The Crittenden Automotive Library

An Air-Line in Broadway.

An Air-Line in Broadway.

Publication: The New York Times
Date: 5 January 1853

Paris paper give an account of a new motive power, as applied experimentally in that capital. With true French passion for the romantic, they describe two porters bearing a mysterious burden, concealed in multitudinous envelopes, and behind it eight or ten persons marching evenly and eagerly onward, until the party arrived at the Church of St. Vincent de Paul. The pack was there placed on the asphaltum pavement. The wrappings being removed, two persons took their seats in a little three-wheeled carriage, thereby disclosed,—and at a given signal moved off rapidly around the church. No motive agency was to be seen ; and yet the speed was highly respectable, and maintained for some length of time. Upon examination, compressed air was found “to be at the bottom of it,” there being detected under the seat a receiver containing air of the density of thirty atmospheres. Several large vehicles, it is added, for the conveyance of passengers about the streets of Paris, are already in course of construction, the propelling principle being this crowded air. The mechanic, who applies a common scientific fact so usefully, demonstrates that the expense is but half that of steam. Indeed, how could it be otherwise, when the machine, chameleon-like, feeds on air?

It may be put to the gentleman, who spends days and nights in discharging injunctions at the Broadway railroad, whether in this new discovery there be not still another ground of attack. Carriages, mark, to travel about and turn around upon all manner of pavements, whether primitive cobble-stone, highly artificial Russ, of that vile half-and-half Perrine, are what we are told of. No noisy and startling steam to terrify horse-flesh ; nor inextricable rails to perplex wheels and coachmen, are implied in the device. All is smooth, controllably noiseless, horseless, compact and comfortable ; and if the air-vessel should burst, who ever heard of deaths from a gust of cold atmosphere, unless in the tardy way of cough or rheumatism? Decidedly is it a duty of all parties to wait a little. No better cause could be shown for a stay of proceedings. Should the Parisian improvement succeed, no other company would be tolerated for a moment, but an air-line company, with a charter as free as the winds.