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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)

#121

Post by pyrale »

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?

Pedestrians would likely not be hit, because few would want to walk there with a 75mph headwind in the first place.

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

#122

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

rootbear wrote: post #65
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?

Larry Niven called them slidewalks and I've always been sorry this terminology never caught on.

In the UK, Singapore and maybe other countries with British influence, they use the word travelator, which I find quite cool as well.

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

#123

Post by brohee »

swores wrote: post #93
Animats wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People have tried faster moving walkways many times. The problem is getting humans on and off such a system safely in a way that is easy to maintain. Right. You can build it, but not make it ADA-compliant. One subway station in France tried a 4km/h moving sidewalk, but the accident rate was too high. The Paris system was really two trains on parallel tracks. Here's the mechanism.[1] Same concept as buses and trains…

The too-fast one in Paris was 12km/h, not 4km/h which would be OK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway#Trottoir_roulan...

I took it many times, it didn't feel particularly dangerous but you had to pay more attention than on a regular moving walkway. What ultimately killed it was reliability, availability was too low. With more deployed I guess the kinks would have slowly disappeared, but the market just doesn't seem to be there.

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

#125

Post by Someone »

bobthepanda wrote: post #91
Animats wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People have tried faster moving walkways many times. The problem is getting humans on and off such a system safely in a way that is easy to maintain. Right. You can build it, but not make it ADA-compliant. One subway station in France tried a 4km/h moving sidewalk, but the accident rate was too high. The Paris system was really two trains on parallel tracks. Here's the mechanism.[1] Same concept as buses and trains…

it is worth noting that we have transportation systems where you get into a slow moving vehicle that then speeds up. the cable car is a lot safer than a faster moving sidewalk because you can just get inside and sit down securely. of course, it takes up a lot more space and costs a lot more money.

And you can only hop on/hop off a cable car at predetermined locations. To keep average speed high, those tend to be spaced relatively far apart.

I’m not sure about the “takes a lot more space”, and I definitely doubt about the “costs a lot more money”. Using outdoor escalators as proxies, I suspect outdoor moving sidewalks will need lots and lots of maintenance. If you want to have some guarantee of service you’ll also need multiple sidewalks side-by-side.

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

#126

Post by Hard_Space »

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…

Wow, this is exactly the staggered-speed walkway system I once saw in a Philip K. Dick short story, forget which, but obviously it was written after this.

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

#127

Post by TomWhitwell »

In Hong Kong, public outdoor escalators like the Central–Mid-Levels Escalator are a big part of public transport. They go one way - down from 6am-10am, otherwise up. They’ve regenerated/gentrified a whole area of town that was previously hard to get to. Few cars = people travel differently.

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

#128

Post by eCa »

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…

This somehow feels like the horizontal equivalent of a Pater Noster elevator. But probably with even worse error modes if it stops working at 100mph.

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

#129

Post by bayindirh »

Loughla wrote: post #83
rootbear wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Larry Niven called them slidewalks and I've always been sorry this terminology never caught on.

The things I took away from reading Niven was transfer booths. The world has homogenized because information and people were transmitted instantly one from corner of the globe to another. Ooohhh boy.

If you want to see this idea taken to the next level, you should read Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos. ;)

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

#130

Post by delichon »

tangus wrote: post #113
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Everybody carries a gun in Heinlein stories, so those terrorists will be quickly dealt with by armed citizens, thus confirming the superiority of Libertarianism.

In 1940 when he wrote this Heinlein was a New Deal Democrat supporter of Franklin Roosevelt. He was an active progressive who had recently worked on Upton Sinclair’s socialist “End Poverty in California” campaign. His libertarian shift was twenty years in the future, in his fifties.
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