Getting off the (pneumatic) track.


I don't always know just what might fit in as a date tie-in, and it sometimes happens that I find myself choosing items simply because they're the least non-interesting items I can find for a particular date. I had the feeling that this was precisely what was happening with this month. But then, as I guess should be expected (though it isn't always this way) one thing led to another.

February 26, 1870 was the date that the first pneumatic-powered subway was opened in New York City. I admit, I know close to nothing about pneumatic subways, other than the fact that this was apparently the sort of invention that time passed by and became relegated, rightly or wrongly, to the junk heap of inventions.

Today in Science History gave me enough information to whet my appetite:
It was built by Alfred Ely Beach who included a waiting room 120 feet long (the entire tunnel measured 312 feet) and embellished it with a grand piano, a fountain, ornate paintings, and candelabra so customers would not feel they were entering a dank, dreary tunnel. The twenty-two-seat subway car impressed observers with its rich upholstery and spaciousness, and comfortable ride. It fitted snugly into the nine foot diameter, cylindrical tube. Propulsion was provided by a giant fan that the workers nicknamed "the Western Tornado." It was operated by a steam engine, drawing air in through a valve and blowing it forcefully into the tunnel.
But once my appetite is whet, I want to find out more, and that caused me to rediscovered one of those things that most makes me love the web.

Joseph Brennan is a librarian at Columbia University. I don't know how much spare time he has, but in some of that time, he works on his web sites. It was on one of these, devoted to pneumatic subways, and to the New York pneumatic subway in particular, that I found more information than I suppose I'll ever really want to read on the subject. But as is to be expected, more than actually reading his site, I found myself clicking through it, nibbling at the other things he had to offer. After all, anyone who posts a book's worth of information on a pneumatic subway on his site must have other interesting things to say.

And it was in this way that I discovered that Joseph Brennan has also compiled an apparently rather complete list of Beatles variations. Brennan himself seems quite aware of the fact that this sort of pastime might appear rather strange to some people:
One's credentials as a Beatles fan need not rest on whether one can recognize most of the variations. Plenty of genuine fans feel this is one of the most obsessive and boring topics imaginable, and would much rather discuss the meaning of the lyrics, the invention of the melody, or the relation of the song to the Beatles' lives and times. But who cares about all that, eh?
And if that isn't enough, he has also (among a number of other projects) compiled a list of Songs the Beatles Didn't Do.

There might be some sort of RSS feed that could have brought me to sites such as these, though if there were, I probably wouldn't have subscribed to it so it wouldn't have been of much help. Maybe some sort of web-crawling robot could have found them for me. But I doubt it. The true pleasure in finding sites such as this (and the person behind them) is the fact that we somehow stumble across them in some sort of serendipitous ped-xing. We've got to be looking for something, but ready and willing to be derailed from the straight and narrow track.



Go to: It's just too Oh!