuing them. I feel like 1900 people would have fixed global warming, unaffordable housing, universal healthcare etc.
I see your point about a lack of modern day gumption in the physical world but I sleep at night knowing that what we do with software more than makes up for it.
Would they?
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/a-19th-century-vis...
cities that werent firebombed were on somebody’s list to firebomb. Vienna could have met the same fate as Dresden, Dresden could have the charm of a Vienna or Paris. when you put it in perspective there are plenty more trends that are just lost through that dark age.
there are a lot of things from the 1890s to 1910s that I think would be appreciated today if people knew of them.
In Europe, especially, it is very difficult nowadays for good and bad reasons.
Note, though, that this was for a temporary exhibition so being bold and forward-looking, with a level of showing off, what the whole point.
They had a chance to (both were huge problems at the time), they decided to spend massive amounts of resources killing each other instead..
1940s and 50s people on the other hand had a fairly decent run at it.
https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trottoir_roulant_rapide
It's interesting not just because of the engineering that was done, but because it shows what 1900 people thought "the future" would be like. I'm guessing they expected moving sidewalks to become common around cities by now.
Mass production of cars changed many things and directions.
I love peoplemovers (like the Hong Kong Central-Mid Level escalators and the delightfully bouncy SFO walkways) and always wondered what would have to be different for us to get super-fast ones for transit.
In Boston, IMO they would be at least as good as the Green Line :)
In his version there were multiple levels of speed for entry/exit of transit so the main highways were going really fast.
IIRC it required some dexterity to use and sounded a bit dangerous...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternoster_lift
And for my dumb idea of the day: 'just' use solar panels as the walking surface as use that to power the slidewalk.
Moving walkways along flat surfaces though? Its very hard to make them attractive. Most people like to walk a little, certainly we are built for it genetically and most people don't walk as much as they should in any case. In terms of mass transit nobody has ever got the safety and space issues to work. They only really have tended to work in airports where there are sometimes very large distances to traverse, and you need an (actually pretty slow moving for safety) solution for the elderly etc. who aren't as mobile. Even at an airport unless distances are massive and people have giant luggage most will prefer to walk, or only take the moving walkway for novelty value.
Asking for a friend.
http://templetongate.net/graphics/literature/fhchartlarge.gi...
Yeah, but the E line down South Huntington would be downright perilous :-D
YouTube has a couple more of them
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjpCVQgKZsc
Here's also an AI-upscaled/-colorized video which contains a bit of the boardwalk.
https://youtu.be/fo_eZuOTBNc?t=297
There is however an accelerating one at YYZ in Toronto [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway#ThyssenKrupp_AC...
From your Wikipedia page, it says it initially went at 11 km/h but was reduced to 9 km/h because of “frequent falls of passengers and various accidents”.
A real bummer, especially since it seems I have to traverse those passageways every time I return from the US or Europe.
I actually found it better when disembarking because it gives a better transition to the stationary surface when stepping off.
In 200X, there was an IR sensor at the end of each walkway that would trigger a male voiceover warning about the end of the “moving walk”.
There was a Starbucks in one of the terminals, right at a dogleg where a section of the walk ended. I had to listen to that announcement fifty to 100 times in a dozen or so minutes, and between recording, playback, and audio compression quality, my partner and I both swore he was saying “the wooing walk”. Like a ventriloquist trying to not get caught subbing out consonants - and failing. The Wooing/Mooing Walk was a running joke the rest of our relationship.
All I recall from the first hub I remember, Denver (85?) was the water stains on the ceiling tiles. I feel like moving walks would have been novel to me but I have no memory of them.