Alfred Ely Beach | |
|---|---|
 Beachc. 1870 | |
| Born | (1826-09-01)September 1, 1826 |
| Died | January 1, 1896(1896-01-01) (aged 69) New York City, US |
| Education | Monson Academy (nowWilbraham & Monson Academy) |
| Occupations |
|
| Known for | Designing theBeach Pneumatic Transit |
| Spouse | Harriet Eliza Holbrook |
| Children | Frederick Converse Beach |
| Father | Moses Yale Beach |
| Relatives | Moses S. Beach, brother William Yale Beach, brother Charles Yale Beach, nephew Stanley Yale Beach, grandson |
| Family | Yale |
Alfred Ely Beach (September 1, 1826 – January 1, 1896) was an Americaninventor, entrepreneur,publisher, andpatent lawyer, born inSpringfield, Massachusetts. He is known for his design of the earliest predecessor to theNew York City Subway, theBeach Pneumatic Transit, which became the first subway in America.[1] He was an early owner and cofounder ofScientific American and Munn & Co., the country's leading patent agency, and helped secure patents forThomas Edison,Alexander Graham Bell,Cornelius Vanderbilt, and other innovators.[2] A member of theUnion League of New York, he also invented a typewriter for the blind and a system for heating water with solar power.[3]
Beach was born inSpringfield, Massachusetts, and was the son of a prominent publisher,Moses Yale Beach, owner of theNew YorkSun and member of theYale family.[4][5] His brotherWilliam Yale Beach was a banker while his other brother,Moses S. Beach, took over the family newspaper and supported the policies ofAbraham Lincoln during his ownership. Alfred's brother was also later a trustee and shareholder in his Broadway Underground Railway Company, along with his sonFrederick C. Beach, and his nephewCharles Yale Beach.[6]
Charles Yale's brothers-in-law were Commodore Holland Newton Stevenson, and John McAllister Stevenson, aYale graduate and board director of the Pittsfield Electric Street Railway Company in 1892, which operatedelectric trolley cars, replacinghorsecars.[7][8] His three nephews and his great-grandnephew, Rev.Brewster Yale Beach, all attendedYale University.[9][10]
Alfred worked for his father at the "Sun" until he and a friend,Orson Desaix Munn, decided to buyScientific American, a relatively new publication, becoming the early founders of that company.[5] He also brought in the ventureSalem Howe Wales, President of theNew York City Department of Docks and co-founder of theMetropolitan Museum of Art. Beach was the editor and publisher ofScientific American for fifty years and ran the magazine until his death. It was then edited by his son and grandson.[11]
Scientific American is now the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States, and has featured prominent scientists over time such asAlbert Einstein,Nikola Tesla,Marie Curie, andThomas Edison. They reported the invention and patent ofAbraham Lincoln relating to his device that intended to help boats navigate shallows.
On June 30, 1847, at 21, Alfred married 18-year-old Harriet Eliza Holbrook.[12]
In 1846, Munn and Beach established a prominent patent agency withinScientific American named Munn & Co., in synergy with the scientists featured in the magazine who wanted to patent their inventions.[5] They provided the service for the patent applications and tracked the progress once it reached theU.S. Patent Office, having their headquarters next door in Washington.
As a boy,Thomas Edison used to walk a few miles every week to get his copy of the magazine, and later on in his career, he walked in Beach's office one day and showed him a device he called thephonograph, being the first to see his invention.[2][13][14] Beach tested the device with Edison, liked it, and helped him file the patent.[14] Edison would become a frequent visitor of Beach.[13]
He also helpedAlexander Graham Bell,Samuel F. B. Morse,Elias Howe,R. J. Gatling, Capt.John Ericsson,Cornelius Vanderbilt, Col.John Jacob Astor IV, and thousands of other inventors.[15] The magazine's patent department eventually filed about three thousandpatents a year, forcing Beach to split his time between New York and Washington, defending the patents of the inventors in court.[13][14][2]
Beach patented some of his own inventions, notably an earlytypewriter designed for use by the blind, an engineering first for the Americas. He received the gold medal by theAmerican Institute at theNew York Crystal Palace for theGreat Exhibition of 1853, and his invention served as the prototype for typewriters over the next century. He invented a cable traction railway system, and designed and built one of the world's firsttunnelling shields in the same year as famed engineerJames Henry Greathead.[16]
His patent agency eventually brought him fame and fortune, and his magazine helped stimulate 19th-century technological innovations and became one of the most prestigious scientific magazines of its time.[14][17] During its peak years, Munn & Co., as the patent agency ofScientific American, prosecuted about one third of all the patents issued by the US Patent Office.[18] By 1924, they had filled more than 200,000 patents, representing about 15% of all the patents filled in the United States, and was partly responsible for the rapid growth of the US patent system.[18] After opening an office in Washington, they opened new offices across the globe and became recognized as the most successful patent law firm in the world.[18]
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Beach's most famous invention wasNew York City's firstsubway, theBeach Pneumatic Transit.[19] He received his first charter by the legislature in 1868, four years beforeCommodore Vanderbilt's attempt to build a subway in New York.[20][21] Beach created his own enterprise usingpneumatic tube technology, naming it the Beach Pneumatic Transit Company, and made himself its President. This idea came about during the late 1860s, when traffic in New York was very difficult, especially along its central artery of Broadway, crowded with pedestrians andhorse carriages. Beach was one of a few visionaries who proposed building an underground railway under Broadway to help relieve the traffic congestion. The inspiration was the undergroundMetropolitan Railway inLondon, but in contrast to that and others' proposals for New York, Beach proposed the use of trains propelled bypneumatics instead of conventionalsteam engines, and construction using atunnelling shield of his invention[22] to minimize disturbing the street.[23]
Beach used a circular design based uponMarc Isambard Brunel's rectangular shield, which may represent the shift in design from rectangular to cylindrical. It was unclear when or who transitioned tunneling shield design from rectangular to circular untilThe New York Times wrote an article describing the original Beach tunneling shield in 1870.[24]
Beach was also interested inpneumatic tubes for the transport of letters and packages, another idea recently put into use inLondon by theLondon Pneumatic Despatch Company.[25] He refused to bribe corrupt politician"Boss" Tweed to have his proposal approved.[26][27] Instead, he built the tunnel in secret during the night, carting away the dirt under the cover of darkness, with the city officials atCity Hall just across the street.[28][26] He put up $350,000 of his own money to bankroll the project, allowing him to bypass the corruption and extortion schemes ofTammany Hall, which included the Governor, the Mayor, the City comptroller, and countless of other corrupted officials.[28][29] His thinking was that once the public saw the completed subway, the politicians would not dare to stop him.[29] With a franchise from the state, he began construction of a tunnel for small pneumatic tubes in 1869, but diverted it into a demonstration of a passenger railway that opened on February 26, 1870.[30] It is most interesting to note that Beach's tunnel design was likely the first cylindrical tunnel design ever used in the Americas and built using a design inspired byJames Henry Greathead's successful shield patents in London for construction of theTower Subway project. Greathead invented and built his own design of a shield as the contractor for that project, underPeter W. Barlow who was the engineer. Since Beach was a patents lawyer, it is likely he discovered the 1869 Greathead patent and the patent application by Barlow from 1864, using an imitated Barlow's patent design for engineering the PTS tunnel design.
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To build a passenger railway he needed a different franchise, something he lobbied for over four legislative sessions, 1870 to 1873. Construction of the tunnel was obvious from materials being delivered to Warren Street nearBroadway, and was documented in newspaper reports, but Beach kept all details secret until theNew York Tribune published a possibly planted article a few weeks before opening.[31] The Mayor of New York,Abraham Oakey Hall, grew suspicious and sent an aide over to the construction site with a written order to inspect Beach's work, but his workers blocked the inspectors.[14]
When it was finished, after 58 successive nights, it became New York City's first underground subway.[27][32] Beach hosted a gala on February 26, 1870, to which he invited city and state officials, enraging "Boss Tweed" for not having profited from the venture, and for challenging his monopoly onstreetcars.[32][13] In less than a year, Beach's underground system was used by 400,000 people, and he requested his line to extend toCentral Park, with an injection of 5 million dollars in capital, hoping to get financiers such asJohn Jacob Astor III in the venture.[14]
In 1870 New York state SenatorWilliam M. Tweed introduced a bill to fund the full construction of Beach's subway but the bill did not pass.[33] By the end of 1871 Tweed'sTammany Hall political machine was in disgrace and from then on Beach, in an effort to gain support from reformers, claimed that Tweed had opposed his subway.[34] The real opposition to the subway was from politically connected property owners along Broadway, led byAlexander Turney Stewart andJohn Jacob Astor III, who feared that tunnelling would damage buildings and interfere with surface traffic.[35] Bills for Beach's subway passed the legislature in 1871 and 1872 but were vetoed by GovernorJohn T. Hoffman because he said that they gave away too much authority without compensation to the city or state. In 1873 GovernorJohn Adams Dix signed a similar bill into law, but Beach was not able to raise funds to build over the next six months, and then thePanic of 1873 dried up the financial markets.[23]
During this same time, other investors had built anelevated railway atGreenwich Street andNinth Avenue, which operated successfully with a small steam engine starting in 1870. This elevated railway gave an idea toJames Henry Greathead for theDocker's Umbrella inLiverpool, which was a similar idea for an overhead railway for the purpose of easing congestion on the ground in England. The wealthy property owners did not object to the New York City railway well away from Broadway, and by the mid-1870s it appeared that elevated railways were practical and underground railways were not, setting the pattern for rapid transit development in New York City for the remainder of the 19th century.[23]
Beach operated his demonstration railway from February 1870 to April 1873. It had one station in the basement ofDevlin's clothing store, a building at the southwest corner ofBroadway and Warren Street. TheWoolworth Building would be built next door, with an underground entrance connecting to the subway station, but it was later closed down because of fear of criminal activities.[36]
It ran for a total of about 300 feet, first around a curve to the center of Broadway and then straight under the center of Broadway to the south side of Murray Street.[30] Beach spent $70,000 of his own savings to make the station luxurious and comfortable, with chandeliers, mirrors, a towering grandfather clock, a fountain with fish, paintings and a piano.[37] The former Devlin's building was destroyed by fire in 1898.[38] When the subway tunnel closed down, Beach rented out the space as a wine cellar, and later as ashooting range and astorage vault.[39][40]
The profits made by Beach from the subway were given to charities, promising to donate all the money raised to the United Home for the Orphans of Soldiers and Sailors.[41][14] He later also developed a pneumatic tube systems for New York's mail, building the first mail tube in the country.[42]
In 1912 workers for Degnon Contracting excavated the tunnel proper during the construction of a subway line running under Broadway, discovering the old tunnel and the old station that was buried underground. They also discovered Beach's oldtunnelling shield and remains of Gotham's originalsubway car.[43] The new tunnel was completely within the limits of the present dayCity Hall station under Broadway, near theold City Hall station.[44] The British pneumatic tube also failed to attract much attention and eventually fell into disrepair and disrepute in spite of the fact thatRoyal Mail had contracted to use the tunnels. Ultimately the English experiment failed due to technical issues as well as lack of funds.[citation needed]
Much of the Beach subway story was recalled as precedent byLawrence Edwards in his lead article of the August 1965 issue ofScientific American, which described his invention ofGravity-Vacuum Transit.[46] Beach's story is also featured inGotham: A History of New York City to 1898.[47]
The BeachTunnelling shield, similar to the 1864 English patent idea ofBarlow's, was used in the construction of theGrand Trunk Railway, headquartered inMontreal, Canada's firstSt. Clair Tunnel betweenPort Huron, Michigan andSarnia,Ontario.[48] This tunnel opened in 1890. His hydraulic shield system was also used in the excavating of the underground railway tunnels in London and Glasgow, theNorth River Tunnels and other construction works.[5]
Beach's pneumatic system was the firstair-powered train in America, a concept that would be proposed once again about 150 years later by billionaireElon Musk, rebranded as theHyperloop.[49][50][51][52][53][54] The team Hyperloop II of theHyperloop pod competition sponsored bySpaceX also used Beach's pneumatic concept and made the pneumatic vehicle more efficient.[51]
In January 1887, Beach allowed his son and six other men to start a yacht club on his property inStratford, Connecticut. The Housatonic boat club is the oldest operatingyacht club in Connecticut, and the land purchased for the club came from his estate in 1954.[55]
After theCivil War, Beach founded a school for freed slaves inSavannah, Georgia, theBeach Institute, which is now the home of theKing-Tisdell Cottage Foundation.[56] It was the first school in Savannah erected specifically for the education of African Americans, and was built byFreedmen's Bureau, at the initiation of President Lincoln, and was managed by theAmerican Missionary Association.[57] Alumni include MayorOtis Johnson and SenatorRegina Thomas.[58][59]
Beach was also a member of theUnion League Club of New York, an abolitionist society that supported the policies ofAbraham Lincoln.[3]Pneumatic tubes are still used today by banks and theCIA for theirheadquarters, and less than a decade after Beach's death, New York City built its firstsubway system in 1904, and have him featured in thehistory of the New York City Subway.
Beach later was the subject of the 1976Klaatu single "Sub-Rosa Subway."
He died ofpneumonia on January 1, 1896, in New York City at the age of 69.[56][60]
He had a son namedFrederick Converse Beach, who invented aphotolithographic process and ranScientific American, and a grandson namedStanley Yale Beach, who worked for the magazine as well but also became an aviation pioneer, and an early financier ofGustave Whitehead, the contested first maker of a powered controlled flight before theWright brothers.[61][62][63]
Both wereYale graduates, having graduated from Yale'sSheffield Scientific School.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)The funeral of Alfred Ely Beach, the Inventor, who died on New Year's morning of pneumonia, after a brief Illness, was held yesterday morning at 9 West ...
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