Frank Beacham's Journal

Volkswagen, maker of the Beetle automobile, expanded its product offerings to include a microbus, which went into production on this day in 1950 — 73 years ago

Volkswagen, maker of the Beetle automobile, expanded its product offerings to include a microbus, which went into production on this day in 1950 — 73 years ago.

Known officially as the Volkswagen Type 2 (the Beetle was the Type 1) or the Transporter, the bus was a favorite mode of transportation for young people in the U.S. during the 1960s and became an icon of the American counterculture movement.

The VW bus was reportedly the brainchild of Dutch businessman, Ben Pon, an importer of Beetles to the Netherlands, who saw a market for a small bus and in 1947 sketched out his concept.

Volkswagen engineers further developed the idea. In March, 1950, the vehicle — with its boxy, utilitarian shape and rear engine — went into production. The bus eventually collected a number of nicknames, including the "Combi" (for combined-use vehicle) and the "Splittie" (for its split windshield). In Germany, it was known as the "Bulli."

In the U.S., it was referred to by some as a “hippie” van or bus because it was used to transport groups of young people and their camping gear and other supplies to concerts and anti-war rallies. Some owners painted colorful murals on their buses and replaced the VW logo on the front with a peace symbol.

According to "Bug" by Phil Patton, when Grateful Dead musician Jerry Garcia died in 1995, Volkswagen ran an ad featuring a drawing of the front of a bus with a tear streaming down it. The bus was only the second product offering for Volkswagen, a company whose history dates back to the 1930s Germany.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany and announced he wanted to build new roads and affordable cars for the German people. At that time, Austrian-born engineer Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951) was already working on creating a small car for the masses.

Hitler and Porsche later met and the engineer was charged with designing the inexpensive, mass-produced Volkswagen, or "people's car."

In 1938, work began on the Volkswagen factory, located in present-day Wolfsburg, Germany. However, full-scale vehicle production didn't begin until after World War II.
 
In the 1950s, the Volkswagen arrived in the U.S., where the initial reception was tepid, due in part to the car's historic Nazi connection as well as its small size and unusual rounded shape (which later led to it being dubbed the "Beetle").

In 1959, the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach launched a groundbreaking campaign that promoted the car's diminutive size as a distinct advantage to consumers, and over the next several years VW became the top-selling auto import in the U.S.

In 1972, the VW Beetle passed the iconic Ford Model T as the world's best-selling car, with over 15 million vehicles produced.

Thanks History.com

On this day in 1870 — 153 years ago — inventor Alfred Ely Beach opened New York City’s first subway line — a pneumatic demonstration project in a 300-foot tunnel under Broadway

On this day in 1870 — 153 years ago — inventor Alfred Ely Beach opened New York City’s first subway line — a pneumatic demonstration project in a 300-foot tunnel under Broadway.

Beach first demonstrated the pneumatic transit at the 1867 American Institute Fair, and sought to build a pneumatic transit system underground to relieve surface-level congestion with a system consisting of, in Beach’s words, merely “a tube, a car, a revolving fan!”

Beach obtained permission in 1868 to build a large package-delivery tunnel under Broadway, but secretly began work on a demonstration passenger-transit system, complete with a luxuriously appointed station and passenger car.

Like the deposit tubes at bank drive-through windows, the car was propelled by a rush of air from a blower, in this case a massive one. “When the blower is in motion, an enormous volume of air is driven through the tunnel, which drives the car before it like a boat before the wind,” Beach wrote in 1870.

The blower was built by Roots, whose successor company, Dresser, still builds smaller units for pneumatic tube systems. After only 58 days of construction, Beach’s subway opened as a demonstration project on Feb. 26, 1870.

Passengers entered the railway through a station in the basement of Devlin’s clothing store and offered as a fare a small donation to a home for orphans of Union soldiers and sailors from the Civil War.

The railway wasn’t actually operational on its opening day, because of an engine failure, but within a week passengers began taking the short journey under Broadway from Warren to Murray Street and back. The tunnel alone was fascinating to New Yorkers, so daytime hours were reserved for tunnel tours and evening hours for passengers.

Beach envisioned a larger network of underground railway tunnels and gained support from the state legislature in 1871 and 1872. Both measures were vetoed by Gov. John Hoffman, on the grounds that they gave too much power to the Beach Transit Company.

Beach himself publicly contended that infamous Tammany Hall ruler “Boss” Tweed killed the Beach Pneumatic Subway, even though Tweed had first introduced the bill to the state legislature. More to the point, wealthy Broadway landowners favored elevated transit, fearing that underground tunnels would damage the foundations of their buildings.

What ultimately caused Beach’s railway to cease operations in 1873 was the financial panic that led to the Long Depression. After years of rapid postwar economic expansion, a series of financial blows led to bank failures and dried-up credit markets, which would have prevented Beach from expanding his subway, even if the governor had approved it.

Beach himself offered a warning to future railway builders: “Everybody in New York wants rapid transit, but, strange to say, the moment that anybody sets to work with a definite plan for its realization, they are vigorously opposed and the work prevented.”

Elevated lines eventually gained popularity because of their lower cost. Thus the Interborough Rapid Transit Company didn’t begin underground public transit service until 34 years after Beach’s demonstration line first opened.

Despite its appearance in Ghostbusters II, no elements of Beach’s subway remain. The station was lost to fire in 1898, and the tunnel was destroyed during construction of a Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit tunnel in 1912.

Today’s City Hall station occupies the former tunnel’s footprint.

On this day — 49 years ago — the Volkswagen Beetle broke the world car production record over Ford’s original best selling car, the Model T

It was the car that defined the generation of the 1960s. It was cheap, basic and simple to repair oneself.

On this day in 1972 — 51 years ago — the 15,007,034th Volkswagen Beetle came off the assembly line, breaking a world car production record held for more than four decades by the Ford Motor Company's iconic Model T, which was in production from 1908 and 1927.

The history of the VW Beetle dates back to 1930s Germany.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany and announced he wanted to build new roads and affordable cars for the German people. At that time, Austrian-born engineer Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951) was already working on creating a small car for the masses.

Hitler and Porsche later met and the engineer was charged with designing the inexpensive, mass-produced Volkswagen — or "people's car." Hitler's plan was that people could buy the cars by making regular payments into a savings stamp program. In 1938, work began on the Volkswagen factory, located in present-day Wolfsburg, Germany.

However, full-scale vehicle production didn't begin until after World War II. In the 1950s, the Volkswagen arrived in the U.S., where the initial reception was tepid, due in part to the car's historic Nazi connection as well as its small size and unusual rounded shape (which later led to it being dubbed the "Beetle").

In 1959, the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach launched a groundbreaking campaign that promoted the car's diminutive size as a distinct advantage to consumers, and over the next several years, VW became the top-selling auto import in the U.S.

In 1998, Volkswagen began selling the highly touted, "New Beetle," while still continuing production of its predecessor. After more than 60 years and over 21 million vehicles produced, the last original Beetle rolled off the line in Puebla, Mexico, on July 30, 2003.

The world's original best-selling car — Henry Ford's Model T — first went into production at a Detroit, Michigan, plant in 1908. Referred to as the car that "put the world on wheels," the Model T revolutionized the automotive industry — and American society in general — by providing affordable, reliable transportation for the average person.

In 1913, Ford Motor Company began employing the moving assembly line at its plant in Highland Park, Michigan, which reduced the assembly speed of a chassis from 12 hours and eight minutes to one hour and 33 minutes. The following year, Ford produced 308,162 vehicles, more than the output of all other carmakers combined.

By 1924, the 10 millionth Model T came off the assembly line. When production finally ended, after 19 years, in May 1927, over 15 million Model Ts had been built.

Thanks History.com

Ford Model-T

On January 5, 1933 — 90 years ago — construction began on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, as workers began excavating 3.25 million cubic feet of dirt for the structure’s huge anchorages

On January 5, 1933 — 90 years ago — construction began on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, as workers began excavating 3.25 million cubic feet of dirt for the structure’s huge anchorages.

Following the Gold Rush boom that began in 1849, speculators realized the land north of San Francisco Bay would increase in value in direct proportion to its accessibility to the city.

Soon, a plan was hatched to build a bridge that would span the Golden Gate, a narrow, 400-foot deep strait that serves as the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, connecting the San Francisco Peninsula with the southern end of Marin County.

Although the idea went back as far as 1869, the proposal took root in 1916.

A former engineering student, James Wilkins, working as a journalist with the San Francisco Bulletin, called for a suspension bridge with a center span of 3,000 feet, nearly twice the length of any in existence.

Wilkins’ idea was estimated to cost an astounding $100 million. So, San Francisco's city engineer, Michael M. O'Shaughnessy (he’s also credited with coming up with the name Golden Gate Bridge), began asking bridge engineers whether they could do it for less.

Engineer and poet Joseph Strauss, a five-foot tall Cincinnati-born Chicagoan, said he could. Eventually, O'Shaughnessy and Strauss concluded they could build a pure suspension bridge within a practical range of $25-30 million with a main span at least 4,000 feet. The construction plan still faced opposition, including litigation, from many sources.

By the time most of the obstacles were cleared, the Great Depression of 1929 had begun, limiting financing options, so officials convinced voters to support $35 million in bonded indebtedness, citing the jobs that would be created for the project.

However, the bonds couldn’t be sold until 1932, when San-Francisco based Bank of America agreed to buy the entire project in order to help the local economy.

The Golden Gate Bridge officially opened on May 27, 1937, the longest bridge span in the world at the time. The first public crossing had taken place the day before, when 200,000 people walked, ran and even roller skated over the new bridge.

With its tall towers and famous red paint job, the bridge quickly became a famous American landmark and a symbol of San Francisco.

Thanks History.com

Above photo from San Francisco Chronicle

This week in 1791 — 231 years ago — the one-way street was born in New York City

This week in 1791 — 231 years ago — the one-way street was born in New York City.

It happened on John Street outside the John Street Theater downtown, where traffic chaos ensued when shows let out.

The theater urged audience members in a playbill to “order their coachmen to take up and set down their horses heads to the East-River, to avoid confusion.”

In other words, all carriage traffic should face the same way.

The theater is long gone, but John Street today is still a one-way street.

On October 18, 1933 — 89 years ago — philosopher-inventor, R. Buckminster Fuller, applied for a patent for his Dymaxion Car

On October 18, 1933 — 89 years ago — philosopher-inventor, R. Buckminster Fuller, applied for a patent for his Dymaxion Car.

The Dymaxion — the word itself was another Fuller invention, a combination of "dynamic," "maximum" and "ion" — looked and drove like no vehicle anyone had ever seen.

It was a three-wheeled, 20-foot-long, pod-shaped automobile that could carry 11 passengers and travel as fast as 120 miles per hour. It got 30 miles to the gallon, could U-turn in a distance equal to its length and could parallel park just by pivoting its wheels toward the curb and zipping sideways into its parking space.

It was stylish, efficient and eccentric and it attracted a great deal of attention. Celebrities wanted to ride in it and rich men wanted to invest in it. But in the same month that Fuller applied for his patent, one of his prototype Dymaxions crashed, killing the driver and alarming investors so much that they withdrew their money from the project.

When Fuller first sketched the Dymaxion Car in 1927, it was a half-car, half-airplane — when it got going fast enough, its wings were supposed to inflate — called the "4D Transport."

In 1932, the sculptor Isamu Naguchi helped the inventor with his final design. It had a long teardrop-shaped chassis with two wheels in front and a third in back that could lift off the ground.

In practice, this didn't turn out to be a great idea. As the vehicle picked up speed (theoretically in preparation for takeoff) and the third wheel bounced off the ground, it became nearly impossible for the driver to control the car.

In fact, many people blamed this handling problem for the fatal crash of the prototype car, even though an investigation revealed that a car full of sightseers had actually caused the accident by hurtling into the Dymaxion's lane.

Many elements of the Dymaxion’s design — its streamlined shape, its fuel efficiency — have inspired later generations of automakers, but Fuller himself was probably best known for another of his inventions — the geodesic dome.

Geodesic domes are built using a pattern of self-bracing triangles.

As a result, perhaps unlike the Dymaxion Car, they are incredibly strong and stable — in fact, as one historian writes, "they have proved to be the strongest structures ever devised."

Elspeth Beard, 27, became the first English woman to circumnavigate the world by motorcycle. The journey took three years and covered 48,000 miles

Elspeth Beard, 27, shortly after becoming the first English woman to circumnavigate the world by motorcycle.

The journey took three years in the 1980s and covered 48,000 miles.

After her motorcycling feat, Beard bought the derelict Munstead Tower in Godalming, a 130-foot tower built in 1898. Over the course of five years, she renovated it, converting the former water-tower into a habitable house.

The renovated tower was featured on a 1995 episode of Homefront, and in 1994, the tower won the Royal Institute of British Architects award for South East England.

Today, Beard is a noted architect near London.

On September 22, 1953 — 69 years ago today — the first four-level (or "stack") interchange in the world opened in Los Angeles at the intersection of the Harbor, Hollywood, Pasadena and Santa Ana freeways

On September 22, 1953 — 69 years ago today — the first four-level (or "stack") interchange in the world opened in Los Angeles at the intersection of the Harbor, Hollywood, Pasadena and Santa Ana freeways.

It was, as The Saturday Evening Post wrote, "a mad motorist's dream" — 32 lanes of traffic weaving in eight directions at once.

Today, although the four-level is justly celebrated as a civil engineering landmark, the interchange is complicated, frequently congested and sometimes downright terrifying. As its detractors are fond of pointing out, it's probably no coincidence that this highway octopus straddles not only a fetid sulfur spring but also the former site of the town gallows.

Before the L.A. four-level was built, American highway interchanges typically took the form of a cloverleaf, with four circular ramps designed to let motorists merge from one road to another without braking. But cloverleafs were dangerous, because people merging onto the highway and people merging off of the highway had to jockey for space in the same lane.

Four-level interchanges, by contrast, eliminate this looping cross-traffic by stacking long arcs and straightaways on top of one another. As a result, each of their merges only goes in one direction — which means, at least in theory, that they are safer and more efficient.

When the iconic Hollywood-Harbor-Pasadena-Santa Ana four-level was born, it was the most expensive half-mile of highway in the world, costing $5.5 million to build. (Today, highway engineers estimate, $5.5 million would pay for just 250 feet of urban freeway.)

Roadbuilders disemboweled an entire neighborhood — 4,000 people lost their homes — and excavated most of the hill it stood on, dumping the rubble in the nearby Chavez Ravine, where Dodger Stadium stands today.

Though its design has inspired dozens of freeway interchanges across the United States, many Angelenos dread their encounters with the four-level. It's as crowded (500,000 drivers use it every day), stressful and treacherous as the cloverleafs of yesteryear.

Welcome to the car culture, which can be attributed to those “futurists” who created this monster in the last century.

Thanks History.com

On this day in 1914 — 108 years ago — the world’s first electric traffic signal was installed on the corner of Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street in Cleveland, Ohio

On this day in 1914 — 108 years ago — the world’s first electric traffic signal was installed on the corner of Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street in Cleveland, Ohio.

In the earliest days of the automobile, navigating America’s roads was a chaotic experience. Pedestrians, bicycles, horses and streetcars all competed with motor vehicles for right of way.

The problem was alleviated somewhat with the gradual disappearance of horse-drawn carriages, but even before World War I it had become clear that a system of regulations was necessary to keep traffic moving and reduce the number of accidents on the roads.

Various competing claims exist as to who was responsible for the world’s first traffic signal. A device installed in London in 1868 featured two semaphore arms that extended horizontally to signal “stop” and at a 45-degree angle to signal “caution.”

In 1912, a Salt Lake City, Utah, police officer named Lester Wire mounted a handmade wooden box with colored red and green lights on a pole, with the wires attached to overhead trolley and light wires.

Most prominently, the inventor Garrett Morgan has been given credit for having invented the traffic signal based on his T-shaped design, patented in 1923 and later sold to General Electric.

Despite Morgan’s greater visibility, the system installed in Cleveland on August 5, 1914, is widely regarded as the first electric traffic signal. Based on a design by James Hoge, who received U.S. patent 1,251,666 for his “Municipal Traffic Control System” in 1918.

It consisted of four pairs of red and green lights that served as stop-go indicators, each mounted on a corner post. Wired to a manually operated switch inside a control booth, the system was configured so that conflicting signals were impossible.

According to an article in The Motorist, published by the Cleveland Automobile Club in August 1914: “This system is, perhaps, destined to revolutionize the handling of traffic in congested city streets and should be seriously considered by traffic committees for general adoption.”

On this day in 2003 — 19 years ago — the last of 21,529,464 Volkswagen Beetles built since World War II rolled off the production line at Volkswagen’s plant in Puebla, Mexico

On this day in 2003 — 19 years ago — the last of 21,529,464 Volkswagen Beetles built since World War II rolled off the production line at Volkswagen’s plant in Puebla, Mexico.

One of the 3,000-unit final edition, a baby-blue vehicle was sent to a museum in Wolfsburg, Germany, where Volkswagen is headquartered.

The car produced in Puebla that day was the last so-called “classic” VW Beetle, which is not to be confused with the redesigned new Beetle that Volkswagen introduced in 1998. The new Beetle resembles the classic version but is based on the VW Golf.

The roots of the classic Beetle stretch back to the mid-1930s, when the famed Austrian automotive engineer, Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, met German leader Adolf Hitler’s request for a small, affordable passenger car to satisfy the transportation needs of the German people.

Hitler called the result the KdF (Kraft-durch-Freude)-Wagen (or “Strength-Through-Joy” car) after a Nazi-led movement ostensibly aimed at helping the working people of Germany. The car would later be known by the name Porsche preferred: Volkswagen, or “people’s car.”

The first production-ready, Kdf-Wagen, debuted at the Berlin Motor Show in 1939. The international press soon dubbed it the “Beetle” for its distinctive rounded shape.

During World War II, the factory in Kdf-stat (later renamed Wolfsburg) continued to make Beetles, though it was largely dedicated to the production of war vehicles. Production was halted under threat of Allied bombing in August, 1944 and did not resume until after the war, under British control.

Though VW sales were initially slower in the United States compared with the rest of the world, by 1960 the Beetle was the top-selling import in America, thanks to an iconic ad campaign by the firm Doyle Dane Bernbach.

In 1972, the Beetle surpassed the longstanding worldwide production record of 15 million vehicles, set by Ford Motor Company’s legendary Model T between 1908 and 1927. It also became a worldwide cultural icon, featuring prominently in the hit 1969 movie, The Love Bug, which starred a Beetle named “Herbie.” It was also seen on the cover of the Beatles album, Abbey Road.  

In 1977, however, the Beetle, with its rear-mounted, air-cooled-engine, was banned in America for failing to meet safety and emission standards. Worldwide sales of the car shrank by the late 1970s and by 1988, the classic Beetle was sold only in Mexico.

Due to increased competition from other manufacturers of inexpensive compact cars, and a Mexican decision to phase out two-door taxis, Volkswagen decided to discontinue production of the classic bug in 2003.

The final count of 21,529,464, incidentally, did not include the original 600 cars built by the Nazis prior to World War II.