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Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

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Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#31

Post by OisinMoran »

delichon wrote: post #3

I'd guess that Heinlein was aware of it and scaled it up in his imagination. The Roads must roll — they are the arteries of the nation. When they stop, everything stops. Factories idle, food rots, men starve. The nation cannot live without its Roads. A thousand feet wide, level as a floor, strip after strip moving past in ordered procession. The slow strips on the outside moved at five miles an hour; the inner ones f…

Also Arthur C Clarke in The City and the Stars (1956):

“An engineer of the ancient world would have gone slowly mad trying to understand how an apparently solid roadway could be fixed at the sides while toward the centre it moved at a steadily increasing velocity.”

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#32

Post by moritzwarhier »

Modern urban car infrastructure is neither space- nor energy-efficient, but urban planning is long-term, and decisions shift all efficiency considerations in the long-term in a way that's hard to undo.

For example, transportation of people with the modern extensive net of streets would be most convenient and efficient if there was some kind of public transportation in small buses, available on demand and price being determined by regular market mechanisms. The difference between what I imagine and things like Uber would be a strong integration with existing train and bus lines, and public funding and legislation. Maybe self-driving will get us there, but there are also many political hurdles that make the less efficient option (high coefficient of cars pp) more attractive than the alternative that could provide better efficiency (and, ideally, also great user experience).

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#33

Post by userbinator »

moritzwarhier wrote: post #32

Modern urban car infrastructure is neither space- nor energy-efficient, but urban planning is long-term, and decisions shift all efficiency considerations in the long-term in a way that's hard to undo. For example, transportation of people with the modern extensive net of streets would be most convenient and efficient if there was some kind of public transportation in small buses, available on demand and price being…

Efficiency should not be pursued to the exclusion of everything else. As the article itself says:

trans­porta­tion should be about more than just get­ting from A to B; it should be a plea­sure as well

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#34

Post by al_borland »

ItsHarper wrote: post #25
al_borland wrote: post #4

I like that the fence moves with it. It seems like more of a complete vision than the moving sidewalks we have today, which always look like they were just dropped into a hallway. We also seem to be unable to perfectly match food and hand speed these days. I’m not sure if this is a “feature” somehow, but it bothers me a lot. They didn’t seem to have this issue with the floor and fence, as far as I could tell.

I believe it's to allow room for the handrail belt to wear down, which brings its speed closer to the stairs until it starts de-syncing in the opposite direction. If it started perfectly, you'd have to replace the belt more frequently to maintain the same level of tolerance.

If I’m understanding what you’re saying, couldn’t that be solved with some kind of belt tensioner?

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#35

Post by card_zero »

userbinator wrote: post #21
mlok wrote: post #16

Wikipedia has a nice page about it : "Rue de l'Avenir" (Street of the future) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue_de_l%27Avenir

Scroll down to the photos and be momentarily surprised at the fact that some are in colour .

Hand-colored, "photochromes". One of them is in Commons category "1900 black and white photographs". Check out "autochromes", though:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Autochromes

Leonid Andreev's moody selfie poses amuse me. (Circa 1910.)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Autochromes_by_L...

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#36

Post by moritzwarhier »

userbinator wrote: post #33
moritzwarhier wrote: post #32

Modern urban car infrastructure is neither space- nor energy-efficient, but urban planning is long-term, and decisions shift all efficiency considerations in the long-term in a way that's hard to undo. For example, transportation of people with the modern extensive net of streets would be most convenient and efficient if there was some kind of public transportation in small buses, available on demand and price being…

Efficiency should not be pursued to the exclusion of everything else. As the article itself says: trans­porta­tion should be about more than just get­ting from A to B; it should be a plea­sure as well

I would not deny this, and I don't judge people for enjoying to drive. It doesn't prevent me from thinking about alternative worlds / cities though, or in this case, just a stronger focus on establishing public car-based transportation (such as buses), in addition to train lines, which take very long to be built or are currently lacking space to be built altogether, where they would be most needed.

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#37

Post by shubb »

moritzwarhier wrote: post #32

Modern urban car infrastructure is neither space- nor energy-efficient, but urban planning is long-term, and decisions shift all efficiency considerations in the long-term in a way that's hard to undo. For example, transportation of people with the modern extensive net of streets would be most convenient and efficient if there was some kind of public transportation in small buses, available on demand and price being…

I think citymapper tried to execu this as a pivot. They had an idea to do it in London and other countries and did trial it for a while. Not sure why it (presumably) failed.

I'd note that startup money of the is much harder to get in London, so a US startup might be able to force the idea from experiment to profitability.

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#38

Post by bryanrasmussen »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #12
delichon wrote: post #3

I'd guess that Heinlein was aware of it and scaled it up in his imagination. The Roads must roll — they are the arteries of the nation. When they stop, everything stops. Factories idle, food rots, men starve. The nation cannot live without its Roads. A thousand feet wide, level as a floor, strip after strip moving past in ordered procession. The slow strips on the outside moved at five miles an hour; the inner ones f…

Yeah, love that idea of progressive velocities. I ant someone to at least build a short test track like this so we can play with it. Seem to recall they were called "slidewalks" by some Sci-Fi author—probably Heinlein, eh?

so assuming inner sidewalk moving at 100 mph, next outer at 95, and each moving at 5 per less, when big muscular terrorists placed on s-100 carrying a big cardboard box filled with nails and throw it as quickly and hard as possible so that the box of nails open up over s-75 at what velocity are the nails raining down on pedestrians on s-75?

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#39

Post by kergonath »

excalibur wrote: post #15

> It’s fair to say that few of us now marvel at moving walkways, those standard infrastructural elements of such utilitarian spaces as airport terminals, subway stations, and big-box stores. You've gotta be referring to escalators here. Never seen a moving walkway in a big-box store, or a subway station for that matter.

> You've gotta be referring to escalators here. Never seen a moving walkway in a big-box store

I have seen some occasionally in stores, in or around Paris. They usually are on an incline to allow trolleys to be taken up or down a level. Or similarly outside malls to get trolleys to the upper level of a car park. That’s in places where you have to stack car parks instead of just having them sprawl all over the place, of course.

> or a subway station for that matter.

There are a few of them in Paris métro stations. Some of them in the London Underground, as well.

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#40

Post by bryanrasmussen »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #38
JKCalhoun wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, love that idea of progressive velocities. I ant someone to at least build a short test track like this so we can play with it. Seem to recall they were called "slidewalks" by some Sci-Fi author—probably Heinlein, eh?

so assuming inner sidewalk moving at 100 mph, next outer at 95, and each moving at 5 per less, when big muscular terrorists placed on s-100 carrying a big cardboard box filled with nails and throw it as quickly and hard as possible so that the box of nails open up over s-75 at what velocity are the nails raining down on pedestrians on s-75?

Assuming that these terrorists are relatively fast runners, being in good shape, and they decide to exit the walkways on the other side, how far on the other side will they be in relation to the nail rain on s-75 they caused.
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