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!