Perhaps you have heard about this fabulous Nautilus, or the balloon that allowed to cross the world in eighty days? Yes exactly, we have just entered the Jules Vernes dimension … His fertile imagination did not only give him the idea of these machines exploring the unknown regions of the abyss or sky. In February 1889, he foresaw that in 2889, our travels would be via “pneumatic tubes thrown across the oceans” (if you want to know more about our future, read in the XXIX century, or The day of an American journalist in 2889). Much better than our current TGV: these tubes would move at a speed of 1500 km / h.
Extravagant? This is not what Franklin Smith thought twenty years later. In 1906, this American inventor designed a new type of vehicle, lighter than the cars of the time. In fact, it was enough to lighten the engine by removing some parts of its rotary part. You are going to protest, these parts were obviously useful! Yes, but that’s without counting on Smith’s ingenuity. On the lower part of the cart, he added a system resembling an electromagnet. If you run AC power there, the truck could get up and stay suspended in the air! On the condition, of course, that you add some weight. Do you imagine the advantage of such a vehicle? Its speed would no longer depend on the slopes or the weight it carries, but on the speed of the magnetic field … which never varies!
The Electric Carrier Co. took over Smith’s patents, with the idea of shipping mail, parcels or luggage from one city to another. The trolleys would also be controlled independently of others to avoid collisions. The company had thought about everything! Paterson, New Jersey, served as guinea pigs: they set up a 550-meter test line before embarking on bigger industry … which finally never saw the light of day…
