[HN Gopher] Paris Had a Moving Sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Ed...
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Paris Had a Moving Sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison Film
Captured It (2020)
Author : rbanffy
Score : 93 points
Date : 2025-11-02 21:08 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.openculture.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.openculture.com)
| nashashmi wrote:
| That kid getting slapped on the face in the film! What did he do?
| deadbabe wrote:
| Doesn't matter, he's dead now.
| vondur wrote:
| I think he was spinning on a pole adjacent to the sidewalk.
| delichon wrote:
| I'd guess that Heinlein was aware of it and scaled it up in his
| imagination. The Roads must roll -- they are the
| arteries of the nation. When they stop, everything stops.
| Factories idle, food rots, men starve. The nation cannot live
| without its Roads. A thousand feet wide, level as a
| floor, strip after strip moving past in ordered procession. The
| slow strips on the outside moved at five miles an hour; the inner
| ones faster and faster, until the express strip in the center
| rushed past at a hundred miles an hour. -- The Roads
| Must Roll, Astounding Science Fiction, June 1940.
|
| https://ia601208.us.archive.org/32/items/calibre_library_178...
| troupo wrote:
| It was a recurring theme throughout most of Golden Age fiction.
|
| E.g. Clifford D. Simak mentions them as a mode of
| transportation in _The Goblin Reservation_ , Asimov has them in
| _Robots of Dawn_ , and I'm sure I'm forgetting plenty more.
|
| It could be that it was Heinlein who kicked of the trend.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| People have tried faster moving walkways many times. The
| problem is getting humans on and off such a system safely in
| a way that is easy to maintain.
|
| In practice, everyday transportation systems need to
| accommodate a wide variety of users safely, like a toddler,
| or a commuter holding a cup of coffee, or a grandmother with
| a walker.
| comrade1234 wrote:
| I think about this every time I get on a moving walkway and
| wish it had a few more speeds.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, love that idea of progressive velocities. I ant someone
| to at least build a short test track like this so we can play
| with it.
|
| Seem to recall they were called "slidewalks" by some Sci-Fi
| author--probably Heinlein, eh?
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Asimov went into some detail with this premise too, in Caves of
| Steel iirc. I suppose he probably got it from Heinlein.
| al_borland wrote:
| I like that the fence moves with it. It seems like more of a
| complete vision than the moving sidewalks we have today, which
| always look like they were just dropped into a hallway.
|
| We also seem to be unable to perfectly match food and hand speed
| these days. I'm not sure if this is a "feature" somehow, but it
| bothers me a lot. They didn't seem to have this issue with the
| floor and fence, as far as I could tell.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| That's because the systems are designed to be dropped into a
| hallway. In modern moving walkways and escalators, the treads
| and handrail belt return on the underside.
|
| The system used in Paris requires a giant bulb shape to turn
| around the fence, which is generally a lot harder and more
| expensive to accommodate.
| ItsHarper wrote:
| I believe it's to allow room for the handrail belt to wear
| down, which brings its speed closer to the stairs until it
| starts de-syncing in the opposite direction. If it started
| perfectly, you'd have to replace the belt more frequently to
| maintain the same level of tolerance.
| commandersaki wrote:
| I remember reading about this in Devil in the White City.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Megalopolis
| LiquidPolymer wrote:
| I love the kid who is hamming it up at the bottom of the frame.
| I've been a photographer/videographer for my entire professional
| career and have run into this kid many, many times. Adults
| exhibit this behavior too but it is usually much more moderated.
|
| This kid had to know what a camera was, which end was filming
| (some early film cameras appeared to be simple boxes), and wanted
| to make his mark on the final product.
| TOGoS wrote:
| 1900s MPEG compression was pretty intense.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Thankfully the second video contains a much more watchable film
| rip.
| excalibur wrote:
| > It's fair to say that few of us now marvel at moving walkways,
| those standard infrastructural elements of such utilitarian
| spaces as airport terminals, subway stations, and big-box stores.
|
| You've gotta be referring to escalators here. Never seen a moving
| walkway in a big-box store, or a subway station for that matter.
| userbinator wrote:
| I've seen them in airports.
| nlehuen wrote:
| There are at least some in the Paris subway, including one that
| went at 12 km/h but was decommissioned in 2011:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway#Trottoir_roulan...
| mlok wrote:
| Wikipedia has a nice page about it : "Rue de l'Avenir" (Street of
| the future)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue_de_l%27Avenir
| userbinator wrote:
| Scroll down to the photos and be momentarily surprised at the
| fact that some are in _colour_.
| bofadeez wrote:
| Time traveler: "No, in 120 years we won't have moving sidewalks
| almost anywhere"
|
| Tech enthusiasts: "Oh what a luddite, didn't you see the demo?
| This is the future!"
| tomcam wrote:
| ZZ Top's name before it was ZZ Top was Moving Sidewalks
| Timsky wrote:
| I like how people getting caught by the cameraman greet him with
| all little social niceties of that time.
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(page generated 2025-11-02 23:00 UTC)