Lost to Time

by Martin W. Sandler

  ALFRED ELY BEACH.

  Although he was only nineteen years old, Beach had ambitious plans for the publication. Aware that the nation was in the midst of an unprecedented technological and scientific revolution, he was determined to make the magazine the printed voice of the remarkable changes that were taking place. The fact that Beach increased the magazine’s focus on descriptions of new inventions and newly applied-for patents ensured the success of the magazine and led to a whole new business avenue for the young entrepreneur. As the magazine became increasingly popular, inventors and tinkerers began appearing at Scientific American’s office, seeking advice about obtaining patents for their creations. Sensing a real opportunity, Beach and Munn established Munn and Co., also known as the Scientific American Patent Agency, a company devoted both to helping inventors compose their patent applications as effectively as possible and to monitoring the progress of each application once it was being processed by the U.S. Patent Office.

  THE FRONT PAGE of volume 14 of Scientific American, April 16, 1859, depicts an illustration of the Scientific American Patent Agency building.

  It was a unique business, and it became so successful that by the late 1850s more than three thousand patents were being filed by Beach’s company each year. Ten years later, more than a third of all the patents awarded in the United States had been submitted by the Scientific American Patent Agency, which, by this time, had opened branches in other locations, including one in Washington, D.C., directly across from the U.S. Patent Office.

  It is not surprising that Beach became an inventor himself, given that he was constantly surrounded by inventors, their creations, and their patent applications. Beach’s agency filed patents for his own inventions, including a patent for the world’s first cable railway system and another for a machine by which blind persons could create printed messages. Although Beach never followed up on these inventions, the cable systems later built in San Francisco and Chicago were based on his design, and his invention of a printing machine for the blind led directly to the development of the modern typewriter. And that was not all. He had become fascinated with the power of pneumatic tubes, particularly what he saw as their potential for transportation.

  Still, with all that he had achieved, Beach was a dissatisfied man. There had to be a way, he believed, to solve New York’s disastrous traffic problem. His first idea was to build elevated railways above the city, thus relieving the congested streets below. But as he thought through this idea more fully, he backed away from it. Elevated railways would make the streets below them dark and uninviting. They would be as noisy as the omnibuses that clogged the streets. Most important, they would not be able to carry enough people to provide a real solution.

  No, he told himself, the answer lay elsewhere. It had to be something far more dramatic, far more effective. And increasingly he became convinced that he had the solution. It had to be a subway, an underground system that could move people away from all the congestion, noise, and health hazards. Subways weren’t a completely new concept. The London subway, built in 1863, had already transported millions of people. But that system, based on locomotives pulling the cars, had proved terribly problematic. The locomotives gave off noxious fumes that had already made a number of people seriously ill. In addition, locomotives, which burned a low grade of coal, also gave off showers of sparks, and more than one passenger had had his clothing set afire. If a subway was the answer, then there had to be a much better way to propel the cars. And it had to be totally safe and totally clean.

  He found his answer in work he had already done. In his fascination with pneumatics, Beach had spent considerable time reading about pneumatic railways that had been built in England to carry mail and small packages. He had been particularly impressed with the accomplishments of British engineer Thomas Rammell, who, in 1863, had constructed an underground pneumatic tube through which mail had been successfully transported. Sadly for Rammell, his system—which ran in Camden, London, between an arrivals parcel office and a district post office several miles away—proved too costly to be profitable and was eventually abandoned. But what impressed Beach the most about Rammell’s primitive operation was not that it worked, but that several people had actually snuck aboard Rammell’s cars and had safely made the journey, propelled by air through the underground tube.

  He had become even more intrigued when he had read about how Rammell had built a small aboveground tube designed to carry passengers for about a quarter of a mile between two of the gates at London’s great Crystal Palace Exhibition. Particularly interesting was a report on Rammell’s tube that had appeared in Mechanics Magazine in 1864. “The entire distance [of the tunnel], six hundred yards,” the publication proclaimed, “is transversed in about 50 seconds . . . The motion is of course easy and pleasant, and the ventilation ample, without being in any way excessive. . . . We feel tolerably certain that the day is not very distant when metropolitan railway traffic can be conducted on this principle with so much success, as far as popular likeing goes, that the locomotive will be unknown on the underground lines.”

  If there was anyone with whom that prediction would resonate, it was Beach. But he also knew that it was a prophecy that lacked details of how such a system could be made practical. First of all, there was the not so incidental challenge of building a tunnel, not under the open grounds of Crystal Palace Park, but under one of the busiest streets in the world. And Beach realized that another problem would have to be faced. How do you motivate city dwellers to descend into an ill-lit, spooky underground world to get on trains?

  But the more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that a pneumatic subway was the only answer. One thing he knew for certain. Even in operating the first-stage experimental short line he was intending to build, he would need the biggest fan he could obtain to propel his cars with air and the largest steam engine available to most effectively power the fan.

  After weeks of investigation, he discovered a company in Indiana that made a machine that was used in ventilating mines. In describing the machine (which he called an æolor after the Greek god of wind, Æolus), Beach later wrote, “[It] is by far the largest machine of the kind ever made. . . . [It] weighs fifty tons, or rather more than a common locomotive engine. The æolor is to the pneumatic railway what the locomotive is to the ordinary steam railroad. The locomotive supplies the power to draw the car; the æolor gives motive force to the air by which the pneumatic car is moved. The æolor is capable of discharging over one hundred thousand cubic feet of air per minute, a volume equal in bulk to the contents of three ordinary three story dwelling houses.” No wonder that workers in the factory that made the machine gave it the nickname the “Western Tornado.”

  With his giant “blower,” Beach now believed he had the machinery to power his unique subway. But he was well aware that in order to impress the New York legislature, the press, and the public, he would have to go a giant step further. He had to attract riders by making the subway as appealing and comfortable as possible. Beach began by designing a subway car equipped with one of the new marvels of the age, zircon lights, which burned clearer and far brighter than ordinary gaslights. His design called for the car to be fitted with the richest, most comfortable upholstery available and a sturdy pneumatically sealing airtight door. Then he was struck with a truly inspired idea.

  Realizing that his subway needed a waiting room, and that the waiting room was where passengers would form their first vital impressions of the subway, Beach laid out plans for a 120-by-14-foot room that would be as elegant as the finest room in the most expensive New York hotel. Its features included a crystal chandelier, fine paintings, a grand piano, and a huge fountain filled with goldfish—all beneath the city. Nothing like it had even been imagined.

  But would it all work? Beach was absolutely convinced that it would. In fact, now that he was convinced he had worked out the details, it was, to him, a most uncomplicated idea. What could be simpler, he later explained, t
han a system by which the blower propelled his car from one end of his tunnel to the other “like a sail-boat before the wind?” What could be more easily imagined than that the blower would then reverse the airflow, sucking the car back to where it had begun “like soda through a straw?” In what would become a phrase he would use over and over again, Beach would declare, “A tube, a car, a revolving fan. Little more is required.”

  It was an understatement, of course. Much more was, in fact, required. First he had to publicly demonstrate that his idea would work. Then he had to convince the New York legislature to give him a license to build an experimental line. And should all that be accomplished, there was the small matter of building a tunnel under New York’s busiest street.

  BEACH GOT HIS OPPORTUNITY TO demonstrate the pneumatic tube transport when he learned that the annual highly attended American Institute Fair was to be held on September 17, 1867, in New York. Here was his opportunity to introduce America to the wonders of pneumatic transportation, his opportunity to get the license he needed to make his vision a reality. Over the weeks leading to the fair, he had workers build a 107-foot-long, 16-foot-wide tube. Then he built a car designed to carry ten passengers through this demonstration “tunnel.” He provided pneumatic power for the cars by acquiring a fan powerful enough to serve his purposes. Finally, he had the tube hung by huge cables suspended from the armory’s ceiling. For the next six weeks, more than 170,000 amazed and delighted men, women, and children rode in Beach’s cars. By the time the fair ended, both the public and press agreed that the “subway” was the event’s most spectacular feature. Most important to Beach were the articles in the press that confirmed his belief that the subway was not a mere novelty but the answer to the city’s transportation nightmare. The New York Times of September 16, 1871, extolled the invention:

  TOURISTS EXPERIENCE THE Pneumatic Passenger Railway at the American Institute Fair in New York, 1867.

  It is . . . estimated that passengers by a through city tube could be carried from City Hall to Madison Square in five minutes, to Harlem and Manhattanville in fourteen minutes, and by sub-river to Jersey City or Hoboken in five minutes, and to the City Hall, Brooklyn in two minutes. . . .

  Leaving to the imaginations of our accomplished readers the pleasant labor of converting, with all the material here afforded them, our confused and crowded city, with its no less crowded water boundaries, into a terrestrial paradise, where easy locomotion on land, on water, beneath them both, or in the air, can be enjoyed at will, we close this article, hoping, with them, that out of this great field of promise we may some day soon pluck flowers of comfort.

  Many of the newspaper reports noted that Beach had not only built a tube for carrying passengers but had also, as part of his demonstration of the potential of pneumatic transportation, hung a smaller companion tube through which letters and packages were transported. When the fair finally ended, Alfred Beach’s triumph was complete. Almost without hesitation the exposition’s officials awarded him their two top prizes—one for his pneumatic passenger railway, the other for what he called his Postal Dispatch.

  It was, of course, a great victory. But Beach knew all too well that many obstacles still lay ahead. He had to dig an enormous tunnel. And even before he could begin that daunting project, he had to obtain a charter from both city and state officials. And he was cognizant of the fact that in New York City, this meant getting approval from a man who not only controlled the city, but also may well have been the most corrupt public official that New York or any other American city had ever witnessed.

  Standing six feet tall and weighing more than three hundred pounds, William Marcy “Boss” Tweed stood out in every crowd. A man of enormous appetites, his main desire was for money. Tweed entered New York politics as a city alderman in 1852. From that time on, this son of a Scotch-Irish chair maker pursued positions of increasing power as a means to wealth. At one time or another he was a U.S. congressman (1853–55), New York school commissioner (1856–57), member of the board of supervisors for New York County (1858), deputy street commissioner (1861–70), state senator (1867 and 1869), and commissioner of the Department of Public Works (1870). Every one of this staggering array of positions provided Tweed the opportunity to demand enormous bribes and to elicit huge payments for services he never performed. As head of a Democratic political machine in New York known as Tammany Hall, he was able to surround himself with men as dishonest as he was. Their crowning achievement was the way they managed to artificially inflate the cost of the construction of what was formally named the New York County Courthouse, but what came to be commonly called Tweed Courthouse. The building, which in 1858 was originally budgeted at 250,000, eventually cost taxpayers what has been estimated to be as much as 12 million—a good portion of which went into Tweed’s pockets.

  Some historians have estimated that, expressed in today’s currency, Tweed stole between 1.5 billion and 8 billion, making it no surprise that he was one of the wealthiest men in America. As Beach prepared to apply for his charter, Tweed’s holdings included several homes, including a New York City mansion and a large Connecticut country estate, two steam yachts, a private railway car, one of the city’s largest printing houses, and one of its most lavish hotels. Among the possessions for which he was best known was the enormous diamond pin without which he was never seen, an ornament that, according to one of his cronies, he wore “like a planet on his shirt front.”

  AN UNDATED PHOTOGRAPH of William Marcy “Boss” Tweed.

  Beach was well aware of both Tweed’s power and his character. What troubled him most was the fact that the omnibus and horse-car companies were among the businesses that kicked back money to Tweed. Tweed, he realized, would never approve of a transportation system that might well put these companies out of business unless he was paid a record bribe, probably a large percentage of whatever profits the subway earned. This was something that Beach could not abide. He would have to come up with a plan every bit as creative as the one that had taken his dream of a subway this far.

  He came up with a bold idea. Since Tweed was certain to block any plan to build a subway for carrying passengers, he would apply for a charter for the construction of an underground railway for the sole purpose of delivering mail and parcels. Once he secured his charter, he would build a passenger subway, an underground system so efficient, so safe, so comfortable, and so responsive to the city’s greatest need that once it was revealed, even the mighty Boss Tweed would not be able to prevent the legislature from granting his ultimate goal: a charter to extend the subway throughout New York City.

  His application to the legislature asking for permission to build two small mail delivery underground tubes was quickly approved. Even Tweed saw no threat to his interests in a mail delivery system. Once the license was granted, however, Beach put the second part of his plan in motion, asking permission to build a larger single tube to enclose the two smaller ones, which he claimed would make his mail delivery operation more efficient. This application was approved in May 1869, with Tweed seeing no reason to oppose it.

  Now came the biggest challenge of all: not only building a subway that would be so impressive that officials would overlook his deception, but also building it without anyone finding out that it was really a passenger system until it was completed. The nation’s first subway was about to be built in secret.

  THIS ILLUSTRATION OF ENGINNERS working at night on Beach’s tunnel accompanied an article about the subway in the February 19, 1870, issue of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.

  LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE WITH WHICH he had been involved, Beach had planned well. His first step, back in December 1868, had been to rent one of the largest department stores on Broadway. The building had not one but two large basement levels. It fit Beach’s scheme perfectly. His tunnel would be dug only at night, when there would be much less traffic overhead to detect what might be going on underneath. As they dug the tunnel, the workmen would pile the dirt in the basements.
Then in the darkest hours of the morning, the dirt would be carted away in wagons with muffled wheels and dumped in New York’s East River.

  It was an inspired plan, but the greatest challenge of actually digging the tunnel remained. Long before he had applied for his charter, Beach had begun to address the problem. First, improving upon a design that had its origins in 1818 and one that was used by English engineer Marc Isambard Brumel in building the Thames tunnel in 1825, Beach built his own tunneling machine. He called it a hydraulic shield. Open at both ends and cylindrical in shape, it looked like an open-ended barrel. A hand pump within the machine exerted a pressure of some 126 tons, which kept the device stable while moving it forward, allowing the series of rams at the front to dig eight feet of the tunnel each night. Beach saw to it that as each portion of the tunnel was dug, workmen, following the shield, bricked the walls of the portion that had been completed.

  A FRANK LESLIE’S ILLUSTRATION of workmen advancing the shield and bricking the tunnel walls.

  For a man who had never seen a tunnel dug, let alone staked his dream on building one successfully, Beach proved masterful in overseeing many aspects of its construction. But he was also wise enough to realize that he needed expert help as well. Fortunately, he was able to hire the perfect person to serve as his chief engineer: Joseph Dixon, the Englishman who had overseen the building of the tunnel for the London subway.

  Together, the two men, along with Beach’s son Frederick, who served as foreman of the digging crews, made certain that progress was made each night. All three were certainly cognizant of how perilous the work was for all those involved. They were digging twenty-one feet below the surface, and even though traffic on Broadway at night was far lighter than during the daytime, Beach must have been constantly concerned that a portion of the street would be weakened by the digging and that a rider on horseback would fall through to the tunnel below, causing bodily harm and exposing the secret project to the outside world.