Lemon_CIS270WX-01_Writing 2_Final.doc
The Subway System
Sarah Lemon
The Subway System, particularly in the United States, has contributed to the movement of information and the overall speed of transit in America to an immeasurable extent. It is a vital tool, particularly for larger cities in the country such as New York, and has developed with times as well as changed them. Particularly due to the nature of its information contribution, it is ambiguously beneficial.
The subway system’s main American innovator was Alfred Ely Beach, alive from 1826 to 1896. He contributed to the project by designing the Beach Pneumatic Transit which made the most evidently pre-constructed pathways for the New York City subway. The system was developed in the 1860s due to a chaotic discombobulating of traffic in the city. A more efficient mode of transportation was absolutely necessary. The largest problem area of traffic was along Broadway, and Beach primarily suggested an underground railway to fix the problem and help with the over concentration of vehicles. He developed his idea from the underground Metropolitan Railway in London, but changed the design so that the trains would now be powered by pneumatics rather than steam engines. In other words, he designed an air-driven system. He aimed to design and build a construction for small pneumatic tubes in 1869 but it turned into a passenger railway design. What was originally planned as an information and cargo transit became focused on human beings. Which, in a certain sense, is still an information transit. After fighting for his designs for years, all the correct legislation was shot down several times before everything was finally set in place to make the new transportation system a reality in the late 1870s and 1880s.
Technically, the first underground train network opened in 1863 in Boston, and the first subway system in the United States was built in Boston, however it was passed over for attention because soon afterward the New York City subway became the largest system in America. The night that the New York subway opened to the public, upwards of about 100,000 people paid five cents to ride. Today, around 4.5 million passengers take the subway in New York everyday, and it runs 24 hours a day, everyday.
The subway system didn’t pick up its speed in terms of popularity until about 1932, after which many above-ground railway systems were torn down. However throughout the entire invention process, the subway system helped force Information technology and scientific technology advancements along simply by providing competition. The system was initially developed during the War of Currents between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse; ultimately, direct current was deemed to be the most efficient form of electricity for urban railroads.
The system also directly united the city in the early 1900s due to the Triborough Plan, a collection of subway lines that allowed the city to be connected through railways equally and efficiently. Eventually many more lines were added to the system, but this was the initially written and implemented plan to link different parts of the city easily. This made the passage of information from different areas to the city quick, efficient, easy, and primarily inexpensive. The system has been expanding since 1910, at least. Because of the expansion, the system as well as the city was unified through combined efforts to make this form of travel easy, accessible, and cheap. Citizens still experience the benefits of those goals today.
In regards to the New York subway system, the 20th century was completely full of changes and movement; construction, crime, buy-outs, etc. Many organizations and companies fought for, bought, sold, and rebought different aspects of the system. Investments, changes, and direction all shifted countless times. This helped to aid and nurture a growing capitalist society and economy.
Coming from the center of the industrial revolution, the New York Subway system have provided such a vital avenue for human movement that information technology was aided by the system in an immeasurable way simply due to the fact that human beings are at the heart of information technology. Because it makes people’s lives easier, it makes the movement, improvement, and growth of information technology possible. Subway systems provide a vast amount of less pollution than alternatives, are psychologically healthy because they are quieter than alternatives aboveground, provide quick transportation (which is extremely hard to come by in busy cities such as New York City), and cause less pollution (Wargo and Alderman).
It is an indisputable fact that subways are fast and cheaper than alternatives, therefore the progress being made by those who utilize the system on a daily basis is immeasurable when considering the time and energy saved and redirected to somewhere more useful than a commute. Data cannot be attached to how much advancement the system has aided and made possible, it is incalculable. Each individual contribution to society from each individual person that rides has used the system since the 20th century simply cannot be measured. Transporting people is inherently transporting information, and therefore vastly contributing to Information Technology.
Works Cited
“Alfred Ely Beach.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web.
“History of The New York City Subway.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web.
Köktemir, Faik. “The Advantages of Subway Systems.” Academia.edu. N.p., n.d. Web.
“New York City Subway Opens.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web.
Shafto, Dan. “Underground Railroads.” Infoplease. Infoplease, n.d. Web.
HR: works cited
X_Sarah Elizabeth Lemon
