Retrotech: Technology in 1925–Transportation

 

The twenties.  An era of Prohibition (and gangsters)…jazz…flappers…The Great Gatsby…and an accelerating stock market. I thought it might be fun to take a look at the state of technology as it stood a century ago, in 1925.  This second post of the series is focused on transportation: land, sea, and air.  (The first post, centering on communications and entertainment, is here.)

Land Transportation. Although there was much excitement and innovation around aircraft and automobiles, in 1925 the railroads still ruled, they were vital for passenger as well as freight transportation.  John Stilgoe’s book Metropolitan Corridor is an interesting exploration of the psychological and cultural impact of the tracks that connected the country.

No traditional spatial term, not urbansuburban, or rural, not cityscape or landscape, adequately identifies the space that perplexed so many turn-of-the-century observers. Reaching from the very hearts of great cities across industrial zones, suburbs, small towns, and into mountain wildernesses, the metropolitan corridor objectified in its unprecedented arrangement of space and structure a wholly new lifestyle. Along it flowed the forces of modernization, announcing the character of the twentieth century, and abutting it sprouted new clusters of buildings. Its particular juxtaposition of elements attracted the scrutiny of photographers and advertising illustrators; its romance inveigled poets and novelists; its energy challenged architects, landscape architects, and urban designers. Always it resisted definition in traditional terminology.

To many rural Americans, the Corridor was the connection to a more exciting and glamorous kind of life:

So magnificent was the Illinois Central crack express–The Panama Limited–that every day for twelve years the Sixth Mississippi District Court at Vaiden recessed so that everyone could watch it come through the station…Until the 1920s, such trains represented prosperity and the promise of greater prosperity, luxury, futuristic design, and urbanity. To some Depression-era watchers, the expresses announced good times returning; to others, they advertised an unequal distribution of wealth. Long before and well into the Depression, however, the fast trains bespoke a peculiarly American strassenromantik, one centered on cities flashing across farms and forests, attracting the wondering admiration of children and adults…Every railroad right-of-way shared in the glamor that lingered like a whiff of coal smoke left after the all-Pullman express had passed. In the remotest corners of rural American, in suburbs of broad lawns, in small towns, the luxury express advertised the crackling energy of urban industrial zones.

The steam locomotive was king, and hauled the vast majority of intercity traffic.  Some heavily-travelled corridors were electrified, as was freight service in some mountainous districts.  New York City had banned steam locomotives downtown effective in 1908, leading to the electrification of the relevant lines and the covering over of the New York Central tracks, thereby creating new and highly valuable real estate. (“Taking wealth from the air”)  Gasoline and diesel power were largely limited to rail yard work and local/suburban passenger service, but a  demonstration locomotive for diesel-electric power had been built by American Locomotive Company, GE, and Ingersoll-Rand in 1923, with the first commercial diesel-electric locomotive delivered in 1925.

The steam locomotive had been greatly improved from its earlier days. Boiler pressures had increased to around 200-250 psi, and superheaters had become common, increasing efficiencies by 25-30%.  Although manual firing was still used on smaller locomotives, the automatic stoker had been introduced in the early 1900s and was now common (I believe legally required) on larger engines.  Compound locomotives had been developed, and significantly improved efficiency, but were more commonly used in Europe than in the United States. Why? An article in the 1930 issue of Mechanical Engineering magazine explains that while compound locomotives did save fuel, they required more maintenance-and in Europe, fuel was more expensive than in the US, but labor was cheaper–an interesting point, I think.

Safety by 1925 had been greatly improved from the early days of railroading; the air brake was key to this accomplishment, as were sophisticated interlocking signal systems. Centralized traffic control systems, which allowed a dispatcher to observe track occupancy and control signals and switches from an office dozens of miles away, were on the horizon–CTC would be introduced on the New York Central in 1927.

Electric trolleys were pervasive in most cities of any size–they had replaced earlier horse-drawn services that ran on tracks–but their dominance was beginning to be challenged by buses and automobiles.

On the roads, the Ford Model T was still the dominant product, with 15 million units being sold from its introduction in 1908 up through its replacement by the Model A in 1927.  The newer Ford would feature a self-starter and a three-speed transmission, as opposed to the hand-cranking and two-speed transmission with the Model T.  There were no automatic transmissions in 1925.  For manual shifting, the synchromesh had been invented in 1918, but it wasn’t introduced until 1928.

A Model T touring car in 1925 was priced at $260–that’s about $4700 in 2025 money. It’s estimated that about 40-45% of American families owned cars.  There were still at lot of working horses in the US–22 million in 1925, not that many below the 25 million in the peak year of 1920.

Trucking was primarily local, due in large part to the poor condition of intercity roads and the high state of development that had been reached by the railroads. If you were in a rural area and ordered something large and heavy from Sears or other mail order vendor (furniture, appliances), it would likely be delivered via rail to your local train station and you’d need to pick it up from there, or get somebody to do it for you.

Sea Transportation. Cargo ships were mostly powered by reciprocating steam engines, but there were still quite a few sailing vessels in use. Passenger liners were usually driven by steam turbines. The transatlantic speed record in 1925 was still held by the RMS Mauretania (sister ship of the Lusitania), with a service speed of 25-28 knots.  She carried 2165 passengers and also had a government mail contract.

Conversion of shipping from coal to oil fuel had begun in the early 1900s, but there were still a lot of coal-powered ships operating in 1925. Some experiments with steam-electric propulsion had been conducted immediately prior to WWI, but this propulsion mode turned out to be inferior for most purposes to the steam turbine with reduction gears.

Container freight had not yet been invented, so the loading and unloading of cargo at ports was very labor-intensive.

In naval warfare, the battleship still ruled at sea, but was being challenged by air-delivered bombs and torpedoes. In 1921, airpower advocate Billy Mitchell demonstrated that he could sink warships with bombs–including the former German battleship Ostfriesland, a ship that had proven its robust qualities by surviving 18 hits from British battleship guns and then striking a mine.

Air Transportation.  The aviation industry was advancing rapidly in 1925, but there was not much scheduled airline service yet in the US.  Air mail had been introduced in 1919, with a route between New York City and Washington DC, soon expanded to encompass NYC–Cleveland–Chicago.  Transcontinental service was introduced in 1920, using a combination of air and rail to avoid the need for night flying; 1924 marked the beginning of night airmail service. A major institutional change affecting aviation in 1925 was the Kelley Act, which provided that airmail would hence be carried by private contractors rather than government employees.

Aircraft were still mostly fabric-covered, and biplane construction was common. In 1925, the Ford Motor Company began production of the Ford Trimotor, an all-metal monoplane which carried 8-9 passengers, in addition to pilot, copilot, and stewardess.  Almost 200 of them were ultimately built, and quite a few of them are still flying. Cruising speed was 92 knots (107 mph). However, they weren’t yet available for service in 1925.

Gyroscopic instruments had solved the problem of maintaining control of an airplane without outside visual references, but this did not solve the problem of navigation in low visibility or at night.  The problem of navigation at night was partially solved by the construction of the lighted airways, with the major airways having been completed by 1925. Radio-range navigation would come later, although there may have been some limited use of radio direction finding to take bearings from commercial radio stations.

Dirigibles were viewed as an up-and-coming technology.  Germany had been a pioneer in the lighter-than-air field, having operated both military aircraft and limited passenger services in the years before the First World War.  Construction of large airships was not permitted by the terms of the Versailles Treaty; however, this provision was relaxed in 1925 and construction of the transatlantic airship Graf Zeppelin was begun.  The US Navy was excited by the potential of dirigibles as adjuncts to the surface fleet. The Los Angeles (pictured above) was built in Germany and delivered to the US as war reparations in 1924.  Among other things, it was intended as a flying aircraft carrier which would serve as a base for small fighter and observation planes.  She served until 1939.  The first helium-filled airship was another US Navy aircraft, the US-built Shenandoah, which first flew in 1923 and made the first crossing of North America by airship. She was destroyed in a squall line over Ohio in October 1925.

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Retro-Reading: The Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine from 1884

Leafing through a copy of the Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine (published 1876-1907) at a used bookstore, I was struck by the high quality of the writing. I didn’t buy the magazine, but there are copies online and I recently downloaded the collection from 1884 and have been reading through some of the contents.

A locomotive fireman is quite different from a regular fireman–he doesn’t put out fires, rather,  he starts them and keeps them going. These are the guys who shoveled the coal into the boiler furnaces, working on a swaying platform in a cab that was definitely not climate-controlled. The job required more brainwork than one might think but still, this was not one of the more intellectual jobs on the railroad. I doubt if there were many if any college graduates among the readership of this magazine, I’d guess that no more than half had gone all the way through high school.

So what kind of reading material was designed for them?

There are a lot of short stories, some of them centered around railroading but many on other topics entirely. Ichabod Turner’s Mission is about a mentally-disturbed man who believes it is his mission to save the world..his life will intersect with that of a young railwayman who has been assigned to run a train–although he knows that he has had inadequate rest.

All in a Fashion is about a girl who marries “an enterprising young man” and later visits her hometown wearing a a very fashionable hat…which everyone wants to borrow and some try to imitate…eventually, she is accused of being the one doing the copying.

His Mistake is a gripping story about a train dispatcher, Bob Norcross, and his telegrapher, Miss Louise Dale. Attempting to keep traffic moving following various mishaps, Norcross writes an order to change the usual meeting place of two trains running in opposite directions. He has finished writing the order but not yet signed it when he hears a whistle and, picking up what he thinks is the order he has just written…but is actually another loose message slip lying nearby… and walks out onto the platform.

Miss Dale turns from her instrument and picks up the message, noticing that it has not been not signed but remembering that the dispatcher had twice spoken about changing the meeting point of the trains.  “Bob is hurried and driven tonight,” she thought, “he forgot to sign it.” And then she remembered that the mail must be close up to Scotville..the intended new meeting point..already and that no time ought to be lost.  She looks for Bob, but doesn’t see him–he is speaking with the superintendent, in the baggage room.  What should she do?  What does she do?

There are philosophical thoughts and historical notes on various subjects. Consistency is a meditation on the concept of equality…which the author sees as being violated by two privileged classes of people: lawyers and liquor sellers. Stands Alone, reprinted from the London Times, says about this country:  “The history of the world has furnished no precedent for the condition of the United States…With the conscious power to carve its own destinies belonging to perfect national independence, it combines the Roman peace enjoyed privately and commercially by subject provinces of the ancient Roman empire.  No country in the world has any interest in molesting it…Their happy fortune has left it for the time with no more difficult problem to settle than how to avoid accumulating so enormous reserve of public wealth as not to know what to do with its taxes.”  (Well, we’ve solved that problem)  There’s a transcript of a fiery speech given by Patrick Henry in response to British threats toward signers of the Declaration of Independence.

There are many stories about then-current events and projects, including the prospects for what became the Suez Canal…the potential for solar power, involving what we would now call the solar-thermal method…the potential for what became Trans-Siberian Railway…and progress on automatic couplers for railcars, the lack of which was responsible for a large number of deaths and serious injuries every year.  There are a lot of pieces on scientific subjects, including the chemistry of life, such as photosynthesis. There’s a suggestion that ship collisions with icebergs could be prevented with a very sensitive thermometer that would sound an alarm if the temperature suddenly dropped (would this work?) and an article on ballooning which argues that it is pretty pointless.

There are a couple of articles about Kate Shelley, who, aged 15, had three years earlier saved a train from destruction by an incredible act of heroism. Her Iowa home overlooked the railroad tracks and a bridge over Honey Creek, and during a terrible storm, she observed that the bridge had gone down.  She knew that the Omaha express was due from the west in a short time.  The only way to save the train was to get a message to the station at which the express would stop briefly and to do this, she had to make her way across the high trestle bridge over the Des Moines river. The walkways on the bridge had been removed to discourage pedestrians, and the only way she could get across was by crawling from tie to tie, making her way by feel and by lightning flashes. (True story–more here)

Lighted Airways and the Radio Range (updated)

When airplanes first started to be used for serious transportation purposes, sometime after World War I, the problems involved with flight at night and in periods of low visibility became critical. Transcontinental airmail, for example, lost much of its theoretical speed advantage if the plane carrying the mail had to stop for the night. Gyroscopic flight instruments addressed the problem of controlling the airplane without outside visual references, but there remained the problem of navigation.

An experiment in 1921 demonstrated that airmail could be successfully flown coast-to-coast, including the overnight interval, with the aid of bonfires located along the route.  The bonfires were soon displaced by a more permanent installation based on rotating beacons. The first lighted airway extended from Chicago to Cheyenne…the idea was that pilots of coast-to-coast flights could depart from either coast in early morning and reach the lighted segment before dusk.  The airway system rapidly expanded to cover much of the country–by 1933, the Federal Airway System extended to 18,000 miles of lighted airways, encompassing 1,550 rotating beacons. The million-candlepower beacons were positioned every ten miles along the airway, and in clear weather were visible for 40 miles. Red or green course lights at each beacon flashed a Morse identifier so that the pilot could definitely identify his linear position on the airway.

Lighted airways solved the navigation problem very well on a clear night, but were of limited value in overcast weather or heavy participation. You might be able to see the beacons through thin cloud or light rain, but a thicker cloud layer, or heavy rain/snow, might leave you without navigational guidance.

The answer was found in radio technology. The four-course radio range transmitted signals at low frequency (below the AM broadcast band) in four quadrants. In two of the quadrants, the Morse letter N (dash dot) was transmitted continuously; in the other two quadrants, there was continuous transmission of  the Morse A (dot dash.) The line where two quadrants met formed a course that a pilot could follow by listening to the signal in his headphones: if he was exactly “on the beam,” the A and the N would interlock to form a continuous tone; if he was to one side or the other, he would begin to hear the A or N code emerging.

The radio range stations were located every 200 miles, and were overlaid on the lighted airways, the visual beacons of which continued to be maintained. The eventual extent of the radio-range airway system is shown in the map below.  All that was required in the airplane was a simple AM radio with the proper frequency coverage.

The system made reliable scheduled flying a reality, but it did have some limitations. Old-time pilot Ernest Gann described one flight:

Beyond the cockpit windows, a few inches beyond your own nose and that of your DC-2’s, lies the night. Range signals are crisp, the air smooth enough to drink the stewardess’s lukewarm coffee without fear of spilling it…Matters are so nicely in hand you might even flip through a magazine while the copilot improves his instrument proficiency…

Suddenly you are aware the copilot is shifting unhappily in his seat. “I’ve lost the range. Nothing.”

You deposit the Saturday Evening Post in the aluminum bin which already holds the metal logbook and skid your headphones back in place…There are no signals of any kind or the rap of distance voices from anywhere in the night below. There is only a gentle hissing in your headphones as if some wag were playing a recording of ocean waves singing on a beach.

You reach for a switch above your head and flip on the landing lights. Suspicion confirmed. Out of the night trillions of white lines are landing toward your eyes. Snow. Apparently the finer the flakes the more effective. It has isolated you and all aboard from the nether world. The total effect suggests you might have become a passenger in Captain Nemo’s fancy submarine.

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Not All Borders Are Land Borders

It’s been pretty obvious that the Biden administration and their supporters have wanted the southern border to be substantially open.   But for some reason, they don’t seem to have extended this idea to other ways of entering the US:   airports and seaports.   I haven’t seen any proposal to eliminate the customs & immigration facilities at international airports, or at passenger-handing seaports.

Why not?   It would certainly be more convenient for all international travelers, and especially for those who want to migrate to the US:   no traveling through deserts, jungles and swamps, no need to fear robbery, murder, and rape on the way, no need to pay off the drug cartels.   Just buy an airline ticket: surely much more affordable than the other path, as well as more convenient, considering the high extortion payments demanded by the cartels.

What would be the reason why open-borders advocates do not push for this logical extension of their ideas?

One hypothesis might be that the people who buy airline tickets would include a higher mix of financially-better-off people than those who are willing to make the grueling trip across the southern border…and those people would be (a) less-likely to vote for Democratic candidates, and (b) more likely to compete for jobs held by members of key groups within the Democratic constituency.

Any other theories?

Retrotech, Back at Work

A Union Pacific steam locomotive, built in 1941, was returning from a visit to the College World Series in Omaha, when it was called upon to rescue a stuck freight train which needed some extra tractive effort to get over a hill.

More about this locomotive and its history here.

See also my post A Retrotech Adventure.