January 17
CABLE CAR DAY
Andrew Smith Hallidie of San Francisco, California received a patent for a cable car system on this day in 1871. The public transportation system was put into operation in the city by the bay in 1873, providing a fast, safe way to travel up and down San Francisco’s steep hills.
Now, Hallidie didn’t just wake up one day and invent his cable car system. This was one situation that proves the truth of the old adage, ‘necessity is the mother of invention.’ Hallidie realized the necessity for the cable car system when he saw a loaded horse-drawn San Francisco streetcar slide backwards on a slippery hill. It was a summer day in 1869, but the cobblestones were wet from the usual San Francisco dampness. The heavily weighted car dragged five of the horses to their deaths. The catastrophe prompted Andrew Hallidie and his partners to do something to prevent this from happening again.
Coincidentally, Hallidie already had the basic product needed to produce his cable car system. His father had filed the first patent in Great Britain for the manufacture of wire rope. Although Andrew was born in England, he had moved to the U.S. in 1852. As a young man, he was able to use his father’s new, tough rope when he designed and built a suspension bridge across Sacramento’s American River. He also had used the wire rope to pull heavy ore cars out of underground gold mines on tracks. The light bulb went on and his wire-rope manufacturing plant (that he had already moved to San Francisco) began the process of making the new cable car system.
A little known fact is that Mr. Hallidie didn’t call them cable cars at first. Originally, one took a trip on ‘the endless wire rope way.’ The cars ran on rails, pulled by an endless steel cable moving on a slot beneath the street surface. In fact, the San Francisco landmark and tourist attraction works the same way today.
Visitors and commuters alike still consider their cable cars a true San Francisco treat.
Those Were the Days, the Today in History service from 440 International
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