“Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Stephen Jobs
  • Solar District Heating is now a reality in many parts of Europe Solar District Heating is now a reality in many parts of Europe
  • Solar heating panels are easy to install and provide cost-free solar heat from sunlight! Solar heating panels are easy to install and provide cost-free solar heat from sunlight!
  • Payback is quick and there are many government incentives Payback is quick and there are many government incentives
  • The principle is simple, reliable and proven The principle is simple, reliable and proven
  • Solar hot water preserves the environment Solar hot water preserves the environment
    

Who was Alfred Ely Beach?

Alfred Ely Beach was an inventor and the editor and co-owner of "Scientific American." In the first issue of "Scientific American," it was announced that the magazine would help secure patents for U.S. inventors. Alfred Ely Beach was awarded patents for an improvement he made to the typewriter (1857), for a cable traction railway system (1864) and for a pneumatic transit system (pneumatic tube) for mail and passengers (1865).

Alfred Ely Beach was upper-crust. He was educated at Yale and given management of the New York Sun newspaper by his father in 1848. He was only 22 when he took over the Sun's offices in the Wall Street area. By then, Manhattan was just becoming a high-population-density nightmare. But Beach was a young man with ideas. Already, two years before, he'd bought the one-year-old Scientific American magazine. He also opened a major patent agency that would deal with clients like Morse, Edison, Bell, and Ericcson.

Alfred Ely Beach Subway All the while, Beach watched Manhattan's streets growing hopelessly dirty and dangerous as four or five horse-drawn omnibuses rattled by each minute. He turned his attention to urban rail service. The British had just built a small experimental subway line in London, but it'd be another thirty years before regular subway service was finally established in America.

In 1866, Beach petitioned the City for something called a postal dispatch charter. That was actually a smokescreen -- a way to get authorization to build a subway system without letting the city of New York know what he was doing. He meant to start with a small 300-foot demonstration line under Broadway. He had to keep it secret from the corrupt Boss Tweed (of Tammany Hall infamy) because he knew Tweed would extort extra money before he'd let him dig.

Alfred Beach's pneumatic New York subway, a giant pneumatic tube ran for one block west of City Hall and was based on his 1865 patent. It was America's first subway.