All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

S3 All About Inventions and accelerating street traffic. Steam was advocated as superior to animal traction, but was promptly ruled out of court, visions of the public thoroughfares being converted into roaring railways precipitating a hostile attitude from the powers that be. Besides, there were many technical difficulties which assumed a forbidding aspect. Gas, compressed air, and finally the cable system were tried in turn. Although an illustration of each system of propulsion is afforded in one country or another, it was the cable method which secured the greatest measure of success, but only for a time. The cable tramway, comprising an underground endless travelling cable which could be gripped and released by an apparatus on the car, was the revival of one of the oldest ideas for the movement of vehicles without animal power. In its revived form it first attracted attention because it offered a means of moving tramcars up and down hills which were beyond the capacity of horses. While the advocates of the cable system were enforcing their claims upon the tramway world, a new means of accomplishing this end was attracting the attention of inventors and engineers, which, it was realised, if carried to perfection would constitute an ideal traction system for tramways. In 1842 a Scottish engineer, Davidson by name, and hailing from Aberdeen, had indulged in an experi- ment upon the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, as it was then called, but which is now incorporated in the North British Railway, which had aroused more than casual attention, especially in certain circles. With a small car of his own design he had carried a full load of passengers at a speed of four miles per