1897 - Transportation

Transportation

U.S. railroads are subject to the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Law, says the Supreme Court March 22 in a 5-to-4 decision handed down in the Trans-Missouri Freight case, but the court nullifies the "long and short haul" clause of the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act November 8 in Interstate Commerce Commission v. Alabama Midland Railway.

German-born banker Otto (Hermann) Kahn, 29, joins with his Kuhn, Loeb partner Jacob H. (Henry) Schiff, 49, and speculator Edward H. (Henry) Harriman, 49, in reorganizing the bankrupt Union Pacific Railroad, pruning away unprofitable branch lines, and creating a simplified bond structure to replace the company's old tangle of debts (the Union Pacific will soon be able to buy control of Southern Pacific and a 40 percent interest in Northern Pacific) (see 1901).

Boston's Boylston Street subway line begins service September 1 between the Public Gardens and Park Street (see Budapest, 1896). The first U.S. subway line, it will be extended within a year to the 3-year-old North Station (see New York, 1904).

Trolley service begins across New York's 14-year-old Brooklyn Bridge.

Chicago's "Loop" elevated train service begins October 3 (see 1886). Promoter Charles T. Yerkes has bribed aldermen to let him run his elevated structures right down the middle of streets; now 60, he will sell his Chicago interests in 1899, move to London in 1900, and take over the syndicate that built the London Underground system that began service in 1890. The South Side Elevated Railway employs the first "multiple-unit" system, invented by Richmond trolley-car pioneer Frank J. Sprague to control trains whose cars each have their own motors and do not have to be pulled by a locomotive; this not only eliminates slipping of locomotive driving wheels when trains start up but also assures rapid acceleration and permits long trains to operate at high speeds. A master switch in any car enables an engineer to control all the cars in the train, and Sprague organizes the Sprague Electric Company to develop the system (see New York subway, 1904).

Sleeping-car inventor George M. Pullman dies at Chicago October 19 at age 66, leaving $1 million to found a free manual-training school at his company town, Pullman. He has been embittered by the criticism of his treatment of labor in 1893 and 1894; by the early 1900s some 100,000 passengers will be sleeping each night in Pullman-car berths, and the Pullman Palace Car Company will be the largest U.S. employer of black men (Pullman has had a reputation for selecting the blackest men with the whitest smiles to serve passengers as porters and waiters; see porters, 1915).

A new steel arch railroad bridge completed across the Niagara River Gorge replaces earlier suspension bridges and will remain in use into the 21st century. Engineer Leffert Lefferts Buck has designed the span, having earlier supervised renovation of the Roebling bridge that opened in 1855.

A projected Cape Town-to-Cairo Railroad reaches Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia November 4.

The Oldsmobile motorcar has its beginnings in the Olds Motor Vehicle Company founded August 21 at Lansing, Michigan, by Ransom E. Olds, 34, and a group of investors. Olds will soon start producing cars at Detroit (see 1901).

Bicycle maker Albert A. Pope switches to motorcar production (see 1896; Pope-Tribune, 1904).

Scottish-born bicycle maker Alexander Winton, 37, at Cleveland builds the first large U.S. automobiles, organizes Winton Motor Carriage Company, and drives one of his cars 800 miles over dirt roads to New York. He will have a patent for his vehicle by the end of next year and will have sold nearly 30 cars.

Total U.S. auto production rises to 100 vehicles, up from 25 last year (see 1898).

The 33-year-old Travelers Insurance Company of Hartford, Connecticut, writes the first automobile insurance policy.

The Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland that will be renamed the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) in 1907 is founded at London by Frederick H. Simms, whose Motor-Car Club has become a mouthpiece for promoter Harry J. Lawson. Popularity of the motorcar has grown, but Britain has some 400,000 horse-drawn carriages, and every large town has at least one coachbuilder. The new club encourages motoring and will offer assistance to motorists (see AAA, 1902)

Engineer Octave Chanute obtains fresh capital for his aeronautical experiments from Elmira banker Matthias Arnot and sends some assistants on further glider flights in the dunes of Lake Michigan (see 1896; Wright brothers, 1903).

The first vessel to be propelled by a steam turbine attains a speed of 34.5 knots (see Parsons, 1884). Such speeds have been impossible with piston-engined ships, whose engines were subject to severe damage if driven too hard, but the Parsons turbine uses only rotating parts in place of reciprocating engines; a jet of steam turns blades inside a rotating cylinder to drive multiple propellers on the experimental yacht Turbinia, which makes its way at dazzling speeds through fleets of international navies assembled for Queen Victoria's Jubilee, making it clear to knowledgeable Navy officers that turbine-driven ships can be lighter, faster, lower in profile (presenting less visible targets), and will make piston-driven ships obsolete (see politics [Dreadnought], 1906). When the Cunard Line builds the 650-foot Caronia and Carmania for service on the transatlantic crossing it will find that the Carmania, fitted with a steam-turbine engine, is nearly a full knot faster than the Caronia, which has been fitted with quadruple-expansion piston engines (see R.M.S. Mauretania, 1907).

The Argonaut designed by Pleasantville, New Jersey-born naval architect Simon Lake, 31, is the first submarine to operate successfully in open waters (see politics [Bushnell], 1776; Holland, 1900).

The full-rigged, five-masted "tall ship" Preussen launched by the 69-year-old Hamburg maritime transport company F. Laeisz begins an era of windjammers. Few British shipowners have recognized the value of the Jarvis winch patented in 1891, but founder's son Carl Heinrich Laeisz, now 69, puts it to the test on the steel-hulled Preussen, whose sails are smaller than those on earlier sailing ships (its topgallant has been divided into an upper topgallant and a lower topgallant, and there is no studding sail). Laeisz finds that the winch not only saves labor but also makes it safer for the men who handle a square-rigger's braces, since they can operate from the middle of the ship instead of from her sides. Windjammers will average 300 feet in length (a clipper ship measured only 150) and will sometimes reach 400 feet, their masts will be three feet in diameter at the base and soar as high as 200 feet, they will have as many as 34 sails with an area of nearly 45,000 square feet, the larger sails will weigh as much as a ton when dry, and the ships will carry cargoes of up to 8,000 tons. Before his death in 1901 Laeisz will install the Jarvis winch on every vessel in his fleet, using windjammers thus equipped to carry nitrates around Cape Horn from Chile (see grain race, 1939).