This guy here with another episode of the History on Plug podcast.

In the late 1880s, one of the best way to quickly send a message in a major city is by pneumatic

tube, a network of sealed tubes in which a cylinder carries telegrams, letters, and money.

These tubes were propelled by compressed air or vacuum, and you can still see these in banks today. 1880s London had nearly 22 miles of these.

But these chip systems were never more than a few inches in diameter, but some inventors dreamed

that they could be scaled up and more could be done with them. One such invention was Alfred

Beach. He built America's first operational subway in secret beneath 1860s Manhattan.

Decades before, the city's official electric subway line opened in 1904.

He designed and commissioned a 300-foot-long, 8-foot-diameter tunnel, 20 feet underground, built

with a tunneling machine he invented for this purpose.

This car moved quietly and silently, pushed by a 50-ton steam-powered fan,

nicknamed the Western Tornado, which pushed and pulled the single subway car through its steel two.

Now, this was only a demonstration line,

but Beach envisioned a clean, quiet, pneumatic railway that would shoot passengers up and down Broadway,

revolutionizing urban transit.

Basically, the entire city would be able to get around in the steampunk system of transportation.

Now, Beach was the right man for this job. He was the editor of Scientific American Magazine

and the head of the nation's leading patent agency. He was connected with many of the 19th

century's most important inventors and inventions. And Thomas Edison invented the photograph, the first person he showed it to was Beach. But his dream was derailed

by powerful political enemies, most notably boss-tweed in the corrupt machine of Camany Hall.

Because of this in the economic crash of 1873, dreams of the project died. Today's guest is

Matthew Algio, author of New York's Secret Subway,

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