The intriguing new Boston history blog, Looking Backward, has a short tidbit on a prospective D.C. to Boston monorail that, obviously, never got built.

“Illustration by Andre Castaigne for article “The Brennan Mono-Rail Car,” McClure’s Magazine, 1910

A proposed elevated line running from Washington to Boston based on the gyroscope-balanced monorail car Irish-Australian inventor, Louis Brennan. His model, introduced in 1909. while successfully demonstrated, never reached mass production.

Amtrak’s Acela tilting trains can reach 150mph. Brennan said his might reach 200mph.

I’d love to look into this more. Why didn’t it work? Who were the interest groups that supported or opposed the work? Did it even get to that stage?

Here’s what I found in a 1960 text, MONORAILS by Hermann Botzow, Jr.:

Date: November 10, 1909.

Builder: Louis Brennan.

Location : London, England.

Purpose: Exhibition and experiment.

Type: Supported on single rail and stabilized by a gyroscope only. Speed: 22 mph. Description: A 40′ ten-ton 40-passenger car ran on 70 Ib. rail by using two 3′-6″, 1,500 Ib. gyroscopic wheels rotating in opposite directions at 3000 rpm. The car operated on gas-driven generators furnishing power for propulsion and for the gyroscope motors.

Comment: 10 years of subsequent experiment were necessary to perfect a superelevation of the car as it rounded curves. Fear of the gyroscope stopping kept this and the Scherl vehicle from being used for public transportation. 125 mph speeds were predicted to be possible.

Were the gyroscope fears well-founded or not? Were there extenuating circumstances (WWI?)?

One of the problems in the historiography of technology is that if the use of something doesn’t become widespread, it rarely gets investigated. There’s a serious bias built into the record based on outmoded ideas about the market (“necessity”) bringing any and all needed and possible technologies into being. With that kind of thinking, if a piece of tech doesn’t exist it’s either impossible or unnecessary. Recent historians like David Nye and Gijs Mom have made that assumption very shaky.

Nonetheless, while a piece of infrastructure like this, which could have changed the functioning of the East Coast corridor, gets no attention, every single word of minor legal documents and minor political philosphers is puzzled over endlessly. Kind of weird, no?

Photo: flickr/j3net

I’ve got a big feature up on Wired Science about the Aquatic Species Program, an R&D effort at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (née Solar Energy Research Institute) through the 80s and into the early 90s. It’s a case study on how uneven funding can destroy even promising programs. And with the end of the stimulus funding for science in sight, we’ve got to be careful that we don’t yo-yo more good ideas into oblivion.

Another point I tried to make is that we don’t do R&D just to know what works. We also do R&D to know what doesn’t. In fact, the failures are going to outstrip the successes by a wide margin. If billions of dollars go into algae biofuels and they are a long-term loser, that’s a very bad thing for green technology. On the other hand, if algal biofuels are a long-term winner but there is a lot of risk involved in their production because of scanty R&D, then that’s terrible too because our lack of foresight increases the cost of capital and therefore the cost of the fuel itself. Either way, stopping and starting or ramping it up and then letting it trickle away is the worst way of developing these technologies.

Here’s the conclusion:

Just $25 million was invested over the life of the Aquatic Species Program, which is just 5.5 percent of the total money the DOE dedicated to biofuels over that time. Adjusted for inflation, the program’s total budget in today’s dollars was less than $100 million. To put this tiny number in oil industry context, Exxon Mobil made $142 million in profit each day of 2008.

“They came up with this idea and in four years, they almost demonstrated the technological feasibility, and then the funding fell out,” said Johansen, the phycologist who collected algae for the program. “The maximum of funding was about $4 million a year. When I left, it was $800,000 a year. Now, there is all this biofuel work going on, and they are all going back to that public domain research. It kind of drives me crazy.”

The neglect of the Aquatic Species Program and subsequent resurgence of algal biofuel interest is one of many examples that show that the lack of coherent, consistent energy policy has left the world’s most oil-dependent nation scrambling in times of crisis.

Johansen even went so far as to say that “if the Reagan and Bush administrations had not ended” the growth of the algal biofuels program, our country would have algal biofuels now.

Even under far less optimistic scenarios, if the Aquatic Species Program had been fully funded from its start until now, there is no question that we’d know a lot more about the potential, and limitations, of algal biofuels.

Instead, we’re left with some lessons learned, a partially missing library of microorganisms, and a lot of questions that investors and entrepreneurs want answered before the next oil price spike.

Absolutely stunning footage of downtown San Francisco in 1905. Check out how multi-use the streets were. Pedestrians, automobiles (some probably gasoline-powered, others electric and steam), street cars, horse-drawn carriages.

I could go on about the various energy systems represented here, but just watch this video. It’s incredible.

If you like this stuff, and you live in San Francisco, don’t miss archivist Rick Prelinger’s “Lost Landscapes” event this Friday. He’ll be showing footage from all over San Francisco that he’s collected from residents. (Rick is the one talking in the video.)

The Dynosphere was a one-wheeled contraption that graced the cover of Popular Science in 1932, but that never made a commercial impact. A 2.5 horsepower engine could propel it at up to 30 miles per hour, though that figure might be bunk.

It’s interesting because we tend to think of the diffusion of inventions like this:

But really most inventions’ adoption curves look nothing like that, even ones much more successful than the Dynosphere. What about, say, the Bluetooth headset? Or the diesel car? Or the nuclear reactor? Or the household fan? Or the thermos? Or Dolby surround sound? Or the videophone? Or the electric knife for cutting turkey? Or manufactured gas from coal? Or compressed air pipelines for transmitting motive power? Or the bicycle? Or electric resistance heating? Or anti-dandruff shampoo?

Our thinking about technology is based largely on a handful of products when hundreds of thousands of other things have been brought to market and used by millions of people. We don’t have to ignore the car, but let’s not skip over the rest of this vast history.

Intellectually via a Twitter conversation with Tim Maly, Maureen Ogle, and Suzanne Fischer.

Image: NYT.

Ahem. Talk about invoking the American technological sublime! Yikes.

Energy has not always been conceived the same way, at least by oil companies like Humble, a forefather of Exxon.

This giant glacier has remained unmelted for centuries. Yet the petroleum energy Humble supples—if converted into heat—could melt it at the rate of 80 tons each second! To meet the nation’s growing needs for energy, Humble has applied science to nature’s resources to become America’s Leading Energy Company. Working wonders with oil through research, Humble provides energy in many forms — to help heat our homes, power our transportation, and to furnish industry with a great variety of versatile chemicals. Stop at a Humble station for new Enco Extra gasoline, and see why the “Happy Motoring” Sign is the World’s First Choice!

Via Grist

You probably know Levittown as the place where America went wrong, if you’re a sustainability nerd. The tract home development in Long Island became the model, so we’re told, for all kinds of suburban development, setting the nation on a path to oil addiction and high energy usage.

But the more I look into the place as it actually was built, the more I’ve become convinced that individual Levittown houses were probably fairly low energy-intensity dwellings — and that the community as a whole was smarter than we give it credit for now.

The original Levittown Cape Cods were under 800 square feet, had big windows for drawing in sun light and heat, and were radiantly heated by pipes in the floors. In comparison to even the most energy efficient big, modern home, it would have used a lot less electricity and heating fuel. Not only that, but the Levitts were prefab adherents. They insisted on using factory-machined parts for just about everything because it was cheaper. My guess is that the method generated less waste, too, and required less energy. Plumbing and energy pumping was minimized because of the boiler between the kitchen and bathroom.

The construction methodology wasn’t perfect, of course. They had almost no insulation, for example, and were built in treeless pastures that could not take advantage of natural shade.

The Levittown community had some excellent features built-in that later communities would eliminate. For example, every section of the community had a supermarket and little stores built right into the neighborhood. For women stranded in the ‘burbs without cars, it was not only an essential and efficient shopping spot, but an important center for socializing, too.

I had the pleasure of talking with Polly Dwyer, head of the Levittown Historical Association, and a resident of Levittown for more than 50 years. She recalled that she and her husband — a World War II veteran — didn’t even look at the inside of the house they bought (“They were all the same, we figured”). They were far more concerned with being close to the Village Green, as it was called (“We bought the location”).

What if the real Levittown had become the model for building suburbs? Compact communities with smaller homes and built-in retail and social establishments. Somewhere along the way to the suburban dream embodied by Levittown, the good parts got excised and the high-energy and antisocial elements emphasized.

How that happened is an important story and underplayed story. Some Spanish suburbs look like a cluster of high-rises built way outside Madrid. Though you wouldn’t exactly call these tremendous examples of planning, they do allow for some of the amenities of density. The point is: it’s not just that America suburbanized. How we suburbanized matters, too.

Over the next couple weeks, I’m going to be working on some energy models aided by Jared Silliker and Dawn Danby of the old Levittown homes. Stay tuned — and let me know if you want to help!

And in case you missed the Levittown links that got me interested, here’s a roundup:

Levittown, Pa. | Building the Suburban Dream: “Between 1950 and 1960, 20 million people were drawn to mass housing developments on the outskirts of America’s cities. In terms of sheer numbers, the move to the suburbs outstripped the fabled Westward migration of the 1800s many times over… The new suburbs combined country comforts with city conveniences. With the help of modern production and financing methods, builders like Levitt and Sons made the American dream of homeownership affordable to millions.”

HOUSING: Up from the Potato Fields – TIME: Time’s original write-up on the miracle of Levittown, New York.

Levittown: Documents of an Ideal American Suburb: “Levittown has long represented the paradigmatic postwar American suburb. Yet very little in the way of good critical work has been done on the history and significance of this American cultural icon. Over the past decade I have been assembling materials to provide an ongoing cultural history of Levittown and, through its story, to offer a more nuanced and sympathetic picture of American suburban life in the Cold War era. Part of a larger project, Outside the Gates: Cultural Landscapes from the Material to the Virtual, my Levittown work has become so interesting in itself that I have allowed it to evolve into something closer to a work of collaborative history, here on the ‘net.”

Here’s former Texas A&M geologist, Earl Cook,  and his full quote from a 1971 article in Scientific American.

The automobile engine and its present fuel simply cannot be cleaned up sufficiently to make it an acceptable urban citizen. It seems clear that the internal-combustion engine will be banned from the central city by the year 2000; it should probably be banned right now. Because our cities are shaped for automobiles, not for mass transit, we shall have to develop battery-powered or flywheel-powered cars and taxis for inner-city transport.

Well, we’re not quite there yet, but how about the kindler, gentler, 21st-century version: congestion taxes?

(This is part of my on-going forecasts project, which details just how bad we are at predicting what the world is going to look like.)

Photo: Tom Baker.

Wow. Take a look at The Ford Nucleon, the fission-powered concept car from a future that really never came to be. As it’s more mockup than anything else, there isn’t much information available about it. But, man, what a symbol of the nuclear craze that swept America during the 50s. You could drive it right up to your house with the swimming pool/decontamination bath.

And yes, this is what our car companies were doing while Toyota and Honda were figuring out how to dominate the industry.

From Ford’s media mavens:

The Nucleon, a 3/8-scale model, provided a glimpse into the atomic-powered future. Designed on the assumption that the present bulkiness and weight of nuclear reactors and attendant shielding would some day be reduced, the Nucleon was intended to probe possible design influence of atomic power in automobiles.

The model featured a power capsule suspended between twin booms at the rear. The capsule, which would contain a radioactive core for motive power, would be easily interchangeable at the driver’s option, according to performance needs and the distance to be traveled.

The drive train would be part of the power package, and electronic torque converters might take the place of the drive-train used at the time. Cars like the Nucleon might be able to travel 5,000 miles or more, depending on the size of the core, without recharging. At that time, they would be taken to a charging station, which research designers envisioned as largely replacing gas stations.

The passenger compartment of the Nucleon featured a one-piece, pillar-less windshield and compound rear window, and was topped by a cantilever roof. There were air intakes at the leading edge of the roof and at the base of its supports.

Cars such as the Nucleon illustrate the extent to which research into the future was conducted at Ford, and demonstrate the designer’s unwillingness to admit that a thing cannot be done simply because it has not been done.

The Infrastructurist notes today that a new electric truck can carry 16,000 pounds and has a range of 100 miles.

Well, electric trucks actually have a long and illustrious commercial history that has been nicely excavated by the historians Gijs Mom and David Kirsch. They found that there were actually quite a few electric delivery trucks bopping around American cities before World War I.

The hope among the electric vehicle advocates of the time was that “separate spheres” for internal combustion and electric vehicles would emerge. Between cities, cars would replace the railroads, but inside cities, electric trucks could replace the horse-carts that did most of the moving around of goods.

As it turned out, gasoline-powered cars could serve both long-haul needs and provide about-town services, thus creating vertical integration that worked, aside from the energy and fuel inefficiency of the whole enterprise.

The key point, though, is that for moving goods around a town in the beginning of the century, electric trucks were a success. Mom and Kirsch provide the details in the 2001 article embedded at the bottom of the post. Here’s a taste:

“In fact, at certain times, under specific conditions and for clearly identified groups of customers, the electric vehicle was both more reliable and cheaper to operate than comparable gasoline-engine or horse-drawn vehicles — the superior technology, that is to say, although its superiority could endure only as long as those specialized markets continued to exist. Technological superiority resided not simply in the physical properties of the individual technologies but in the contexts and systems in which motor vehicles were embedded.”

The lesson that we can draw from the last century could be that new forms of organization and distribution will need to develop if electric trucks are going to make become a major part of the commercial fleet.

And it’s worth noting that I don’t think the companies and people of the day were entirely unaware of the air pollution that internal-combustion vehicles generate. One major electric truck user was, in fact, Commonwealth Edison Company of Chicago. In the late 19th century, the Windy City was really struggling with urban air pollution. A Chief Smoke Inspector was appointed to to make sure that steam boilers using soft, smoky coal kept them in good working order. If the owners neglected their boilers, they could be fined based on old “nuisance laws” that prevented people from keeping dead animals in their homes or what have you.

Given that the early internal combustion engines were smelly and smoky, you can bet people had the same kinds of misgivings about gasoline as they did about soft coal.

“Upon my appointment as Chief Smoke Inspector,” wrote Chicago’s Chief Smoke Inspector, F.U. Adams in a report to the city. “I found that there was an overwhelming public sentiment in favor of a suppression of the smoke nuisance. Opposed to this public sentiment was but one interest powerful enough to menace the success of a vigorously conducted campaign. That interest was the bituminous coal trade.”

If you’re interested, check out the rest of his report. It’s fascinating stuff that probably deserves its own post.

[Image: Waverly truck ad clipped out of larger image at Chuckstoyland, which has an incredible amount of old automobile stuff.]

In the wake of the Depression, FDR created a succession of government groups that were to look into and plan for the future. Tasked with understanding the American economy and its social impacts, the National Resources Committee wrote a report in 1937 that was “the first major attempt to show the kinds of new inventions which may affect living and working conditions in America in the next 10 to 25 years.”

The Technological Trends and National Policy serves as a kind of technological State of the Nation address. I could probably pull out a million interesting factoids, but I was particularly struck by the commonsense way they thought about power. The “power available” to someone wasn’t just what came out of the wall, it was all the systems that used power, particularly cars, planes, etc.

“Transportation systems, which include motor vehicles, railroads, marine propulsion, and airplanes usually carry their own power generating equipment,” they wrote.

In other words, they recognized a car for what it is: a gasoline fueled power plant attached to wheels. Thinking of a car this way, the committee included vehicle engines’ horsepower in a table of other power sources. That doesn’t seem particularly interesting, but take a look at the numbers; they’re eye-popping.

Cars were a horsepower reservoir almost 15 times larger than the combined output of the country’s central and industrial power plants.

I decided to run the numbers for today’s overpowered vehicle fleet. (The math is below.) Turns out we have something on the order of 51 billion peak horsepower sitting in our driveways. That’s an incredible 38,276 gigawatts of power available. That absolutely dwarfs the nameplate capacity of our electrical power plants, which total up to a mere 1,087 gigawatts. In fact, each week of 2008, a horrible year for car sales, almost 38 gigawatts of capacity rolled into the streets of America.

Just to be clear, every week, cars with a total 52 million horsepower are sold. That’s 80% of the horsepower available to American industry in 1935. And that economy defeated Hitler. It’s not quite an apples-to-apples comparison, but it should make us think.

There are three things that I take away from this. One, the current size and power of our cars and trucks is just stupid. The Tata Nano, with its 33 horsepower engine, is the way to go. (If all of the world’s cars looked like that, going electric would also be a lot easier.) Let’s merely note here that the average American passenger car has 7.5 times as much horsepower as the Nano and yet both vehicles will get you to the grocery store or to Nevada or wherever.

Second, the people of just one hundred years ago would be awed by the amount of horsepower every American has access to. The funny thing — the irony, perhaps — is that we no longer need that amount of horsepower to do anything useful. The people of the prairie were scratching and clawing for every kilowatt hour of useful work they could wring out of some oil or the wind. The people of Omaha these days don’t need anything like the direct energy services of their forerunners. Regular folks produce little of their own food or goods or housing and yet they energy falling out of their pockets.

Third, and here’s the hopeful part — no sane country would encourage its consumers to get on the technical and performance treadmill that led us to this point. Who would want this piece of the American technological infrastructure and set of consumer expectations? It’s resource inefficient and expensive. I wouldn’t expect the Chinese to follow our path to the American car anytime soon.

Calculations: It’s hard to figure average horsepower of all American cars because it changes from year to year and the vehicle fleet is a mix of ages. So, let’s just make some simple assumptions based on Christopher Knittel’s data from an Institute of Transportation Studies report.

Let’s simplify a bit and say that cars are 55% of the fleet and light trucks 45%. The average new car has 247 horsepower now and had 110 hp back in 1980. Let’s just say the average car has about 200 horsepower. The average light truck’s got 236 horsepower now, up from 138 in 1980. Let’s call that an average of 210. Do the math. 51 billion horsepower sitting in our driveways.