1912 | Transportation
Transportation
Henry M. Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway opens January 21 to link New York with Key West, Florida, the closest deep-water port to the Panama Canal now under construction. Some 3,000 men have worked for 7 years to complete the 153-mile rail link from the mainland to Florida's largest city; Flagler and his third wife, Mary Lily, are on the train that arrives at 10:43 in the morning of January 22; he has paid close $50 million for its construction; yellow fever has killed hundreds of men; a hurricane in 1906 took 125 lives, and hurricanes will destroy the line in 1926 and 1935.
Brazil's Madeira-Mamoré Railway opens July 15 after less than 5 years of construction that has cost at least 3,600 lives (6,000 by some accounts) and $33 million U.S., the equivalent of three tons of gold. Rubber barons have financed the 367-mile road to circumvent 19 major waterfalls. The road permits resumption of Bolivian rubber shipments, but malaria, yellow fever, beriberi, snake bites, wild animals, and curare-tipped arrows from hostile natives have taken a heavy toll, and the Amazon Basin rubber boom will soon collapse as East Indian and African plantations undercut the price of wild rubber, making the railroad uneconomic (although it will continue to operate until 1972).
Automatic railcar coupler inventor Eli H. Janney dies at Alexandria, Virginia, June 16 at age 80.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules December 2 that a merger of the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads violates the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and must be dissolved.
The Spanish steamship Principe de Asturias strikes a rock off Sebastien Point March 5; some 500 passengers and crewmen are drowned.
R.M.S. Titanic of the White Star Line scrapes an iceberg in the North Atlantic on her maiden voyage, her hull is punctured, and she sinks in 2½ hours on the night of April 14, going down 12,200 feet into the icy waters 375 miles southeast of Newfoundland. Built at a cost of $10 million, the three-screw passenger liner displaced 46,329 tons and was 883 feet in length overall, making it the world's largest passenger liner and the largest moving object ever made by man, although her operating speed of 21 knots made her slower than the Cunard Line's R.M.S. Mauretania. The Titanic was outfitted with a Turkish bath, a squash court, and the first heated swimming pool aboard any vessel. She was called "unsinkable" when she left port April 10, but her wreck will be discovered in 1985, scattered across a square mile of sea bottom, and it will later be found that the rivets in her steel hull contained too much sulfur and were brittle. She had a capacity of 1,343 passengers, 885 in crew, but only 711 of the 2,224 aboard survive, including 60 percent of first-cabin passengers, 44 percent of second-cabin, and just 25 percent of steerage passengers. There was never a lifeboat drill, the Titanic's lifeboats had enough places for only about half the people aboard (French law requires that every ship carry enough boats for all on board with food and water stored in each boat), many were launched when less than half full (the first six carried only 192 people when they could have carried 390), the total number of empty lifeboat seats was at least 500, and despite hearing moans and cries for help the women in the boats did not insist after the ship went down that they return to look for life-jacketed survivors in the numbingly cold water. While 31 percent of first-cabin men survive (a higher percentage than among children in the third class), only 10 percent of men in second class and 14 percent of men in steerage come out alive. The S.S. Carpathia arrives within 7 hours to pick up survivors, who include White Star managing director J. Bruce Ismay (he will claim he entered the last boat when no other passengers responded to the call).
The Cunard Line's R.M.S. Mauretania arrives at New York April 19, having taken longer than planned because her captain chose a less direct course in order to avoid ice in the North Atlantic; the Carpathia leaves that day to resume her voyage to the Mediterranean.
Furness, Withy & Co. cofounder Sir Christopher Furness, Lord Furness of Grantley, dies at London November 10 at age 60.
German-born engineer Grover Loening, 24, designs and builds the world's first amphibious aircraft. He graduated 2 years ago from Columbia University with the first U.S. master's degree in aeronautics and his "aeroboat" brings him to the attention of Orville Wright, who will hire him next year as his assistant and manager of Wright Aircraft's Dayton, Ohio, factory.
Dutch aircraft designer A. H. G. (Anthony Herman Gerard) Fokker, 22, introduces the Fokker aeroplane, opens a factory at Johannesthal, Germany, and will build another next year at Schwerin (see 1916; 1922).
English aeronaut T. O. M. (Thomas Octave Murdoch) Sopwith, 24, founds Sopwith Aviation at Kingston-on-Thames (see Sopwith Camel, 1914; Hawker, 1921).
Aviation pioneer Wilbur Wright dies of typhoid fever at Dayton, Ohio, May 30 at age 45; French aviator Hubert Latham is killed by a buffalo June 7 at age 28 while hunting in Sudan.
Bendix Brake Co. is founded by Vincent Bendix, who has begun production of his Bendix starter drive (see 1907). His new firm will be the first mass producer of four-wheel brakes for motorcars (see Bendix Aviation, 1929).
The first modern electric traffic light is installed at Salt Lake City, where the head of the local police department's traffic detail has devised the light (see Cleveland, 1914).
Buick Division chief Charles W. (William) Nash, 48, becomes president of General Motors and brings in American Locomotive Works manager Walter P. (Percy) Chrysler, 37, to head Buick (see Durant, 1910). A railroad man's son, the Kansas-born Chrysler was a crack locomotive repairman in his youth and spent nearly 20 years in railroading, becoming a hard-driving boss as well as one of the boys, but he will make his fortune and reputation in the motorcar business (see 1923).
Seven companies produce half of all U.S. automobiles (see 1923) More than 22 percent of the cars are Fords, which come out of Ford factories at the rate of 26,000 per month (see 1911; assembly line, 1913).
Britain's Morris Oxford motorcar is introduced by former bicycle repairman William R. (Richard) Morris, 35, of Cowley and will continue production until 1984, rivaling Austin in popularity. Morris is the first British manufacturer to employ mass production that makes motorcars cheap enough for working-class people (see MG, 1929; Nuffield Foundation, 1943).
The Nissan automobile has its beginnings in the Kaishinsha Motor Car Works founded at Tokyo. The company will produce its first vehicle in 1917, merge in 1926 with Jitsuyojidosha Seizo of Osaka, make only trucks until 1930, and enter the U.S. market in 1960 under the name Datsun.