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Some of us inspected hundreds of 19th century photographs. We are used to seeing horse carriages and horse cars on city streets. First cable cars can be spotted in late the 1860s, though these were allegedly invented in 1820s. First electric tram car was tested in 1875 in Russia, and that about...

I can't seem to get off the trains train, lol. The below photograph attracted my attention a few years ago. I think this particular system was used a bit more than we could possibly imagine. Luckily there is some info we can play with. Boynton Bicycle Railroad As you can see, there are a few...

I think the story of this monorail is somewhat weird. They say it existed for 5 years, but it only had one operational car... why only one? The Pelham Park and City Island Railroad was a short street railway in the Bronx, NYC, which connected City Island with the Bartow station of the Harlem...

How many electric car models do you know of the top of your head? Probably three or four. If you are really into it, may be ten, though I'm not even sure there are ten contemporary electric car models out there. Well, in the beginning of the 20th century there were hundreds of different models...

For me it all started with this hard to explain streetcar setup, where a streetcar was being pulled by a horse. This is one of those instances where an official explanation was running into a sharp contradiction with common sense. I was always wondering why people would go through the hurdles of...

Technology like the one presented in this little compilation article is not exactly hidden. As a matter of fact, the information is widely available, if you know what to look for. Early in the 20th century mechanical and engineering magazines were widely advertising these items. These gyroscopic...

Utagawa Yoshitora was a designer of ukiyo-e Japanese woodblock prints and an illustrator of books and newspapers who was active from about 1850 to about 1880. He was born in Edo (modern Tokyo), but neither his date of birth nor date of death is known. He was the oldest pupil of Utagawa Kuniyoshi...

1649 Nuremberg Carriage A few days ago I was reading about bicycles, and ran into this contraption style below. I do not know if this mechanism was actually a motorized vehicle, but there is enough in there to investigate, and this is exactly what I wanted to offer our blog members to do. There...

Today, the building standing at the northeast corner of 61st Street and Ninth Avenue in Manhattan blends in well with its tall, dirt-colored brethren. But back in the 1930s, the tower was anything but a bunch of apartments and offices. Indeed, it was the fantastic, futuristic “HOTEL for...

1862 Source I was thinking along the lines of what kind of highways they could have in 1862. Sure enough we could call some horse carriage trail a highway, but I figured I'd look for things. It is important to understand that we are not talking about railroad trains here. We are talking about...