Latest / History Unplugged Podcast
An Inventor’s Quest to Build a Pneumatic Subway System in 1870s New York
Alfred Beach built America’s first operational subway in secret beneath 1860s Manhattan, decades before the city’s official electric subway line in 1904. He designed and commissioned a 300-foot-long, eight-foot-diameter tunnel 20 feet underground, built with a tunneling machine he invented for this purpose. The car moved quietly and silently, pushed by a 50-ton, steam-powered fan nicknamed "the Western Tornado," which pushed and pulled the single subway car through its sealed tube.
Beach envisioned a clean, quiet pneumatic railway that would shoot passengers up and down Broadway…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.