In the past couple of years, I doubt anybody reading this has had cause to use their passport very much, if at all. Those little red, black, blue and green books have been locked away in drawers, cabinets, strongboxes and safes, secure, snug and out of sight…for the foreseeable future, at any rate.

But where do passports come from? How did they come to be? What’s in them and how have they changed over time? Today, we’re going to take a look at the history behind that little booklet of stamps, scribbles and stickers which follows you every step of the way on your world tours and overseas jaunts.

So please have your document open to the information page with the photograph clearly visible, and let’s begin.

The First Passports

Passports in one form or another have existed for centuries, and early forms of passports date back as far as ancient China, among other places. In Europe, King Edward V is believed to have introduced the first type of ‘passport’ that we might recognise today, in the 1400s. By Tudor times, a century later, the Privy Council was in charge of handling these documents, and it was also at this time that the word ‘Passport’ first started being used, originally two words, as in ‘Pass Porte’, from the French ‘Porte’, meaning gate or doorway (ie – a pass to go through the city gates).

Passports were originally quite rare, because few people traveled any great distances, and literacy was low. It wasn’t until the 1800s with the rise of steam locomotives and ocean-going liners that passports started becoming issued on a wide scale. So many people were now moving around that while passports were required, the laws governing their examination, use and checking, were pretty lax – there just wasn’t any point in trying to rigidly enforce the rules when it would cause such a massive backlog at train-stations and shipping ports. For example, on the Orient Express, any passengers boarding the train would surrender their passports not to border-control, but to their carriage steward!

As the train stopped at each crossing along its route, border-guards would seek out the steward in each sleeper-car, examine the passports, stamp them, and then leave again. Checking on the passengers wasn’t considered important, since you already had the documents in front of you to read.

Up until this time, a passport could look like almost anything – early British passports, for example, were just a single sheet of paper! How did they come to be the little booklets which we know today?

The modern passport was not designed until a little over 100 years ago!

As I said – laws and regulations surrounding passports were pretty relaxed in the 1800s, and rarely (or at least, only loosely) enforced. This culture changed in the 1910s because of the First World War. After the war, the League of Nations – the predecessor to the U.N., held a conference in 1920 to officially set down the standards for what a passport was, what it had to have, how it operated, and what it would look like. Follow-up conferences in 1926 and 1927 tightened up the definitions, and for the first time in history, what a passport was, did, and would look like – were written down on paper, and internationally agreed to.

Types of Passports

Broadly speaking, there are only a few types of passports: Individual passports (the most common kind that you probably have in your desk right now), official passports (for government officials, etc), and diplomatic passports (for those in the diplomatic service). Previously, a fourth type – the family passport – also existed, where the details of an entire nuclear family might be written down in one document, with a group photograph of all the people mentioned on the information pages. However, these are no longer in use.

To differentiate between these various types of passports, each one is usually a different colour, and colours vary by country. Passport colours are usually standardised, and common ones include blue (for example, Australia, the United Kingdom and the USA), red (for example, Malaysia, China, Japan, etc), and green (India, Morocco, and most Muslim countries). While most countries conform to this, not all do – for example, New Zealand passports are black!

The reason for these standard colours is pretty simple – so that passports can be easily recognised. But also, so that different types of passports can be told apart. For example – which passport is your individual passport? Which one is your diplomatic one? It’d be kinda embarrassing if you had to fly somewhere in your diplomatic capacity and you brought the wrong passport along, because they were both the same colour…whoops! It’s for this reason that, in the United States, for example, individual passports are blue – but official passports are red!

Can you imagine being a passport control agent, and having to remember all these things??

Passport Control

Aaah, passport control. You either love it, or hate it. Some people enjoy it, getting to see all the stamps and stickers fill up their little books – inky souvenirs of their travels around the world, and others are frustrated by the seemingly endless questions and forms. But even here, things have changed over time. The most notable one is in passport photographs.

Early on, passport photographs were not standardised. It was common for men, women and children to wear almost anything, and have almost any expression, while having their passport snaps taken. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for a passport bearer to simply stick in just any photograph of themselves that they had lying around, so long as it looked like them. Old passport photos show men wearing hats, ladies wearing glasses, kids smiling…what changed?

More stringent passport-photograph regulations are a relatively new phenomenon. For much of their 20th century history it didn’t matter so much, but as more people began traveling – especially after the jet-age of the 1950s and 60s, being able to compare a passport photo to the person holding it became more and more important, since the process had to be done as fast as possible. This is why, in more recent times, passport-photo regulations have become much more strict, so that anything that obscured the face, or anything that obscured a normal, blank facial expression such as hats, scarves, glasses, and cheeky grins – were out.

Thus ends this rather brief look at the history of passports, the one document that we’ve probably used less than any other over the past two years. So while yours might still be gathering dust and cobwebs in a desk-drawer somewhere, at least now you know where, when, and how they came into being.

Checking your Papers – Sources

Information for this posting was gleamed from the following locations…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3437455/Not-passports-equal-travel-documents-come-different-colours-countries-choose-them.html

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2006/nov/17/travelnews

https://www.imidaily.com/editors-picks/the-passport-throughout-history-the-evolution-of-a-document/

https://thewest.com.au/news/the-history-of-the-passport-ng-ya-377959

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30988833

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/passport-photos-history-development-regulation-mugshots

This is the long-awaited Part II of my look into the Golden Age of Travel.

You can find Part I here!

In this posting, we’ll be looking at what travel was actually like during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and see just what the pre-war travel experience was actually like. What could you expect? What happened? And how did it perhaps differ from what we might have today? On top of that, we’ll see what changes occurred that meant that the pre-war experience could not be recreated in the decades after the Second World War.

A guard waves his flag. A whistle-chirrup echoes down the platform; a foghorn sounds and the roar of four diesel engines powering a magnificent airship through the air calls us to attention. All aboard for another trip back into the past…

Travel during the Golden Age of Travel

These days, the journey itself is the least luxurious and exciting part of travelling. You get on a bus or train or plane and you just…sit there. For hours at a time, with almost nothing to do. You have a boarding-pass and your passport and nothing else. If you’re lucky, you’ve got the in-flight movie, or you brought a book or your laptop or iPad, with which to while away the time. Or maybe, just maybe, you might actually fall asleep. Only to be woken up an hour later by flight attendants shunting past you with trolleys loaded to the brim with food of questionable quality at best.

And before all this, you had to go through check-in, immigration, luggage-weights, and security checks for you and your luggage, and now, you’ve got a flight in front of you that’ll eat up all of the first day of your holiday and you’re starting to wonder why the hell you ever decided to go to Barcelona. You could’ve stayed home and gone to the beach instead! But what was the travel experience like before all this rigmarole got started? Let’s find out.

Back in the early 20^th century, when life on a whole moved at a slower pace, a steamship journey took several days at least. Because of this, the journey itself had to be comfortable, memorable and relaxing – and steamship companies and railroad companies constantly strove to improve their service and amenities in order to lure in as many customers as possible by advertising speed, comfort, luxury, great food, electric lighting, running hot water…anything that would put their service above that of a rival company.

Before you even reached your destination, what was the ‘travel’ part of the ‘Golden Age of Travel’ really like? Let’s go on three imaginary journeys during the 1930s and see what kind of travel experience you could expect. To sample the best of everything, we’ll do the transatlantic crossing, the Orient Express, and to top it all off, a ride in the most famous airship of all. 

Trip No. 1 – The Transatlantic Crossing

Route: London, England to Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

Expected Travel-Time: 7 Days (dependent on weather)

The Transatlantic Crossing – Part I – The Boat Train

A typical trans-oceanic journey of the late 1800s or early 1900s started at a railway station. Let’s say you’re sailing on one of the great Cunard steamships from England to America! What happened?

To get from London to Southampton, you boarded the boat train at Waterloo Station. The boat train was a special express train that ran regular services from major metropolitan stations to port cities around England such as Dover, Southampton and Liverpool. They worked in a similar fashion to airport shuttle-bus services today which scoot you back and forth from major cities to your nearest airport. These trains were in service specifically to make fast, punctual connections between major population centers, and the great ports of embarkation. However, even express, a journey by boat train took a few hours. You might nap, read or eat lunch on the train, depending on the time of its departure. The train of choice from London-Waterloo to Southampton was the Cunarder or Statesman boat train which would whisk you across the south of England to the great ocean terminal at Southampton. 

At Southampton Docks, you got off the boat train with your mountain of luggage and boarded your ocean liner for your ‘crossing’ or ‘passage’ to the New World – the United States. The next leg of your journey would now begin…

The Transatlantic Crossing – Part II – The Crossing

Having arrived at Southampton, you now had to find your ship! Every major shipping company had docks assigned to them, much like how today, every major airline has a terminal and gates at an airport assigned to them. In the 1920s a wide variety of ships were available. If you wanted old world charm, you might sail on the R.M.S. Olympic, sister ship to the Titanic. If you wanted something grander and more modern, perhaps take the Berengaria, notorious for hosting American ‘booze-cruises’, where dried up Americans purchased return tickets and sailed to England and returned to America in a fortnight round-trip where they could drink to their kidneys’ discontent. Not being an American ship, the Berengaria was not subject to American prohibition laws!

Or maybe your ship is the Aquitania, a vessel which, until 2004, held the distinction of being the longest serving ocean liner plying the transatlantic route – thirty-six years! This record was broken in 2004 by the Queen Elizabeth 2, whose service reached 40 years doing the same route! The Aquitania became known as the ‘Ship Beautiful’ and was a common choice for passengers crossing the Atlantic.

RMS Aquitania. Source: Wikimedia Commons

In the old days, much care was taken in selecting which ship you would take to cross the Atlantic. There were loads to choose from, and each ship and company came with different things to recommend them to the discerning traveling public. The two biggest rivals were Cunard and White Star. They competed fiercely for passengers by boasting of larger ships, faster crossings, more luxuries, better food, improvements in safety and an ever-expanding range of on board diversions ranging from swimming-pools, spas and even cinemas.

After boarding the ship and being shown your cabin, you were allowed to settle in. The ship was dragged out to sea by tugboats and then would set sail for New York, a crossing that could take anywhere from five, to seven, to ten days, depending on the ship, the route, and the weather that it encountered on the way. That said, ships were typically expected to be able to make a crossing a week on the transatlantic route, so that passengers would never have to wait more than seven days to get another ship.

Once on board, you now had to find things to do. Southampton to New York takes the better part of a week, or more, depending on your chosen vessel. Are you a gambler or a betting person? Perhaps you should get in on the ship’s pool? No, not the swimming pool on E-deck, the ‘ship’s pool’ was the pool of cash which passengers contributed money to. You all had to bet how far the ship would go in 24 hours. At a prearranged time each day, an officer or steward would stick up a notice on the public noticeboard detailing how far the ship had gone during the night. The passenger whose guess was closest to the actual distance traveled won the pool!

This map of the Atlantic is found in the Grand Saloon of the R.M.S. Queen Mary, one of the most famous ocean liners of the Golden Age of Travel. The two lines track the ship’s routes from Southampton to New York. Small crystal models of the Queen Mary moved along these lines each day, indicating the ship’s progress during the voyage.

Of course, ships did come with actual swimming-pools, and gymnasiums, daycare centers, libraries, barbershops, cafes, restaurants and dining-saloons. During the 1930s, ships also started having cinemas on board, showing the latest films. If you wanted to take in the sea air up on deck, you might take part in a game of deck shuffleboard in which you had to slide painted wooden pucks along the deck using a long wooden paddle. The pucks would slide along the deck and across a painted and numbered grid. The skill in playing deck shuffleboard was in knowing how much force to put into your push to get your puck to slide across the grid and get the highest score – not always as easy as you might think, if the ship was rocking and lurching in the waves.

There was no internet access back during the Golden Age of Travel, no WIFI. But that didn’t stop you from contacting friends and relatives thousands of miles away. Perhaps your ship’s been delayed by storms and you’ll be in New York a day or two late? No problem. Off you went to the purser’s office. Here, you were given a telegraphic form where you could send off a brief message to your friends via the ship’s radio.

Telegrams were charged by the word. For example, it might be a shilling for the first ten words, and then a penny for every word thereafter. Unsurprisingly, telegrams were sent as infrequently as possible and when they were, were kept as short as possible. After filling out the telegraphic form with your message and having paid the fee, the form was torn off the pad and sent up to the radio-room by messenger or by pneumatic tube. The form was rolled up, stuffed in a cylinder and rammed into a pneumatic tube. The air-pressure in the tube or pipe pushed the cylinder up to the radio-room where it was spat out and landed in a basket. The radio-operators would open the tube, take out the message, and transmit its contents to the nearest land-station.

For all its glamour, ocean-travel did not come without risks. Ships were in constant danger of crashing into each other, of running aground, and of course, of sinking. In 1942, the RMS Queen Mary was sailing as a troopship off the coast of Scotland when a rogue wave of an estimated height at least 90ft (approx. 28m) hit the ship broadside. The entire vessel rocked over 52-degrees, and the wheelhouse windows were blown in from the force of the impact. In 1934, the SS Morro Castle, steaming the New York-Cuba route down the Atlantic coast of the U.S.A. caught fire. One of the worst fires at sea, the ship beached itself near the coastline. Passengers who could not escape on a lifeboat (what few which were not burned or made inaccessible in the inferno) jumped overboard and swam to shore, or floated in the water waiting for rescue from passing boats.

The RMS Queen Mary in New York Harbor, 1961.

In 1925, the Cunard Line offices in New York received word that a terrorist bomb had been loaded on board the RMS Berengaria. At the time, the ship was over a thousand miles out at sea. A radio distress-signal was sent to the ship from shore-stations and the vessel was searched. Passengers were herded to their lifeboat stations under the pretext of a fire-drill. The bomb was never found and the threat later turned out to be a hoax.

When shipboard life was calm, however, it could be idyllic. If the weather was fine you might take a stroll around the deck. You might visit the ship’s library, listen to the ship’s band or orchestra, or relax up on deck in a folding, wooden ‘deckchair’. Deckchairs could be rented, or they could be reserved. If you spotted a deckchair in a particular spot that you wanted to use, a steward might tack a card onto it, saying that it was reserved for a particular passenger, that way, you wouldn’t lose your special place in the sun!

The relaxed, carefree nature of ocean liner travel, as well as the friendships and connections that might’ve been made during long voyages around the world was captured in a popular song of the period, simply titled: “On a Steamer Coming Over”, about a blossoming shipboard romance between two passengers previously unknown to each other. Other popular songs of the 1920s and 30s which glamourized the allure and romance of international travel included “A Slow Boat to China”, “On a Sunny Street in Singapore”, and “Nagasaki”. In the 1920s, with America officially under prohibition, the song “I’ll See You In C-U-B-A” (1920) recommended that frustrated Americans should “…plan a wonderful trip, to Havana, hop on a ship, and I’ll see you, in C-U-B-A…”

When a ship docked in New York, customs and health officers and pilots were ferried aboard to begin the docking procedures. After going through customs and ensuring that nobody on board was seriously ill, the ship was permitted to dock and passengers were allowed off.

The Transatlantic Crossing – Part III – The Sleeper Car

Perhaps after landing at New York, you haven’t finished your journey? Then what? Well, another train-trip, of course. From New York, let’s say you travel to Chicago, the Second City, and Mobster Central! To do this, you would head to Grand Central Station in Manhattan, and from there, board one of the most famous trains in the world: The 20^th Century Limited.

The 20^th Century Limited ran nightly expresses from New York to Chicago, leaving Grand Central at 6:00pm every night, and arriving at Chicago’s LaSalle Street Station at 9:00am the next morning. The 20^th Century Limited was so famous, it was featured in a number of films. The train featured in ‘The Sting’ (1972) was the Century Limited. The train featured in ‘North by Northwest’ (1959) again, was the 20^th Century Limited.

The Twentieth Century Limited, ca. 1907. Source: Wikimedia Common

To ride the Century Limited was one of the greatest experiences in Golden Era tourism. Catering to first-class passengers and wealthy businessmen, passengers riding the Century Limited were given the Red Carpet Treatment – literally. A broad, red carpet with “Twentieth Century Limited” printed on it in gold letters was run along the platform, parallel to the train, so that passengers could spot it easily and board it without confusion. It was from here that the expression to be given the ‘red carpet treatment’ originated.

Once on board the famous train, you had dinner in one of the train’s dining-cars, eating food prepared on board. The train left New York City at 6:00pm and travelled nonstop through the night. The train didn’t stop to pick up coal or water. Instead, it relied on track-pans – large steel troughs between the railroad lines which collected rainwater, (or if rainwater was not available, were recharged using pipes connected to a reliable water-source) to refill the boiler with water during the trip – a steam-powered vehicle requires more water than fuel when it’s in operation. Upon approaching a track-pan, a crank-and-screw mechanism was operated and a scoop was lowered from the bottom of the locomotive. The force of the train rushing over the pan forced water up the scoop and into storage tanks in the tender. Pipes then channeled the water into the boiler at the front of the train.

On an overnight train journey, dinner would typically be served on board. This wasn’t just some cheap snack-bar with packets of chips, hotdogs and chocolate-bars as we might expect today. Oh no, on the Century Limited, you were treated to a full, silver-service dinner, where passengers could choose from a menu of dishes cooked on board and served in the dining-car which was accessible from other parts of the train. After dinner, you might go to the lounge car or the bar for a drink, a smoke, a game of cards or a chat with friends. If you considered yourself too sleepy, you would retire to your assigned berth or compartment in your assigned cabin. Here, you could stretch out on a bed and relax.

Travel on trains like this wasn’t entirely primitive. You had running water if you had to wash up. And flushing toilets if you had to answer a call of nature (just so long as that call wasn’t while the train was in the station – toilets emptied their contents right between the rails in those days), but in the cramped quarters of railroad carriages, don’t expect to have a bath or a shower – that would have to be reserved for the end of your trip.

Once you arrived at your destination (in this case, Chicago), you alighted the train with your luggage. Depending on how much luggage you had, you might have stored it all in your compartment. If this wasn’t possible, then it was stored in the luggage-van at the back of the train. To offload all your trunks and suitcases and move them around the station, you might need a luggage-trolley. Not one of those tiny things that you see in airports today, a real trolley, capable of carrying up to half a dozen or more bulky, well-packed trunks, cases, boxes and suitcases.

In all, this is a journey that would’ve taken you roughly a week, depending on weather conditions and delays. And this was considered fast! To make connections faster and smoother, things like boat trains, steamship tenders, express services and nonstop water-filling on long train-journeys all aimed to cut out as many of the delays as possible, and give passengers a smooth, fast and comfortable journey as possible.

Trip No. 2 – The Orient Express!

About the Orient Express

Ask any group of people to name the most famous ship in the world, and the argument could go on until the end of time. The Titanic, the Olympic, the Berengaria, the Queen Mary, the Normandie…like a box of Whitman’s Samplers, it would be impossible to try and name them all!

Now, turn the question around. Ask any group of people to name the most famous train in the world. Almost at once, only one answer will come to the minds of most people: The Orient Express.

The Orient Express is a legend, a myth, and a time-machine. It has been running almost nonstop for over 100 years. It’s lasted through two world wars and the Iron Curtain. It’s been marooned in snowstorms, blown up by terrorist bombs, broken up, remade, threatened with closure and bankruptcy, and yet, somehow, it survives, and has outlasted almost all other famous trains in history. But what is it? A very valid question indeed, because the Orient Express is probably THE most confusing journey you will ever take in your life. Why? Simple.

Because there isn’t one Orient Express.

There are FIVE.

The first is the Orient Express, which ran from 1883-2009.

The next is the Simplon Orient Express, which ran from 1919-1977.

The third one is the Arlberg Orient Express, which ran from 1930-1962.

The fourth one is the EuroNight Orient-Express, which ran from 1977-2009.

The fifth one is the Venice-Simplon Orient Express, established in 1982 and which runs to this day as a period recreation of the original Express which ran the transcontinental route started back in 1883.

Confused, much?

On top of that, all these different Orient Expresses didn’t all run the same route. And they didn’t all run the whole route. And they didn’t always run all routes all the time. Routes depended on factors such as passenger-loads, public requirements and of course, the weather. But where and when did the Orient Express start?

Established in 1883, the Orient Express ran through Europe on various routes at various times. The most common short route was Paris, France, to Venice, Italy. The most common long route was the legendary long-haul train journey to beat all train journeys – London, England to Istanbul, Turkey. This is the route that is the most famous of all. It’s the route that everyone has heard about, read about, seen on TV and watched in movies. It’s the route where Hercule Poirot, travelling from Istanbul to London, has to solve the most baffling, famous and morally confusing case of his entire career, that of the ‘Murder on the Orient Express’. 

Some might think that the Orient Express was supposed to go all the way to Asia, the ‘Orient’. It doesn’t, and never did. The name ‘Orient Express’ comes from the Latin ‘Oriens’ or ‘East’, so literally, ‘The Eastern Express’.

The original Orient Express ran from 1883-2009, with stops and starts and changes along the way. The Express was originally operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons Lits, or ‘International Sleeping-Car Company’ in English. The running of the Orient Express was interrupted at numerous times throughout history, most notably in 1914, 1939, and in the 1960s and 70s during the Cold War.

But what was it like to ride the Orient Express back in the Golden Age of Travel? As it would be too confusing to pick through the minutiae and differences of all the different Orient Express trains, the trip presented here will be one which takes the best of all the Expresses, to give us a general feel of the whole journey. Now for the starting point: London, England.

The Orient Express – Part I – The Boat Train & Boarding the Orient Express

Route: London, England to Istanbul, Turkey

Expected Travel-Time: 3-4 days (dependent on weather)

Just like with any other international trip from Great Britain, your first stop was the boat train. This time, you caught the Continental Express boat train from London’s Victoria Station, to the docks on the south coast. From here, you caught the cross-channel ferry to France. Having arrived in Calais, you would board the Orient Express and ride it from there to its main embarkation point, which was Paris’s Gare de l’Est station, which was where it picked up all passengers not travelling on the Express from Britain.

The Orient Express near Constantinople, 1900

One thing you have to understand is that the Express was not a huge, long train of a dozen grand carriages, hauled proudly along by a gigantic, steam-powered, smoke-belching locomotive chugging ahead through the European countryside. At most it was only a half-dozen carriages at any one time. A typical layout of the Orient Express included the locomotive, its tender, a luggage-van, a couple of sleeper-cars, a dining-car, a galley-car, and another luggage-van. The train made frequent stops along its route, changing and shunting carriages and coaches all the time. Carriages were added and subtracted as the route required it, so that the train wouldn’t be overburdened. But we digress; back to the Gare de l’Est.

It was here (and always from here) that the Orient Express departed when it left from Paris. It left this station for the first time on the 4^th of October, 1883, for its marathon run across Europe. The original eastern terminus was not Istanbul, but the port city of Varna in Bulgaria. Here, passengers had to get off the train and take a boat to Istanbul, then called Constantinople. It was on the 1^st of June, 1889 that the first, uninterrupted rail journey from Paris to Constantinople was accomplished. Today, the modern Venice-Simplon Orient Express still leaves from the Gare de l’Est on its two different routes, to Venice and to Istanbul. 

Paris Gare de l’Est, Paris, France, 2009. The main western terminus of the Orient Express.

The Express was not a daily service. It departed from London and Paris three days a week, (Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays) for either Bucharest, or Constantinople/Istanbul, depending on the day of the week. Travel-time took three-to-four days, depending on the weather and delays. If the weather was really bad, the train might not make it through at all. In 1929, the Express was trapped in a mammoth snowdrift that took rescuers ten days to dig out. This legendary event hit the newspapers and inspired Agatha Christie’s famous murder-mystery. It’s even referenced in the David Suchet TV production of the novel.

The Orient Express became wildly popular. Travel across Europe had previously taken weeks. Now, you could go from one end to the other in just less than a week! The Express became so popular that other trains with similar names started running similar routes across Europe, to pick up the excess passengers which the original Express couldn’t handle.

Sirkeci Terminal, Istanbul, Turkey. The eastern terminus of the Orient Express.

Whether you got onto the train at Calais, or Paris, what happened next?

Well, first you entered the station and presented your ticket. Your less important luggage was stored in the luggage-vans, and your more important cases were brought on board the train. You were assigned a carriage, and a compartment within that carriage – always a sleeper-car. Your steward (there was one steward for each sleeper-car, whose job it was to look after the passengers under his care) would show you to your compartment, put your luggage safely away, and then he would ask for your passport.

As the Orient Express was a transcontinental train, it passed through several borders and countries (thirteen countries in total!) At every stop along the way, border-officers would board the train to check the passports of each passenger. So that passengers wouldn’t be disturbed at every single border crossing, their steward would handle their passports, and present them to border-guards at each stop, where they would be checked and stamped with a minimum of fuss and disturbance.

A typical compartment on an Orient Express sleeper was very small. Designed to hold two people and their most essential luggage, it came with a double-bunk bed (which could be turned into a couch in the daytime by your trusty carriage-steward), electric lights, a call-button, a hook on the wall for your watch, to stop it sliding around, space for your luggage and clothes, and a closing wash-basin. All packed into a space 5ft wide by 8ft deep by about 8ft high! Pretty snug!

The Orient Express – Part II – Riding the Orient Express

Within the confines of about three or four passenger-carriages, the Orient Express had a surprisingly large number of features. You had electric lights, heaters, a call-button system, hot running water and cold running water provided by cisterns on board, and one flushing toilet per-carriage. But no shower, and certainly no bath! The Express was luxurious, but not that luxurious!

A carriage of the Orient Express in CIWL livery.

During your trip, your constant guide and assistant was your carriage-steward. He handled passports, answered questions, provided assistance, helped with your luggage and answered the light above your door if you called for assistance. But for all his efforts, your poor steward didn’t get too much in return!

For all the services that the carriage-stewards provided, they had almost no personal space of their own. At best, they slept in small, cramped quarters at the end of the carriage, or if not even that, then on padded benches or chairs out in the corridor at the end of each carriage. From here, they could monitor the service-lights above each compartment door, and help passengers if they exited their compartments.

A poster advertising the Orient Express

The Orient Express did not run one route. It ran several routes of varying lengths, with terminations in Athens, Paris, Calais, Venice and Istanbul. Common stops along the longest Express routes included Venice, Krakow, Budapest, Vienna, Belgrade, Munich and Bucharest, until the train finally arrived in Istanbul. The train was a popular mode of transport for the rich and famous. Authors, actors, musicians, dancers, and artists all travelled on the Orient Express. So too did diplomats, since the Express ran through many major European cities. It was also popular with British colonial officials hoping to reach India as fast and as comfortable as possible.

The three-and-half-day journey of the Orient Express meant that comfort and luxury had to be part of the package. Passengers weren’t going to pay to go on just any train if it didn’t come with some sort of draw-card. On the Orient Express, you were served meals cooked fresh and hot in the kitchen-car, which were served in the dining-car. The train was restocked at each stop along the way, so that the kitchen could be cleaned out and empty containers thrown away. Whenever the train stopped at a station, you could get out and send telegrams or letters from the station’s telegraph office or nearby post office, and have opportunities to take photographs and stretch your legs.

At the end of three-and-a-half grueling days, you would arrive at your destination. The eastern terminus for the Orient Express was the Sirkeci Terminus in Istanbul (or ‘Constantinople’ during the early years of the Express). From here, you could travel to countries like Egypt, Persia (Iran), India, Palestine (Israel), or sail further on towards Asia, reaching countries like Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Siam (Thailand), Burma (Myanmar) or the colonial holdings of the Straits Settlements (Malaysia & Singapore), the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) or French Indochina (modern-day Vietnam).

Come Take a Trip in my Air-Ship!

One of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the Golden Age of Travel was the new kid on the block: Airships!

Controlled, powered air-transport had been a reality ever since 1852, when French inventor Henri Giffard took to the skies in the world’s first powered airship. This crude technology was a full fifty-one years before the Wright Brothers made their legendary flight at Kittyhawk in 1903. The Wright Brothers were not the first people to fly. They were not the first people to attain controlled flight. They were the first to do so successfully in an airplane. Airships predated them by half a century!

It was because of this that in the early 20^th century, most people put great expectations upon the airship to be the air-transport king of the future! Flimsy airplanes with tiny engines, wooden frames stretched over with cloth and strung together with wires couldn’t possibly transport great numbers of people in speed, comfort and safety! But an airship, floating gracefully through the air, powered along by its propellers, looked big, sturdy and capable, although this was mostly due to publicity rather than fact. Early airships were slow, inefficient and lacked sufficient lift to make them effective modes of transport. In the 1880s and 1890s, experiments were made using batteries (which were too heavy and inefficient), and first-generation internal-combustion engines, which were too slow. It would not be until the turn of the century that the first real strides in airship technology allowed for practical transport.

Throughout the Edwardian era, airship technology, a pet project of Germans such as Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin, and Hugo Eckener, continued to advance. Nonrigid airships (‘Blimps’, we’d call them today) were phased out in favour of dirigibles, or rigid-frame airships, where gas-bags were inflated inside a rigid frame with fabric stretched over it. Airships remained largely experimental until the end of the decade, when the first flights of significant distance were achieved, first across Germany, and then across the European continent. In October, 1910, the first ever airship, the Clement Bayard II, managed to fly from Europe to Britain and made aerial-transport history. The airship captured the imagination of the travelling public like no other form of transport before it. In 1904 the song: “Come take a Trip in my Air-Ship” was published, many years before the airship became a popular form of long distance transport. Despite this, the song’s lyrics spoke of fantastical trips far beyond the vehicle’s capabilities at the time.

The first successful passenger-carrying airships started taking to the air around this time. This growth in confidence and advancement in technology led to the establishment of airship companies towards the end of the decade. In 1908, the Zeppelin Company was established in Germany, headed by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. In 1909, DEFLAG, or the German Airship Transport Company, was established. DEFLAG stood for Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktein-Gesellschaft, the company’s name in German.

Between the 1900s until the start of the First World War in August of 1914, the Germans had established the world’s first commercial passenger airship companies and a network of routes and airship fields around Germany. German expertise with airships was growing, and growing enough for them to start using airships in bombing raids.

In 1915 during the First World War, airships were used in the first long-range bombing missions ever carried out in wartime over a civilian population. London, although almost out of the effective range of airship technology at the time, was still a big target. The British were largely unprepared for this new form of warfare and had to hastily adopt strategies for attacking and destroying German military airships, as well as warning the public of air-raids (this led to the post-war creation of Air Raid Precautions in 1924). Airships, for all their size, had a notorious Achilles Heel – the fact that they were inflated with highly explosive and flammable hydrogen gas. British fighter-pilots took advantage of this by firing incendiary bullets at the airships as they flew past them in their primitive combat biplanes.

Despite the death and destruction wrought by the German ‘Baby-Killers’ as they were called by the British propagandists during the First World War, airships became wildly popular in the post-war era. By now, Friedrichshafen in Germany was the name that everyone associated with airships. It was where they were built, launched from, and where passengers travelled in order to board. With airplanes still being little more than open air, unpressurised biplanes – unreliable at best and lethal at the worst of times, airships stood to take on the rising market in international air-travel.

The golden age of the airship was truly the Roaring Twenties and the 1930s. Although other countries such as America and Britain had attempted to establish airship programs, either for passenger transport or for military purposes, only the Germans really succeeded in either of these endeavours. The British airship program ended in disaster with the crash of their most famous airship, the R101, in 1930. Similar disasters marred the American airship program in the years to follow. The result was that by the mid-1930s, only the Germans were still operating regular passenger airship routes. Their most famous was airship LZ-129, better known as the Hindenburg.

Trip No. 3 – LZ-129 Hindenburg!

Route: Frankfurt, Germany, to Lakehurst, New Jersey, U.S.A.

Expected Travel-Time: 2½ days (3 days if you were flying Germany to South America)

The Hindenburg – Part I – Boarding the Hindenburg

If the rigid airship or dirigible was the symbol of cutting-edge transport technology in the 1920s and 30s, then the Hindenburg was rightly considered the flagship of this new glamorous and new-age technology – the most famous airship of its age, and of any age. The Hindenburg was to be the pride and joy of the Zeppelin Company, and its design and appointments were expected to rival even the most luxurious of the transatlantic ocean liners chugging across the ocean over which it glided, free of the dangers of Atlantic storms, icebergs, and wrecks with other vessels. It symbolized a bold, new post-war age of scientific advancement and technological skill. But what was it like to ride on? To find out, let’s take a typical flight on the Hindenburg. This would’ve been from Frankfurt in Germany, to Lakehurst, New Jersey, in the United States, a trip that typically took two-and-a-half days.

The Hindenburg’s departures were remarkable events. Docked on the ground, and tethered off, passengers would have their tickets clipped and their luggage loaded on board. As an obvious safety-precaution, passengers’ cigarette-lighters and matches were confiscated upon boarding. You were not allowed to use them, you were not allowed access to them, and you would only get them back at the end of the trip. Smoking in unauthorized parts of the airship was forbidden. Any fire could rapidly get out of hand, and if it did, the risk of explosion was high.

That’s not to say the Hindenburg didn’t have water on board – Water was stored in ballast-tanks and cisterns on board. These tanks controlled the ship’s weight and speed of descent and ascent. At the appropriate time, water was jettisoned from the ballast-tanks, and the tethers and ropes holding the airship down would be released. The Hindenburg floated into the air so quietly and noiselessly that many passengers on board never noticed the takeoff. On many occasions, passengers would ask the stewards why the airship had not yet left the ground! In reply, stewards would simply tell the passengers to look out the window, and they would see that they were already well on their way!

Despite the airship’s size, only a small percentage of its space was given over to passenger and crew accommodations. The majority of the airship’s space was taken up by the metal framework, maintenance shafts and corridors, and the huge gas-bags, which gave the airship its lift. Passenger and crew-quarters were limited to the small cabins or ‘cars’ underneath the airship. The airship had an auxiliary control-car at the rear, a main control-car at the front, and the large combined (but segregated) passenger-and-crew accommodations between them. The ship was powered by four ‘engine-cars’, two slung out on each side, with large propellers to power the ship through the air. They were kept well away from the passenger and crew-quarters, to cut down on noise interference.

Fully loaded, the Hindenburg could house seventy-two passengers in comfort. They were broken up into pairs, and each pair shared a cabin with a double-bunk bed and wash-basin with running hot and cold water. Cabins were housed on A-deck, along with the airship’s promenade area, dining-room, and lounge, complete with grand piano for passenger entertainment. Below, on B-deck, were the mess-rooms for officers and crew, the airship’s kitchen, bathrooms and toilets, the airship’s bar, and beyond the bar, the smoking-room.

The Hindenburg allowed only one functioning cigarette lighter on board, to cut down the danger of fire and the subsequent risk of igniting the hydrogen gas in the gas-bags above. This single cigarette-lighter was an electric one which was fixed to the central table in the smoking-room. To make the room as safe as possible, there was even a double-airlock door between the smoking-room and the rest of the airship.

To look after you once the ship got underway, the Hindenburg had forty crew and officers, and a dozen stewards and cooks to see to passenger comfort and cook the food for all the passengers, officers and crew. Officers, the captain and passengers all ate in the same dining-room.

Food on the Hindenburg was prepared fresh every day. The airship featured an electric stove, roasting and baking ovens, an ice-maker, and a refrigerator. A typical crossing would see the ship’s chef cook his way through 440lbs of meat and poultry, 800 eggs and up to 220lbs of butter!

The Hindenburg – Part II – Travelling on the Hindenburg

The Hindenburg represented the pinnacle of early 20^th-century air-travel. It was dignified, smooth, quiet, classy, modern, and comfortable. Airplanes by comparison were considered cramped, noisy and uncomfortable. Given a choice, most people would probably have flown anywhere in an airship, and the world expected these graceful, mechanically-powered balloons to transport people everywhere in style and comfort. The spire at the top of the Empire State Building in Manhattan was originally designed as an airship-dock, although this was later deemed to be so unsafe that the idea was scrapped.

A voyage on the Hindenburg took from 2-3 days, depending on the destination: either Rio in South America, or New Jersey in the United States. Passengers on board could kill time in the smoking-room, the reading-and-writing room, or the lounge. Passengers wanting a drink could go to B-deck, and visit the bar, located next to the smoking-room.

If you wanted to enjoy some music during the voyage, the Hindenburg’s grand piano was available for any and all musically-gifted passengers. This piano might be considered unique in the history of piano-manufacturing. Due to the strict weight-limits that governed the Hindenburg’s maneuverability and lift, the majority of this piano (a baby grand) was manufactured out of aluminum, to make it as light as possible! Even the legs were made of hollow aluminum tubing, to cut down on weight. The instrument’s weight was just 162kg, remarkably light for a piano!

Passengers on the Hindenburg could get amazing birdseye views of the seas and landscapes below by looking through the downward-angled windows on either side of the main cabin.

On opposite sides of the main cabin, both the dining-room and the lounge offered amazing views of the earth below, through down-facing windows. Passengers could lean on balustrades and handrails on the outer sides of these two rooms, and look down through the glass at the world passing by beneath them. If you had a camera on hand (and some passengers did bring them), amazing views of the world from above could be taken from these vantage points.

The Hindenburg – Part III – Landing the Hindenburg

Landing a modern jumbo jet is a fairly straightforward affair. After receiving clearance from air-traffic control, a plane lines up with a runway, slows speed, drops its landing gear, extends flaps and thrust-reversers and touches down, sometimes as smoothly as a landing feather.

Landing a huge airship like the Hindenburg was a significantly more challenging procedure. Here is how it happened:

Once the Hindenburg had been cleared for landing by radio, it would make for the mooring-area – on trips to the United States, this was the Naval Air Base at Lakehurst, New Jersey. The crew on board the Hindenburg would drop mooring-lines out of the airship’s body and ground-crews would grab them and physically pull the ship towards the mooring-mast. A main, central mooring-cable was dropped from the ship’s nose, and this was affixed to the mooring-mast. The cable was then winched in, drawing the ship towards the ground. The extra mooring-lines held by ground-crews would stop the airship from blowing off-target as it was being winched to the ground.

As the airship descended, water from its ballast-tanks would be released. This was to lessen the ship’s weight, and to reduce the chances of the airship crashing to the ground if it landed too heavily. Once near to the ground, mooring-lines would be made fast, and then the stairs and hatches under the airship could be opened so that passengers and crew could get out.

Bags were unloaded and sorted. Every passenger on the Hindenburg had his bags marked with a company stamp. On the stamp was a letter corresponding to the first letter of his surname. Bags were unloaded and sorted alphabetically, so that passengers could find them more easily. After a two-and-a-half day journey floating across the Atlantic, your trip on one of the great marvels of the Golden Age of Travel was over.

The End of the Golden Age of Travel

The Second World War signaled the beginning of the end of the Golden Age of Travel. The powerful changes caused all over the world by this conflict meant that it was impossible to revive the glory days of travel that had existed before the war. Too much had happened and too much had changed or been lost forever, to make this possible. And it would be decades before anything even resembling a tribute to the Golden Age of Travel would be possible once more. Technological changes, as well as political and geographical ones would further speed the end of the Golden Age, as old forms of transport were replaced with new ones, and a whole new way of travelling swept across the world in the 1950s.

Countries once open to travel, like China, were now closed. Ravaged by war and internal political strife, the decadence and grandeur of pre-war Shanghai was lost forever after the Japanese invaded the International Settlement on the 7^th of December, 1941 – the Day of Infamy. Foreigners fled the city by the shipload, and one of the most popular tourist spots in the world was abandoned almost overnight. It would be another forty years before Shanghai would open up to the West again, when the Americans re-established their consulate in Shanghai in 1980.

The Dutch, French and British Empires were rocked by powerful independence movements, especially in French Indochina (Vietnam), the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), India and Malaya. This made travel to the Far East unwise at best and dangerous at the worst of times. European countries like Germany, Austria, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands and Greece were heavily bomb-damaged. Malaya and Singapore were still recovering from the Japanese occupation.

The original Hotel Adlon, opened in 1907. Berlin, 1926, near the Brandenburg Gate.

Hotels from the Golden Age which once boasted famous journalists, actors, artists, politicians and diplomats as their guests, had been burned down, shelled or destroyed entirely during the War. The Hotel Adlon in Berlin, a popular haunt of foreign journalists and international celebrities in pre-war Germany, was badly damaged during the Russian occupation of the city. The Adlon has since been rebuilt in a style closely resembling the original hotel, and on the original site that it has occupied since it was opened in 1907. It was from the balcony of his room at the rebuilt Hotel Adlon, that Michael Jackson famously dangled his son, in 2002. However, the Hotel Adlon is a rare example of the Golden Age reborn. Most Berlin hotels destroyed by enemy air-raids or cannon-fire were not rebuilt after the War.

Destroyed by Russian artillery-shells and fire in the Second World War, the rebuilt Hotel Adlon opened in Berlin in 1997, 90 years after, and on the same site as the original. Source: Wikimedia Commons

In Singapore, the world-famous Raffles Hotel was taken over by the Japanese when they overran the island. With the Japanese surrender in 1945, officers committed suicide in its rooms. In 1942, at the start of the occupation, Raffles’ waiters had dug a huge pit in the gardens and threw in the hotel’s silverware and buried it, hiding it from the enemy. When the war ended, the hole was dug up, and the silverware was retrieved, cleaned and put back into service. One of the items dug up was Raffles’ solid silver antique carving-trolley, used to present and serve the Sunday roast. After being carefully restored, it’s still used in the hotel today!

The rise of communism and the Eastern Bloc in Europe meant that as soon as the Second World War was over, it was replaced by the Cold War. And countries and cities which might once have been popular tourist destinations, like Poland, and the Free City of Danzig, were increasingly difficult to visit because of the ‘Iron Curtain’, a word coined by Winston Churchill. The rise of the Iron Curtain also put an end to the traditional Orient Express. It continued to run, but it would be the 1990s before it could reopen its classic London-to-Istanbul route once again.

Airplanes now replaced ocean liners as the main means of intercontinental travel. The disastrous crash of the airship Hindenburg in 1937 and the subsequent Second World War forever squashed any ideas of airships being the primary mode of air transport around the world. Airplanes were faster than airships and ocean liners, and much cheaper. Before long, many shipping companies were sending their ships to sea with half or even one-third capacities. It wouldn’t be until the Queen Mary 2, that grand, ocean liners would cross the seas of the world in grandeur and style once more.

By the 1960s, grand ocean liner travel was something of the past. Ships like the Aquitania and the Queen Mary were either too old to run, or too expensive to rebuild or maintain. Competition from airports and airlines meant falling passenger numbers. And shipping lines could no longer get enough revenue from fare-paying passengers to keep their expensive seagoing ships in good repair. Famously, the Aquitania suffered structural failures late in her career. Corrosion, leaking decks and ceilings and rotting timberwork and unsafe floors resulted in a spectacular incident involving a piano falling through the deck into the dining-room below!

Airports replaced seaports. Luggage restrictions, security scares, hijackings and terrorist plots shaped the travel experience that we have today, and the era of relaxed, glamorous travel which we’ve seen in movies, novels and TV shows vanished forever.

Sources used in the writing of this posting included:

ARCHBOLD , Rick – “HINDENBURG – Reliving the Era of the Great Airships – AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY” – Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion Publishing Group, London (1994) – Illustrations and artwork by Ken Marschall.

DANKER, Leslie – “Memoirs of a Raffles Original”, Angsana Books, Singapore (2010)

DONG, Stella – “Shanghai – The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City”, Perennial, New York, U.S.A. (2001)

KRASNO, Rena – “Once Upon a Time in Shanghai: A Jewish Woman’s Journey through 20^th Century China”, China Intercontinental Press, Beijing, China (2008)

MATTEOLI, Francisca – “WORLD TOUR – Vintage Hotel Labels from the Collection of Gaston-Louis Vuitton” – Abrams, New York, U.S.A.

SERVER, Lee – “The Golden Age of Ocean Liners”, Todtri, U.S.A., (1996)

“Great Journeys – Travel the World’s Most Spectacular Routes”, Lonely Planet, Victoria, Australia (Aug. 2013)

http://www.airships.net/ – One of the most comprehensive web-sources out there, on the history of airships and the Hindenburg – Accessed 25^th, June, 2014

http://mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/r045.html – Mike’s Railway History – ‘The Orient Express’ – Accessed 20^th of June, 2014

http://www.seat61.com/OrientExpress.htm#.U7QWjJSSxD1 – Seat61.com – ‘The Truth Behind the Legend – The Orient Express’ – Accessed 21^st of June, 2014

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-orient-express-149702768/?no-ist – Smithsonian.com – “A Brief History of the Orient Express” – Accessed 21^st of June, 2014

This article was originally posted in the July, 2014 issue of the Australia Times – HISTORY online magazine, and is reposted here with permission.

I’m lucky enough to live in a city with one of the largest, and oldest tram networks in the world. For over 130 years, virtually every type of tram or streetcar that has ever been invented has, at one point or another, rattled, rumbled and clattered along the streets of Melbourne, the capital city of the state of Victoria, in Australia.

So, living in such a place as this, it seemed only logical that I should write a posting about the history of trams, or streetcars as they’re known Stateside. I’ll be using both terms interchangeably (along with others) throughout the posting. Anyway, let’s begin…

Horse-Drawn Trams

Apart from horse-drawn taxi-cabs (or ‘hackney-coaches’ as they were sometimes called), the tram or streetcar is the oldest form of urban public transport in the world, and certainly the oldest form of mass transit in the world. But why did they come to be in the first place? Why on earth would you have something that rides on rails? Surely it’s just cheaper to have something that rides along the road-surface instead, just like everything else, right?

Well, running wheels on tracks or rails had one big advantage over running wheels over the road – tracks, made of wrought iron or steel, were smooth and flat. This meant that there was less friction. Less friction meant a smoother, easier ride – particularly important, when you consider that early trams were pulled by horses! The bumpy, rough, friction-inducing nightmare of dragging a carriage through the streets was much harder than simply gliding along smooth rails of steel and iron. Making the trams easier to pull meant that the horses which pulled them could go faster, further and more frequently, and could pull heavier loads with more comfort, important if they were going up or down hills all day!

These first, horse-drawn trams operated as early as the 1800s, but it wasn’t until the 1850s that permanent horse-tram lines and networks started being established in England, Europe, and the United States. Although moderately effective, horse trams came with a variety of issues that made them undesirable.

First, they couldn’t go appreciably faster than a horse and carriage. Secondly, they were limited largely to flat, or gentle sloping areas. Thirdly, horses could be injured on the job. They also required rest, food and water, medical attention and specialist equipment to do their jobs. And horses had to be replaced regularly if they got tired or ill.

While horse-trams could pull heavier loads with greater ease while the trams remained on the tracks, the simple fact was that eventually, there would be a load that would be too heavy for the horse to pull – especially uphill. This was dangerous if the horse suddenly lost its grip and the tram went sliding back down the hill instead of up it! By the 1870s and 1880s, more effective methods of urban mass-transit were being explored that were safer, faster, smoother and cleaner.

Cable-Hauled Streetcars

The next major advancement in tram technology was the development of the cable-hauled streetcar. The system was surprisingly advanced for the day, but also relatively simple to operate, even though it required a fair bit of infrastructure in order for it to work.

Using huge steam-engines, large driving-wheels pulled enormous steel cables through a trench or ‘slot’ between the two guiding-rails along a streetcar’s route. The trams themselves had no motive force. To move, a steel clamp fed down into the slot gripped around the cable as it slid past.

Once firmly clamped onto the cable, the grip allowed the streetcar to be pulled along the tracks at the speed of the cable, which was dictated by the speed of the driving-wheels and pulleys in the powerhouse at the end of the streetcar line. Wheels and pulleys set into the tracks also helped guide the streetcar up and down hills, and around corners.

Experiments in cable-hauled transport date back to the 1820s, but many early attempts failed miserably, and were eventually replaced by steam-powered locomotives. It wasn’t until the early 1870s that the technology was truly viable.

The first really successful cable-streetcar was established in the suitably hilly city of San Francisco, a city where then-conventional horse-trams couldn’t possibly hope to operate. After witnessing a horrible horse-tram accident while living in the city by the bay, it is said that English-born inventor Andrew Hallidie decided to use his expertise in manufacturing ‘wire rope’ (what today we’d call ‘steel cables’) to see whether he could design a really effective, and safer cable-hauled streetcar system.

That system, the first, last, and today, only original cable-streetcar network still functioning in the world in modern times, was opened in San Francisco in 1873. Between 1873 and 1900, several miles of track were laid out across San Francisco.

The city’s neat, grid-layout of streets made the laying of streetcar lines easy and by the turn of the century, it had one of the most extensive cable-streetcar networks in the world. Strategically-placed powerhouses operated the massive wheels required to pull the cables between the tracks and one powerhouse could, if properly sited, power the cables for two or three different lines all at once.

Operating a Cable-Streetcar

Cable-hauled streetcars were the most technologically advanced form of public transport yet devised. The system operated by having a steel cable running through a trench (‘slot’) in the road between the two running tracks of the streetcar line. The cable moved at a constant rate of speed and at a certain tension. The streetcars themselves had no engines or motors. They moved by sliding a clamp (‘the grip’) through the slot in the road. The grip-jaws locked around the cable by mechanical force, and this grip held onto the cable and the car was pulled along the street as the cable moved through the slot.

Cable-streetcars typically had two or three brakes – a standard track-brake (blocks of wood which clamped down on the track to create friction and stop the car) and wheel-brakes, operated by the crew using wheels and cranks.

A cable-streetcar typically had two crew-members: The driver or ‘gripman’, and the conductor.

The gripman operated the heavy grip-levers used to ‘pick up’ (grasp) or ‘throw’ (drop) the cable. As this was done entirely by brute force and mechanical movement, you needed considerable strength to pull the levers back and forth to operate the heavy steel jaws that clamped onto the cable running beneath the car. The gripman also kept his eyes on the road ahead, and above him in the gripman’s dummy-car, was a rope and handle for ringing the main bell at the front of the streetcar to announce stopping, staring, and to clear the road ahead.

Knowing when to ‘throw’ and ‘pick up’ the cable was vital – usually, this was done when the streetcar was entering or exiting the car-barn at the start or end of a shift, or else when it was crossing intersections with tracks from other streetcar lines running perpendicular. If you didn’t drop the cable at the right time, then the grip-jaws would snag against the cable of the streetcar tracks running the other way across the intersection. It was a job that required a fair bit of concentration, and a lot of brute strength!

While the gripman operated the actual movement and control of the streetcar, his second-in-command, the conductor, did everything else. Conductors were in charge of helping passengers on and off the cable-tram, of issuing tickets and collecting fares, operating the emergency brake (usually located at the back of the tram) in the event of an emergency, and of communicating instructions to the gripman.

To communicate orders to the gripman, the conductor used the smaller communications bell mounted to the underside the dummy-car’s roof. A cable ran around the inside of the streetcar, through guide-rings bolted to the ceiling. Pulling the cord and ringing the bell once, was the signal to stop. Ringing the bell twice was the signal to proceed. Ringing it three or more times was the signal that the streetcar needed to make an emergency stop. This bell was either operated by the conductor, wishing to communicate with the gripman, or by the passengers themselves, wanting to board or alight the streetcar at various stops along the way.

The Spread of the Cable-Hauled Streetcar

Although costly to install, cable-hauled streetcars were popular around the world because of their relative ease of operation, and ability to operate under conditions that older, horse-drawn streetcars could not. They could move faster, smoother, were more controllable, they could climb hills and descend slopes with greater speed and safety, and they did not require the streetcar companies to maintain a whole heap of horses.

Because of all these benefits, cable-hauled streetcar systems spread all over the globe. At one time they could be found in San Francisco (where they originated), but also New York, Melbourne, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Philadelphia, St. Louis, London, Birmingham, Wellington…as you can see, their use was quite extensive!

Extensive, popular, but also, relatively short-lived. Just as cable-hauled trams were becoming the norm (around the turn of the last century), new methods of streetcar propulsion started becoming popular. In Europe, experiments in gasoline-fired trams, steam trams, and electric trams were underway. As early as the 1890s, some cities were already creating (or converting) streetcar-lines that operated on electrical power.

Despite this, cable-hauled streetcars remained in use for a considerable length of time. The expense of changing over to electricity, the high price of early automobiles, warfare, the Great Depression, and other stalling factors kept them going. However, by the early 1900s, most were on the way out, and after the Second World War, only a handful of cities still had them (Melbourne’s cable-tram network was finally shut down in 1940, for example).

Electric Streetcars

By the 1890s, cable-hauled streetcars were already becoming obsolete, being replaced by much faster, smoother-operating electrically powered models. Although they weren’t any quieter than cable-cars, electrically-powered models could do away with things like centrally-positioned cable-slots, guide-wheels, powerhouses and heavy engines to drive the machinery needed to operate a vast cable-hauled streetcar network. Electric trams could have lights, hydraulic brakes and doors, and they didn’t need so much physical strength to operate them.

With the aid of a trolley-pole (which today has been replaced by the more reliable pantograph), electrical power was delivered from overhead wires to the streetcar. The electrical power operated the little motor and ran through the circuitry inside the body of the streetcar to move it forwards or backwards, and to power the lights. Moving the streetcar was then simply a matter of increasing or decreasing the amount of power sent to the wheels beneath the chassis, which controlled the speed.

Since electrical streetcars did not have to rely on a cable to pull them through the streets, they could be made much larger and could carry far more passengers. Various configurations of electric trams were developed in the late 1800s and early 1900s, to try and fit as many passengers on in as many ways as possible. Open and closed compartments, and seats and doors in different configurations were all trialed and tested to find designs that would work.

The Decline of the Streetcar

Trams or streetcars remained popular in countless dozens of cities all over the world for the better part of fifty or sixty years. From Canada to Britain, America to Europe, China to Australia and New Zealand, all kinds of trams, trolleys and streetcars of all varieties, were being used from the period spanning roughly 1850 – 1960. And then suddenly – most of them just…disappeared! Cities that once boasted extensive networks saw them vanish in the space of a few years, or even months!

Why?

In the postwar “Long Boom” of the 50s and 60s, trams were seen as old-fashioned. They were heavy, loud, they took up road-space, they were rattly and could only travel along fixed routes. They were seen as a relic of the Victorian era, when people didn’t have cars, and therefore needed trams to get around.

But now people had cars! So why on earth would they still need trams? And if they need trams, why not replace them with buses? So much more flexible!

It was thinking like this which caused many cities to rip up the vast majority of, or in some cases, even all, their tram-tracks and replace them with dedicated bus-lanes. Melbourne in Australia, my home town, was one of the very, very few cities which retained its network when all over the world, from Los Angeles to Shanghai, Cincinnati to New York, cities were disposing of the tracks, the sheds, the rolling-stock…everything! In the whole world, Melbourne, Hong Kong, San Francisco, and a handful of other cities, were the only major population-centers to cling onto them. And of all those, only Melbourne really bothered to expand on their networks and keep it going as a viable means of public transport.

Buses Replace Trams

Starting in the 1940s, buses started replacing trams in big cities, and this trend only increased in the 1950s and 60s as more and more cities started removing streetcar lines from their streets. In most developed countries, most people could now afford cars, and the freedom to go where-ever they wanted, because of them. This meant that there was less need for public transport, and therefore a decrease in interest in trams. But replacing them with buses meant that there was only another set of wheels on the road which was loud, heavy, polluting and which couldn’t move any faster than the traffic itself.

On top of that, buses needed to stop regularly for everything else that a car needed to – oil-changes, refueling, replacing tires, fixing punctures, engine-repairs…these all cost money, but it also means that buses didn’t last as long as trams did.

A Streetcar-named Desire!

In the early 21st century, trams, trolleys and streetcars – whatever you wish to call them – have been seeing a huge resurgence in popularity around the world. In cities where such networks already exist, news tracks are being laid. In cities where streetcars didn’t exist, routes are being opened. In cities where streetcars once rolled, old stock is being pulled out of retirement and being put back into service.

Since 2000, at least a dozen cities in the United States have started experimenting with streetcar networks, including Portland in Oregon (which has one of the largest modern streetcar networks in the USA), Cincinnati in Ohio, and London in England.

Along with Melbourne and Hong Kong, other cities which never shut down their streetcar lines include New Orleans in Louisiana, Toronto in Canada, Vienna in Austria, and San Francisco in California, which still maintains a total of five routes (three cable-routes, and two heritage streetcar routes running vintage streetcars imported from around the world).

One of Melbourne’s vintage, W-class trams, which were popular in the 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s. When I was a kid, you could still find these vintage relics clattering around town. Today they’re a pretty rare sight, although you can still sometimes find them.

Why Are Streetcars Coming Back?

Honestly? Because they’re cool. And because people are finally realising the error of their ways.

While it’s true that buses are more flexible in the sense that they don’t need rails to move on, buses had a number of disadvantages which meant that they simply could not outperform trams.

Buses were limited in size, they burn fuel and emit fumes, they require regular maintenance and tire-changes and repairs, and they need to deal with all the other issues that public transport has to handle. Trams by comparison could be made very long, with lots of space inside them for passengers. They could last on the road far longer than buses, they didn’t emit fumes, and they use electricity to move around with, which can be produced from clean sources that don’t emit harmful gases.

Trams don’t have much in the way of maintenance. Apart from regular cleaning and the occasional motor-check, there’s no fuel to replace, and steel wheels and tires last a lot longer than rubber ones, and by their nature, tram-routes are typically limited to wider streets and boulevards, meaning that they’re less likely to delay traffic, even if they do break down. On top of that, tram or streetcar networks give a city in the 21st century – just as they did in the 19th century – a look of progress and modernity.

It’s for all these reasons and more, that trams are making a comeback. While some cities struggle with the idea of miniature train-lines running through their streets, the number of large cities around the world which are successfully embracing, and even expanding on their tram-networks are proof that over 100 years ago, our Victorian ancestors knew what they were on about!

In the history of transport, fewer inventions were more compact, innovative, liberating, practical and enjoyable than that of the bicycle. And yet, the bicycle as we know it today is only just over 100 years old. What is the story behind this invention? Why was it created? And how did it reach the design which we know so well today? Let’s take a ride…

The World Before the Bicycle

Before bicycles came onto the scene with their dingling bells and rattling drive-chains, transport was slow, dependent, and/or crowded. You had ships, boats, carriages, horseback, or your own two feet.

When it came to pre-bicycle travel, you had three options available when it came to the characteristics of the journey that you were likely to receive:

Fast, Private, Comfortable.

You may pick only two.

If it was fast and comfortable, such as a railroad-train, you were resigned to sharing the carriage, and even the compartment, with others.

If it was private and comfortable, such as a carriage, then it certainly wasn’t fast. The average speed of horse-drawn transport in the 19th century was about seven or ten miles an hour at best. In the same bag is walking. Private and relatively comfortable, but don’t expect to get anywhere in a hurry.

If it was fast and private, such as riding on horseback, alone, then it certainly wasn’t going to be very comfortable, being jolted around in a saddle for hours on end.

What was needed was a fast, relatively comfortable, individual mode of transport, that relied purely on the rider for propulsion, and which didn’t need to fed, fired, stabled, stoked, sailed, steamed or otherwise externally operated.

With the internal combustion-engine still a dream, and coal-fired steam-carriages being large, loud, slow and unpredictable (to say nothing of dangerous), there was a serious market for a convenient, fast, practical machine which a rider could use for individual transport: The Bicycle.

The First Bicycles

The first serious attempt at a bicycle-like machine was the German-made ‘hobby-horse’ or ‘dandy-horse‘ machine of the 1810s.

The ‘Dandy Horse’ bicycle was a fascinating…um…experiment. It was hardly what you could call a bicycle, and it was never utilised as a serious mode of transport. It was seen more as a toy, for the use and amusement of the ‘dandy’, the well-dressed, leisured, upper-class gentleman of Regency-era Europe. As you can see, the Dandy Horse has no seat to speak of, no driving-mechanism, no pedals, not even a real handlebar! Steering and propulsion are rudimentary at best, and without any form of suspension, riding one of these on the rough, dirt roads of 1810s Europe would’ve been hard on the back and spine!

You didn’t so much ‘drive’ or ‘operate’ the dandy-horse as you ‘glided’ on it, similar to a skateboard. You kicked it along the ground with your feet to build up speed and then coasted along until the momentum gave out. An amusing gimmick for a Regency garden-party, but hardly a practical form of transport!

During this time, the word ‘bicycle’ was not even coined. And wouldn’t be for several decades. Human-powered, wheeled land-machines were called ‘Velocipedes‘, from the Latin words for ‘Fast’ (as in ‘Velocity’), and ‘Foot’ (as in ‘pedestrian’). And as the 1800s progressed, there was a growing range of fantastical and ridiculous ‘velocipede’ machines with which to delight the population of Europe.

The next advancement in bicycle technology came from France, and we look to Joseph Niepce and his contraption known as the…um…’velocipede‘.

Any long-term readers of this blog may fancy that they’ve heard the name ‘Niepce’ before on this website. And you’d be right. Apart from tinkering with bicycles, he was also instrumental in the development of modern photography. 

Joseph N. Niepce’s contribution to the bicycle came in the early 1860s, although it wasn’t a great departure from what had existed before.

The Niepce ‘velocipede’ differed from the earlier ‘dandy-horse’, but only a couple of ways: The front wheel now had pedals, and a proper seat or saddle which was adjustable to the height of the rider, along with proper handlebars and steering. But other than these minor additions and improvements, the French velocipede was not much of an improvement.

A French ‘velocipede’, as invented by Joseph Niepce. Note the presence of the handlebars and steerable front wheel, and the centrally-mounted saddle

The Ordinary Bicycle came next. Invented in the late 1860s, the Ordinary was the first machine to be specifically called a ‘bicycle‘, using the two words ‘bi’, meaning ‘two’ and ‘cycle’.  The Ordinary also introduced something which has become commonplace among all bicycles to this day: Wire-spoked wheels!

The Ordinary was variously called a High Bicycle, a Boneshaker (due to its lack of suspension), or, most famously of all – a Penny Farthing, after the largest, and smallest denomination coins in circulation in Britain at the time.

The Ordinary was the first bicycle for which there was any serious commercial success, and they became popular for personal transport, as well as being used as racing-machines!

Despite its relative popularity, the Ordinary had some serious shortcomings: There were no brakes, there was no suspension, and they were incredibly dangerous to ride! The immense front wheel could tower up to six feet in the air, which made mounting and riding these machines quite a feat of acrobatics in itself! Accidents could cause serious injury and stopping, starting, mounting and dismounting were all big problems. Something better had to be devised!

The Safety Bicycle

The Ordinary or ‘Penny Farthing‘ was one of the first practical bicycle designs, but its many shortcomings and dangers meant that something better had to be found. Enter the ‘Safety Bicycle’.

The ‘Safety Bicycle’ is the direct ancestor to all bicycles manufactured today.

The prototype ‘safety bicycle’ came out in the late 1870s, in response to the public dissatisfaction with the fast, but dangerously uncontrollable Penny Farthing.

Henry John Lawson (1852-1925) developed the first such machine in 1876. Lawson, the son of a metalworker, was used to building things, and loved tinkering around with machines.

Lawson’s machine differed from others in that the rider sat on a saddle on a metal frame. At each end of the frame were spoked wheels of equal size, with a handlebar and steering-arrangement over the front wheel. The rear wheel was powered by the use of a simple crank-and-treadle-mechanism, similar to that used on old treadle-powered sewing-machines, a technology familiar to many people at the time.

The great benefit of Lawson’s bicycle was that the front wheel was used solely for steering, and the rear wheel was used solely for propulsion, and the rider’s legs were kept well away from both of them! On top of that, the wheels were of such a size that the rider’s feet could easily reach the ground, should it be necessary to stop, or dismount the machine in an emergency. Lawson was certainly onto something!

Lawson updated his machine in 1879, with a more reliable pedal-and-chain driving-mechanism, but sadly, although innovative, his bicycle failed to catch on. All the extra parts and the radical new design meant it was hard to produce and too costly to be sold to the general public.

Although Lawson’s machine was a commercial failure, his invention spurred on the development of this new contraption: The Safety Bicycle! Building on what Lawson had already established, over the next few years inventors and tinkerers all over the world started trying to produce a bicycle that would satisfy the needs of everyone. It had to be practical, fast, easy to use, safe to ride, mount and dismount, it had to stop easily, start easily, and be easily controlled.

All manner of machines came out of the workshops of the world, but in 1885, one man made something that would blast all the others off the road.

His name was John Kemp Starley.

Starley, (1854-1901), was the man who invented the modern bicycle as we know it today. And every single one that we see on the road today, is descendant from his machine.

Building on the ideas of Mr. Lawson, Starley rolled out his appropriately-named ‘Starley Rover’ safety bicycle in 1885.

The Starley Rover was revolutionary. Like the Lawson machine, it had equal-sized (or near-equal), spoked wheels, a diamond-frame made of hollow steel, a seat over the back wheel, handles over the front wheel, and a pedal-powered chain-drive in the middle, linking the drive-wheel and the rear wheel with a long drive-chain.

By the late 1880s, the modern bicycle had arrived. It was Starley who had brought it, and he cycled off into the history books on one of these:

This model from the late 1880s has everything that a modern bicycle has, apart from a kick-stand. And this is the machine that has revolutionised the world of transport ever since!

The ‘Rover’ was so much better than everything that had come before it. It was easy to ride, easy to mount, easy to dismount. It was close to the ground, but did not compromise on speed with smaller wheels, because of the 1:2 ratio between the pedal-wheel and the rear wheel. You could reach tremendous speeds without great exertion, and you could stop just as easily!

The Bicycle Boom!

At last! A functional, fun, fast machine. Something you could ride that was safe, quick, light, portable, quiet, comfortable, practical, and which could get you almost anywhere you wanted to go!

With machines like the Rover, and the ones which came after it, all other bicycle-designs were considered obsolete! The Rover had shown the way, and others would follow.

With the success of this newly-designed bicycle came the cycling boom of the the 1890s! For the first time in history, you didn’t need a horse to get anywhere! You needn’t spoil your best shoes in the mud! You didn’t have to worry about smoke and steam and soot! Just roll your bicycle onto the road, hop on it, kick off, and down the road you went. What a dream!

With a truly practical design, the true practicality of the bicycle was at last, fully realised. At last, the ordinary man or woman on the street had a machine which they could ride anywhere! Although, that said, most bicycles in the late Victorian era were expensive toys for the wealthy. But nonetheless, they were used for everything from cycling through the park, cycling around town running errands, cycling to and from work, cycling to visit friends and relations across town, cycling to take in the sights! What a wonderful invention!

The ‘Gay Nineties‘, as this period of history is fondly called, saw the first big boom of the bicycle. Or a medium-sized one, at any rate. There were still a few problems: Bicycles were still rather expensive. And it was considered scandalous for a woman to ride a bicycle! Women opened their legs for one thing, and one thing only. How dare they sit, mounted…on a bicycle! Lord knows what other things they might be mounting next!

Women and Bicycles

A woman on a bicycle? Who’da thunk it?

The mere idea of this radical collaboration sent Victorian men into a tizz! Famously straitlaced and buttoned-up, Victorian morality dictated that a woman’s legs remained covered and obscured at all times. In fact, legs of ANY kind had to be covered at all times. Some people even draped floor-length covers over their pianos to prevent offense to visitors!

Women were generally expected to ride a horse side-saddle. But it was impossible to do this on a bicycle, since both legs were required to drive the pedals. And it was also impossible to ride a bicycle with the huge, floor-sweeping dresses and skirts of the era.  Something had to be done!

Fortunately, tailors came up with a solution!

The second half of the 1800s saw the arrival of the Rational Dress Movement, also known as the Victorian Dress Reform. Aimed mostly at women, this movement said that it was impractical for women to wear the clothes that they did, and still be expected to do all their wifely and womanly duties. The clothes were too bulky, too restricting and far too uncomfortable! Especially for such activities as sports, riding, walking and bicycling! Something had to be done! And fortunately, something was.

It came about in the 1850s, when Elizabeth Smith Miller of New York State, invented a sort of pair of baggy trousers for women. When their legs were together, they looked like a full skirt, but they parted company quite easily, for greater comfort and freedom of movement.

Women’s Rights advocate Amelia Bloomer, a strong supporter of more sensible women’s attire, liked the idea of these newfangled trousers, and they were eventually named after her: ‘Bloomers‘.

With bloomers, a woman could ride a bicycle safely and comfortably. But even if she didn’t have bloomers, a woman could still ride a bicycle in a skirt. She simply had to buy a woman’s bicycle!

Instead of a regular bicycle with a diamond-shaped frame, a woman could buy a step-through bicycle, like this one:

A step-through was identical to a regular bicycle in every way, except one. Figured it out yet?

Without a central bar between the handles and the seat, it was possible for a woman wearing a skirt to ‘step through’ the frame, so that she could get her feet either side of the pedals. Then, she simply hopped onto the seat, put her feet onto the pedals, and cycled away!

If that wasn’t handy enough, a woman could also purchase bicycle-clips, or ‘skirt-lifters’, which clipped onto the waist of her dress or skirt, and trailed down the sides of her skirt. Here, they were clipped onto the fabric to keep the hem of the skirt or dress off the road, but also, away from the pedals, where the fabric might get caught and tangled in the drive-chain!

The Safety Bicycle was ideal for women. Even with bloomers or bicycle-clips or skirt-lifters, it was almost impossible for a lady dressed in Victorian or Edwardian garb, to operate a Penny Farthing! The bikes were too big, too cumbersome, far too unstable, and generally unladylike to ride!

With the safety bicycle, a woman was able to ride with much greater comfort and security. The risk of accidents was smaller, they were easier to mount and dismount, and much easier to operate and control.

The Social Impact of the Bicycle

From the mid-1880s onwards, the bicycle became more and more popular, as safer, easier-to-ride models were invented, produced, and put on sale to the general public around the world. Bicycles caught on quickly, and were popular then, as they are now, for the very same reasons.

They provided free, motorless, quiet, smooth, quick transport, without the need of a horse. They were relatively easy to ride and control, and with a little practice, you could use one to get almost anywhere, and so much faster than walking!

A bicycle also had load-bearing capabilities, and could be used to transport and carry all kinds of things, provided that they could either fit in the front basket, or were strapped securely enough to the rear luggage-rack. Some bicycles even had side-satchels which hung over the back wheel for even greater storage.

Bicycles allowed people who previously couldn’t travel very far, the chance to explore much further afield. Women and children were no-longer restricted to riding in carriages or on railways, or horseback – they could climb onto a bicycle and ride around the village, go to the park, cycle through town, ride along the canal-paths. They did not need men, or older people around, to operate a horse and carriage, or a railroad train, or a steam-powered canal-boat. They simply needed two functional legs, and a decent sense of balance.

This ease of use and versatility allowed the bicycle to be used for almost anything. It was a commuting vehicle for office-workers and labourers. It was a cargo vehicle for anything from the weekly trip to the high street, to a day on the town. With the spread of bicycles came the rise of home-delivery and advertising. Now, bicycles could be used by butcher’s boys and apprentice bakers, shop-boys and telegraph-delivery boys, to provide effective and swift home-delivery of everything from bread, to meat, parcels, mail, telegrams and pre-ordered items of clothing or other items that might be small enough to be delivered safely on a bicycle.

Their open, light frames meant that it was possible to hang signs from the horizontal connecting-bars between the seat and the handlebars. Local businesses could paint advertisements on these signs, or on the mudguards of their store-owned bicycles. At the same time, a business could deliver merchandise or produce, and tell strangers where these things could be purchased.

Cycling clubs became incredibly popular. Friends and relations would gather and ride around the countryside for a day’s outing. They might go picnicking, or they might ride from town to town, visiting new shops, restaurants and public houses. This kind of freedom of movement had never been possible before. Not with a horse, that you had to feed and rest and saddle, not with a carriage which was slow and cumbersome. Not even with a steam locomotive and carriages, which was restricted to the railway lines. Before the rise of the automobile, only a bicycle allowed this level of freedom. No waiting, no fuss. Jump on, kick off, and pedal down the road.

Bicycles in Literature

The impact of the bicycle can be seen by its inclusion in literature of the late Victorian and Edwardian age. In ‘The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist‘, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes’ client is a piano-teacher who uses her bicycle as her main mode of transport, and who is shadowed everywhere by another cyclist.

In the mid-1890s in Australia, Andrew Barton ‘Banjo‘ Paterson, wrote the famous comic poem, “Mulga Bill’s Bicycle“. The cocky Mulga Bill declares that he can control absolutely any form of transport, even this newfangled ‘safety bicycle machine’. He purchases it from the local store and cycles off down the street with it, before losing control of the machine and spectacularly crashing it into a pond, deciding thereafter to stick to riding a horse!

The Bicycle in Wartime

During times of war, the bicycle proved to be a very popular mode of transport. Driving off-road was almost impossible, and at any rate, petrol was often in short supply and severely rationed. On the home-front and on the battlefront, civilians and soldiers often left motor-vehicles behind and fell back to the old-fashioned, reliable bicycle to get themselves around. During the First World War, British soldiers even formed bicycle infantry units! Bicycles didn’t need to be fed like horses, they were quieter, and they could get troops moving a lot faster!

During the Second World War, bicycles were used extensively by both sides. The Allies developed folding bicycles which soldiers could strap to their backs and jump out of airplanes with. Once they landed, they threw away their parachutes, unfolded their bicycles, braced them up, and cycled off to their rendezvous points.

The soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army, maybe even to mock the British and their severe lack of preparation, invaded the Malaysian Peninsula and Singapore…on bicycles! It was impossible to drive tanks through the thick Asian jungles, but a bicycle on a dirt track could go anywhere!

As well as being used for military transport, bicycles were also highly popular on the home front. With petrol-rationing strictly enforced, driving became almost impossible. Unless you were in a reserved occupation (you had a job which was essential to the war-effort), or had some other important status which allowed you a larger petrol-ration, chances were that your car was going to be up on blocks for the duration of the war.

Bicycles don’t need petrol. They only needed whatever strength you could muster from your new diet of rationed food. At any rate, it would be easier to cycle through the bomb-shattered streets of London, Coventry, Singapore and Shanghai, than to drive a car! Most roads were so covered in craters, downed powerlines or the rubble from collapsed buildings that even if your car had fuel, it wouldn’t be able to make it down the road for all the obstructions!

Bells and Whistles

As bicycles became more and more popular during the Edwardian era, more and more features were added to them. One of the most famous additions is the bicycle-bell!

The idea of some variety of warning-device on a bicycle goes back to the 1870s, when the safety bicycle was in its infancy. The modern, thumb-operated bicycle-bell, which you clamp onto the handlebars of your machine, was invented in 1877 by John Richard Dedicoat, an inventor and eventual bicycle-manufacturer in his own right.

The bicycle bell works on a very simple spring-operated lever system. Pressing the button on the side of the bell rotates gears inside, which vibrates a pair of discs which jangle and ring when they move, a bit like a tiny pair of cymbals. This dingling noise is amplified by the bell-housing. Then, the spring simply pushes the bell-button back, ready for the next ring.

Dedicoat also invented a sort of spring-loaded step for helping people mount their bicycles. When Penny Farthings were still the rage, the step was designed to give the rider a boost into his seat. It worked rather well, but if the spring was more powerful than the rider was heavy, it might accidentally shoot him over the handlebars, instead of giving him a helping leg up onto his bicycle-seat!

The popularity of the safety bicycle meant that it was ridden at all times of the day, and night! To make it safer to ride at night, bicycle lamps were clipped to the front shaft, underneath the handlebars.

As with automobiles of the Edwardian era, bicycle headlamps were gas-fired calcium-carbide acetylene lamps. The reaction of water and calcium-carbide produced a flammable gas which could be ignited, and produced a bright, sustained glow. These lamps and their reaction-chambers were small enough to clamp onto the handlebars of early safety bicycles.

Pellets or chunks, or even powdered calcium-carbide was stored in the lower reservoir of a two-chamber reaction-canister. Water was poured into the upper chamber, and a valve between the two chambers allowed water to drip from the top canister onto the calcium-carbide stored in the lower canister. The reaction caused the production of acetylene gas, which escaped through a valve into the headlamp, where it could be ignited, producing light.

Increasing or decreasing the amount of light coming from your bicycle lamp was a simple process of adjusting the opening of the water-valve on the reaction-canister. The more water, the greater the reaction, the greater the amount of gas, which caused the flame to burn brighter. Less water meant fewer chemical reactions, which reduced the overall supply of gas to the headlamp.

At the dawn of the 20th century, bicycles could also be fitted with dry-cell battery-powered headlamps, and alternating-current dynamo-systems. A dynamo really works very simply: You clip the headlamp to the front of the bicycle, and clip the dynamo and its lead, near to a wheel on your bicycle, usually on the mudguard, or on the frame if there isn’t a guard. Engaging the dynamo presses a small wheel against one of your bicycle wheels. As the bike wheel spins, it rotates the dynamo generator, which produces the electricity necessary to power the lamp.

The Bicycle Today

Whether it be a racing-machine, a manner of commuting, an A-to-B mode of transport, a delivery-wagon, a cargo-bicycle or a method of exercising, the humble 1885 safety bicycle remains essentially unchanged since its entrance onto the transport stage back in the closing decades of the Victorian era. The bicycle remains popular because of its simplicity, ease of use, and its seemingly endless practical advantages over various other forms of transport.

The Bicycle World Record

‘Flying Pigeon’ bicycle manufactured in China

Based in Tianjin, in northeast China, the Flying Pigeon is the most popular make of bicycle in the WORLD. In fact, it’s the most popular VEHICLE in the world. That includes motor-cars. The Flying Pigeon company was established in Tianjin in 1936. The Flying Pigeon model, after which the company was renamed, came out in 1950. The communist government in China demanded that the company produce a strong, practical, easy-to-use, and aesthetically pleasing bicycle. It had to ride good, and look good. And it’s been doing that for the past sixty-odd years. Cars were expensive in China, and bicycles were far cheaper and more practical for the average working Chinaman. So much so that the Flying Pigeon was seen as a sign of prosperity in China.

Echoing Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Chinese president Deng Xiaoping said that prosperity in China meant that every household would own its own Flying Pigeon bicycle.

Most popular car in the world: Toyota Corolla
Units made: 35,000,000+

Most popular bike in the world: Flying Pigeon
Units made: 500,000,000+

I think we have a winner.

More Information?

I found the documentary “Thoroughly Modern: ‘Bicycles‘”, to be very helpful. I wonder why…At any rate, it’s fascinating watching.

World’s Top Five Most Successful Cars

In the 1860s in the years during and after the American Civil War, two railroad companies completed America’s first transcontinental railroad, colloquially called the “Overland Route”. This cut down the travel-time from cities such as Chicago in the East, to Los Angeles and San Francisco in the West, from several weeks or even months by wagon-train…to a few days by steam-powered locomotive. Instead of stocking up on rifles and muskets, provisions and supplies…a person could pack his steamer-trunk or suitcase, buy a ticket and ride the rails in what was then a fast, comfortable and convenient way to travel.

Around the same time that the Americans completed their “overland route”, a hop across the pond called the Atlantic Ocean to England would see the British people’s first…”underland route”…and the birth of the modern subway system.

The London Underground: The World’s First Subway

The London Underground (more commonly called ‘The Underground’ or ‘The Tube’ today), is the world’s oldest and is one of the world’s largest subway systems. It’s famous all over the world for its stations, its red, white and blue logo or ’roundel’ and the similiarly-coloured, tubular railway carriages. It’s famous for being used as air-raid shelters during the Second World War and for appearing in a James Bond movie where an invisible Aston Martin is delivered to Bond on a flatbed railway carriage.

Beneath all this fame and glory and fortune, people tend to forget that the London Underground is the world’s first and oldest underground railroad and is now nearly a hundred and fifty years old and still running. The story of the London Underground is the story of the development of the modern subway system and the story of one is generally entwined with the other.

The Need to go Under

Subway systems are not built for their novelty aspect or because “they can”. In each particular city where a subway exists, there are reasons for their construction. But what was it that led to the whole idea of the “under ground” railroad to begin with?

To understand this, we must flashback to London in the 1850s and 60s. Here, we meet a city which is the center of an empire, which is increasing in population every day due to the vast changes brought on by the Industrial Revolution and which is suffering the consequences of such rapid population-growth…traffic congestion.

By the 1850s, railroads were fast becoming the most popular way to move around. It was quick, comfortable and convenient. While cities had several large railroad stations for big, main train-lines, the problem was that once passengers arrived in town, they clogged up the roads with horse-drawn carriages and taxi-cabs. It was reasoned that if there were trains right in the heart of town, they would be able to move people around more effectively and cut down on congestion. This wasn’t easy in a city as old as London, though. Railroad lines took up a lot of space and with congestion as bad as it was, threading railroad lines all over the road was hardly the best solution. Instead, it was decided that the best method of getting trains into the city was to go underground. It would be relatively easy to follow the roads, stops and stations could be easily planned and it would provide valuable employment to the thousands of unemployed people living in London in the second half of the 19th Century.

The First Subway

The first part of the first subway, the London Underground, was born in 1863 as the Metropolitan Railway and stretched from Paddington Station north to Farringdon Station, via King’s Cross. The man responsible for this new, quite literally groundbreaking task of an ‘under ground’ railroad was Charles Pearson, a London lawyer and Member of Parliament. Throughout the 1830s, 40s and 50s, Pearson had campaigned for an ‘underground railroad’ to help ease the increasing traffic congestion in central London during the mid-19th century. After numerous government meetings, debates and discussions, an act of Parliament was passed for the construction of the first stage of what would become the world’s first subway system.

The Metropolitan Railway under construction near King’s Cross Station; February, 1861

To make things easy, the Metropolitan Railway was constructed using the ‘cut-and-cover’ method of tunnel-construction. This involves digging a huge trench in the middle of the street, right down to the level where the railroad lines would go. The rail-lines would be laid and the tunnel walls and roof would be built above it. Once the roof was completed, the excavated rubble and soil was dumped back over the top to reform the original roadway, giving the process its name of ‘cut and cover’. While relatively easy, safe and quick to carry out, Pearson probably won himself a great deal of enemies by building his railroad this way – the Cut and Cover method meant that entire roads and city blocks had to be shut down for construction-purposes. Building the railroad took nearly three years, from February, 1860 – January, 1863. Unfortunately, Pearson wouldn’t live to see his masterpiece open for operation; he would die on the 14th of September, 1862, of dropsy. He was 68 years old.

Underground Trains

Having built the subway, it was now necessary to get trains into it. Obviously, conventional steam-trains were out of the question. They were huge, bulky, noisy digusting things, far too unsuitable for subway tunnels. Instead, an entirely new form of railroad locomotive had to be invented. While still coal-fired, steam-powered engines, these new machines were significantly smaller than their above-ground counterparts.

Metropolitan Railway A-Class subway locomotive. Engine #23 was made in 1864

The steam-engines developed for the London Underground were compact, fat, low-profiled tank-engines. Despite the obvious problems of smoke and steam from these newly designed machines, the London Underground proved popular with Victorians. Nearly 27,000 passengers were using the Metropolitan Railway within the first few months of its opening in January of 1863.

Electrification of Subways

It’s hard to imagine that from the 1860s until the early 1900s, the world’s first, oldest and at the time, biggest subway system, was pulled along using nothing but steam-power. In the crowded, cramped and claustrophobic environment of the London Underground, steam-power was hardly ideal. In fact, it was very uncomfortable riding in the Underground during this period and adequate ventilation had to be installed if the Underground was to maintain a practical, working public service for the people of London. Electrification of the Underground was proposed as early as 1880, but it wasn’t until about 1905 that electrical technology and understanding had progressed far enough to make this a practicality. Starting in the early 20th century, many of the original steam-trains that pulled carriages through the Undergorund were scrapped and replaced by modern, electrically-powered locomotives. Very few of the original Underground steam-locomotives from the 1860s and 70s survive today.

Under and Outwards

With the initial success of the original Metropolitan Railway, other underground railroad companies sprang up, almost overnight. Throughout the second half of the 1800s and the early 1900s, private companies dug and developed their own subway lines throughout London. As the 20th century progressed, the subway became more and more familiar and important to London. By the end of WWI, England had over a hundred big and small railroad companies. In the end, many of these were merged together with the Railways Act of 1921. Nationalisation of the railway system was completed in 1947 with the Transport Act. By the Second World War, the London Underground had grown immensely. By the early 1940s, there were many abandoned stations and stretches of the Underground which were never completed, due to a lack of money or a lack of necessity. Stations that were too close together were considered unnecessary and were closed down. Many of these were converted to air-raid shelters during The Blitz. Many of these stations still exist today and some are set aside specifically for filming-purposes by film-production companies, so that the actual London Underground won’t be disrupted by camera-crews and actors.

The Subway Goes Global

After the success of the London Underground, the subway began to spread around the world. The next subway opened in Glasgow, Scotland in 1891. The first American subway was opened in Boston, Massachusetts in 1897! The New York City Subway system was started in 1904. Previous to this, New York City had been serviced by its famous elevated railroad (commonly called the ‘El’). A horrific blizzard in 1888 dumped several feet of snow all over New York, which brought its above-ground train-service to a screeching halt.

Manhattan’s famous elevated railroad. Started in the 1860s, it lasted until the 1960s when it was gradually destructed. This photo was taken in 1944. The affect of heavy winter snowfalls on the New York elevated railroad was what prompted the construction of the now, world-famous New York City Subway in 1904

To prevent a repeat of this, the New York City Subway was constructed. Subways continue to be popular in countries where snow can affect above-ground railroad traffic, such as in Russia, Germany and Canada. While today subways are seen as modern, bright, fast and wonderful, or at times, a pain in the ass when your train comes late or it’s cramped or overcrowded, remember that they were born in an age of steam and steel, bricks, mortar and feverish industrial revolution.

For centuries, man has wanted to do lots of things. He has wanted to ride in a wheeled vehicle unpowered by a walking manure-factory. He has wanted to sail the open seas…without sails. He has wanted to communicate long distances without having to travel long distances, he has wanted to invent a form of illumination that won’t set the house on fire and he’s wanted to explore under water without ending up under ground. But of all the dreams that mankind has had, none has been stronger than man’s desire…to fly.

Mr. Wile E. Coyote provides a historically-accurate practical demonstration of mankind’s early experiments with flight

For centuries, flight was considered impossible – the dream and fancy of fools, a pipe-dream, a hallucination, an idiotic fantasy. And yet today, we can fly halfway around the world within twenty-four hours. How? And…Why? This article will explore the history of manmade aircraft – anything that didn’t come with a beak, claws and a feathery lining, from the first experimental aircraft to airliners as we know them today.

Flight of Fancy

Since time immemoriam, man has looked at the skies, and has seen birds. Or maybe bats. Probably even flies. On the off-chance, even a mosquito. He puzzled and fumed and fussed over the fact that all these things could do the one thing that he couldn’t – Fly.

Mankind has had dreams of flight for centuries. Even the famous inventor and painter, Leonardo from Vinci, invented a bloody helicopter before the word had even been thought up! But even with wonderful sketches, ideas, dreams and brainstorming, man couldn’t make a successful flying machine. To many, it was considered impossible. Man did not understand what made something fly and, once it was flying, how to keep it flying and, once it was kept flying, how to make it stop flying!

Leonardo’s fantasmagorical flying machine…would it ever have really worked?

The very first flying machines never left the pages that they were drawn on. Leonardo, who created the world’s first helicopter prototype as well as a primative parachute, never actually manufactured his inventions, although modern reconstructions and testing has shown that, with enough persistance, the right materials and a whole heap of chutzbah, it could be done! So…when did man first take to the air?

Full of Hot Air

The first real flying machines that mankind created out of his own hands which really worked were primative hot-air balloons. Hot air balloons had been known for centuries; they were toys and novelties. Cute little fun displays to be seen at garden parties, a toy for the children to marvel at and something for older people to ponder: “What if…?”

The first unmanned hot-air balloons were introduced into the world centuries ago. Early experimenters realised two things about the air which we breathe: Cold air descends. Hot air rises. By this logic, if you put hot air (produced by a continuous heat-source, say, a candle) inside a sealed compartment (like a paper bag), then the hot air would cause the bag to rise, once it had been filled up enough. This proved to be the case, and the hot air balloon was invented.

The idea of travelling by hot air balloon took a while to ehm…get off the ground, though. It wasn’t until the early 18th century that the first experiements by European scientists and inventors were begun. The big problem confronting these early experimenters was weight! For this fancy-schmancy ‘hot air balloon’ gizmo to actually lift anything of value off the ground, it would need a massive envelope (the big ‘balloon’ part) and it would need even more hot air! It was all these scary weight-concerns that kept mankind grounded for so long. For a balloon flight to be successful, weight had to be kept to an absolute minimum!

It wasn’t until November 21, 1783 that the world’s first manned balloon-flight happened. The two lucky fellows in the basket on this historic day were Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes, a physics teacher and a soldier, respectively. The balloon being flown was a creation of the famous Montgolfier brothers, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne. One likely reason why it took so long for man to take to the skies in hot air balloons was because of how long these things took to make! Apart from the exhausting testing that the Montgolfier brothers carried out on their balloons, there is also the physical size of the balloons themselve to consider. The historic balloon which took de Rozier and d’Arlandes into the air on that day in November, 1783 was absolutely massive! Here are the technical specifications of that famous balloon, as translated from the original French document:

Height of Globe: 22.7m (75ft).
Weight of Globe: 780kg (1,700lbs).
Diameter: 14.9m (49ft).
Lifting capacity: Max approx 830kg (1,800lbs).
Volume of Globe: 2,000 cubic meters (73,000 cubic feet).
Gallery (a doughnut-shaped basket attached to the envelope): 1m wide (3ft).

Needless to say, getting such a massive balloon into the air was not easy, but when it happened, history was well and truly written and made. The Montgolfier brothers’ success was so amazing that King Louis XVI elevated the entire Montgolfier family to the French nobility as a reward! If the Montgolfiers had known that the French Revolution was just a few years away, they might have decided to take the second prize of a two-door, 4hp carriage with guilded windowframes instead…

The hot air balloon created by the Montgolfier brothers

The Hot Air Balloon was now here to stay, and from the late 18th century until the early 20th century, it dominated flight around the world. Hot air balloons were popular attractions at public events, they were used as observation-posts during warfare and for the first time in history, man could fly over the land he owned and see everything from a bird’s eye view.

Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines

Although the hot air balloon allowed mankind its first proper view down on the world, it did have one major drawback – Hot air balloons were slow, hard to navigate and dangerous to fly. They could only move where the wind blew and could only move as fast as the wind allowed. This was deemed unsatisfactory, by some, and it was decided that what mankind really needed was a flying machine that could be completely controlled by man – A machine that could take flight, stay in the air, go where the pilot wanted it to, and land when and where he wanted it to land.

Like the balloon before it, the aeroplane was slow to take off. As Betty Boop says in one of her cartoons, “It was called insane by ‘most every man!”…and it was! The idea of a heavier-than-air flying machine was proposterous! How could such a thing ever work?

At the turn of the last century, mankind was only just beginning to understand aerodynamics, or how airflow affects moving objects. Chief among this group of people who were studying aerodynamics was a pair of brothers named Wilbur and Orville.

Orville and Wilbur Wright, (born 1871 and 1867, respectively) are the two men credited with inventing the world’s first controllable airplane, and it took some doing, too. And it’s proof that you don’t have to have a college education to be a genius…neither of the Wright Brothers attended university!

The Wright Brothers initially led very different lives. In 1885, Wilbur was hit in the face by accident during a game of hockey. There was no significant damage done (although he did lose a few teeth), but the shock of the blow did make him more introverted than he used to be. He spent most of his time at home, reading and looking after Susan Wright, the Wright Brothers’ mother who was by this time, dying of tuberculosis (she did eventually pass away in 1889).

Orville Wright worked as a printer after dropping out of highschool. Wilbur, getting rather bored with sticking around at home all the time, joined his brother in business, and the two boys worked together as editor and publisher respectively, of various small-town newspapers.

In the 1880s, a new machine was invented. It was light, fast, easy to ride and safer to operate than its predecessors, allowing the rider to balance on its frame more easily and control its speed and movement more comfortably.

The bicycle had been introduced to the world.

Wanting to make as much money as they could, the Wrights packed up their printing press and jumped onto the cycling craze, opening a bicycle repair and manufacture-shop in the 1890s. Throughout the 1890s, flight pioneers were constantly making the headlines, with newer, ‘better’ flying machines. All this talk of flying got the brothers thinking. Wilbur was the one who really got interested in flying, and he set about trying to make a flying machine. Orville joined in later, once Wilbur’s work was showing a sufficient degree of promise.

The Wright brothers started out small, practicing their flying first with kites and then with gliders before attempting anything that we’d recognise today as a conventional airplane. Wilbur studied the movements of birds to try and discover the secret ingredient to Lift, the necessary component of flight to compensate for gravity. The Wrights theorised that it was the gliding motion of birds and the movement of air over their wings that allowed them to fly like they did, rather than the actual flapping motion which some inventors had tried for years to reproduce.

The brothers made a breakthrough when they discovered wing-warping, that is, bending or angling a pair of wings to create the correct kind of airflow to provide lift for the aircraft as well as giving it the ability to turn, rise and fall through the air. It was easy enough to bend a wing – just make it out of something light and flexible. The problem was how to control wing-warping. Left to their own devices, early wings would warp of their own accord, depending on wind-conditions. By attaching ropes and pulleys to the edges of their wings, the Wright brothers were able to pull on the cables and affect wing-warp themselves, giving them for the first time, an aspect of control over their aircraft!

Throughout the early 1900s, the Wright Brothers experimented with gliders to give them an idea of how wings and angling these wings affected flight and lift. To aid them with this, they built one of the world’s first wind-tunnels! With wind on demand, the boys were able to test their flyers more and more often and were able to record data more effectively.

Powered Flight

The dream of mankind was to have powered, controlled flight. By the early 1900s, the Wrights were already working on the “control” part, but they still needed to address the issue of power. They knew from their experiements that any power-source onboard an airplane would have to be as light as possible. Fortunately, their experience working on bicycles meant that the Wright Brothers already had some grounding in light and powerful machines.

The world’s first airplane, Wright Flyer I, took to the air in 1903. Using a custom-made internal-combustion engine created in their own bicycle-shop (after no established engine-manufacturers of the time were able to make one small, light and powerful enough for their needs) and propellers made of wood, tested relentlessly in their wind-tunnel, the Wright brothers were ready to fly.

For obvious reasons, this milestone was fraught with danger. Steering a glider, launching a glider and landing a glider was relatively safe – there were no moving parts. But with their new airplane, the boys had to be careful of the rotating propellers, which were literally revolutionary at the time, since nobody had yet figured out how an airplane’s propeller actually worked!

The historic first flight took place on the 17th of December, 1903.

Actually, more than one flight took place on the 17th of December, 1903, on the beaches near Kittyhawk, South Carolina. Four flights in total were conducted. A number of people came out to witness this historic event: Adam Etheridge, Will Dough, W. C. Brinkley, Johnny Moore, a local lad who was on the scene at the time, and John T. Daniels, a member of a nearby lifesaving station.

Of the four flights taken, the first, third and fourth were photographed. The famous “First Flight” photograph (With Orville at the controls and Wilbur jogging alongside) was taken by John T. Daniels, the lifesaver, and a man who had never operated a camera before (or since!). Daniels had been given instructions by Orville to take the shot when he saw the machine move in front of the camera. Daniels, too excited by what was going on around him, nearly forgot to take the photograph! At the last minute, he tripped the shutter and history was made…

The Airplane Takes Off

If the Wright Brothers thought that their newfangled “flying machine” (Oh what an absurd notion!) was ever going to be a wonderful, amazing, popular, attention-grabbing, imagination-stimulating, sought-after and life-changing machine!…They were wrong.

In fact they were so wrong they probably wondered why the hell they started in the first place. The truth was that very few people were actually interested in their new flying-machine. It didn’t make the headlines that they’d expected it to (probably because so many other flying-machines had done so, and they’d all failed!) and the military was not in the least bit interested. The planes were too light, too flimsy, too dangerous to fly. What possible military application could they have?

The Rise of the Airplane

Just like early anythings, planes were not seen as having much application in the world of the time. Cars were slow, tempermental things, new on the scene, expensive and prone to breakdowns. Similarly, planes were seen as expensive, rich, playboy toys which could never have any practical application in the real world. This changed during the years of the First World War when armies soon discovered the advantages of having an aerial wing which could fly over battlefields, bombing and strafing the enemy, which could take photographs and which could report on enemy troops and movements. By 1918, the airplane had proven itself as a practical and important machine in warfare.

If the 1900s were the experimental stages of airplane-operation, then the 1910s and the 1920s became the era of aircraft endurance-testing. All kinds of famous airplane-related events took place in the 1910s and 1920s, many of which are still fondly remembered today. Here’s a list of them:

1912 – April 16th. Harriet Quimby is the first woman to fly across the English Channel (Dover-Calais, in 59 minutes). Unfortunately, her moment in the sun and her chances of making the front pages were dashed when a little-known watercraft called the R.M.S. Titanic sank in the Atlantic Ocean the night before…

1927 – May 20-21. Charles Lindbergh flies the Spirit of St. Louis from New York City to Paris, France, in the world’s first solo nonstop crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.

1928 – 31st May-9th June. Sir Charles Kingsford Smith & Co make the first crossing of the Pacific Ocean in a three-leg journey from California, USA, to Hawaii, Hawaii to Fiji, Fiji to Brisbane, in Australia.

The 1920s also saw the founding of several famous commercial airline companies. United Airlines is founded in 1926 as Boeing Air Transport. The famous Australian airline company Quantas is founded in 1920. The German airline company Lufthansa is founded in 1926. Pan Am, the American airline is founded as Pan-American Airways in 1927.

Luxury Travel

From the second half of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century, luxury long-distance travel was to be had in only one way. That one way was in an amazingly grand and luxurious ocean-liner, which would transport you across vast stretches of water from England to America, America to Australia, Australia to Asia, Asia to Europe and so-on. The largely experimental status of aircraft in the early 20th century meant that the ocean-liner trade was still going strong well into the 1950s, but things were all about to change.

The 1920s showed everyone that airplanes, just like steamships, could safely travel amazing distances, and what’s more, they could do it in significantly more comfort and at faster speeds! This led to the 1930s boom of the airline industry.

Sometimes we like to kid ourselves that airline travel today is really luxurious…little personal TV screens, computer-games, telephone and internet access, luxurious onboard dining and crayons and those cheap, crappy plastic model-airplanes for the kiddies are all the luxury that we need.

In the 1930s, though, there was a whole new kind of luxury…the airship!

The airship was like a hybrid between the airplane and the hot air balloon. Invented in the 1900s, the airship had its golden age from the 1910s-1930s. Less noisy, larger and capable of carrying more passengers than early conventional, fixed-wing airplanes, the airship became the way to travel in style, comfort and most importantly…speed, in the early 1900s. A number of countries operated airship lines, from the United Kingdom, the United States and most notably of all…Germany.

Although large and amazing, airships were dangerous machines. The hydrogen gas which inflated the huge envelopes of many airships was highly explosive and extensive precautions were taken to prevent fires – in Germany, for example, you couldn’t take your camera or your cigarette-lighter onboard an airship – They were confiscated by the crew and locked in a special cargo-area, to be returned by the crew when the ship had reached its destination. The sparking of a cigarette-lighter or the burning flash from early, magnesium flash-bulb cameras was seen as a fire-hazard.

Due to their large size, airships could be difficult to control in bad weather. When the weather was fine, flying in an airship was an exciting and wonderful experience, but when there was a storm, heavy rains or lightning around, the experience could become quite frightening. Winds could rip at the cloth covering of the airship’s enevelope, dangerous static-electric charges could build up on the airship’s frame (although this could also create a spectacular display of ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ to dazzle and awe passengers!) and heavy winds and rain could affect handling and manuverablity. The airship USS Akron crashed in April of 1933 due to flying in a storm after spending only 18 months in civilian service. Of the 76 passengers and crew onboard, only three people survived and were picked up by US. Coastguard watercraft after the crash.

The most famous airship crash is, of course, that of the Hindenburg, which spectacularly erupted into flames at Lakehurst, New Jersey in early 1937 and crashed and burned to the ground in a matter of seconds! Of the 97 passengers and crew onboard, roughly one third (36 people) of them died, including one member of the ground-staff. Destroyed after just over a year in service, the Hindenburg’s demise saw the end of grand airship travel, which was written off as just being far too dangerous.

The Hindenburg Crash. The structure on the right is the airship mooring-tower

To understand why the public was so drawn to airships, these flying death-traps, one has to see what they were really like and what they meant to people at the time. Airplanes are faster, but they’re smaller, more cramped, more uncomfortable.

The interiors of German commercial airships that flew through the air during the 1920s and 30s were bright, modern, luxurious, airy and with plenty of space to move around and stretch your legs. Passengers even slept in their own cabins, instead of trying to sleep strapped into their chairs like we have to do these days. Add to this the fact that travelling by airship was so much faster than travelling by…ship-ship. Steaming from England to America took at least five days using the fastest and most modern ocean-liners in the 1930s. Flying from Germany to America by airship in the 1930s took two or at a stretch, three days. For speed and convenience, the airship certainly won out here.

A period airship advertisement from the 1930s boasting a two-day crossing from America to Europe, which was three times faster than a similar crossing by ocean-liner

The risks of airship travel and the spectacular crashes that involved airships soon spelt an end to their aerial dominance, though. They were seen as just being far too risky a thing to use. Why speed up your trip by a few days when you risked crashing, falling from the sky and being killed when you could cross the ocean in a week by ship? And even if the ship was to sink, you could still get into a lifeboat and radio for help! By the late 1930s, the glory days of the airship were over.

Postwar Boom

The 1950s saw many things – the emergence of the Cold War, television, rock and roll and do-wop music. But it also saw the downfall of many things, such as the gradual dying-out of the transatlantic passenger-ship industry and the end of the airship industry. But from the ashes of the airship industry, a new form of transport was to emerge…

…the modern airliner.

Capable of transporting more people to more places with more speed, airliners were the thing of the future. Although the airliner of today probably shares several characteristics with the airliners of the past, early airliners had various perks such as the ability to smoke onboard planes (thank god that’s over with!) and being served meals with real cutlery, chinaware and glassware (something that doesn’t happen today!) and being able to listen to live piano-music! Yes, believe it or not, but early airliners used to have (specially made) pianos onboard them, usually in First Class, where passengers could listen to live music!

An airliner’s piano-bar in the 1960s

Continued safety-concerns and space-restrictions mean that spaces reserved for piano-bars, cocktail lounges, drinks bars and other public-seating areas on airplanes where passengers could mingle and chat, are now a thing of the past, leaving us with nothing but tantilising images of what is, what was, and what might have been…