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Gravity-Vacuum Transit
Gravity-vacuum transit (GVT) was a form of transportation developed by American inventor Lawrence Edwards in the early 1960s.Scientific American, August 1965: High-Speed Tube Transportation. Origin The origin of this technology is Alfred Ely Beach in 1865. When the U.S. Department of Defense charged all contractors to contemplate what will sustain them if defense funding should taper off, Lockheed Management called for ideas from the troops. Over the long weekend following the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Edwards sorted through industries and product lines, and focused on passenger railroads, which had lost their former popularity due to the speed of airplanes and the convenience of automobiles. He wondered if trains could travel at airplane speed and converge at city centers rather than at airports 20 miles away. Clearly, such speed demands a nearly straight path, avoiding the jumble of city streets and buildings, and even the subways and utilities immediate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lawrence Edwards
Lawrence K. Edwards (July 10, 1919 – April 4, 2009) was an American innovator in aerospace and ground transportation. Early in his career, he pioneered technologies for U.S. space and missile defense programs. He went on to invent and promote high-speed Gravity-Vacuum Transit and monobeam rail transit. He obtained a total of fourteen patents in those areas. Early life and education Edwards was born in Delaware, Ohio. He was the son of a physics professor and was raised in Oxford, Ohio. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Miami University where he studied geology, math and physics. Accomplishments in aerospace Edwards played a role in the engineering of four of the nation's major aerospace programs: * Talos, a long-range surface-to-air missile that served as the U.S. Navy's primary anti-aircraft missile for 20 years. Talos was history's first supersonic missile with ramjet propulsion, making it far more fuel-efficient than rockets. Edwards was project engineer for the program a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred Ely Beach
Alfred Ely Beach (September 1, 1826 – January 1, 1896) was an American inventor, publisher, and patent lawyer, born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He is most known for his design of New York City's earliest subway predecessor, the Beach Pneumatic Transit. A member of the Union League of New York, he also patented a typewriter for the blind and a system for heating water with solar power. Early years Beach was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, and was the son of a prominent publisher, Moses Yale Beach. Alfred Beach worked for his father until he and a friend, Orson Desaix Munn, decided to buy ''Scientific American'', a relatively new publication. He also brought in the venture Salem Howe Wales, President of the New York City Department of Docks and co-founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They ran ''Scientific American'' until their deaths decades later, and it was carried on by their sons and grandsons for decades more. Munn and Beach also established a very succes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lockheed Corporation
The Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace manufacturer. Lockheed was founded in 1926 and later merged with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin in 1995. Its founder, Allan Lockheed, had earlier founded the similarly named but otherwise-unrelated Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company, which was operational from 1912 to 1920. History Origins Allan Loughead and his brother Malcolm Loughead had operated an earlier aircraft company, Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company, which was operational from 1912 to 1920. The company built and operated aircraft for paying passengers on sightseeing tours in California and had developed a prototype for the civil market, but folded in 1920 due to the flood of surplus aircraft deflating the market after World War I. Allan went into the real estate market while Malcolm had meanwhile formed a successful company marketing brake systems for automobiles. On December 13, 1926, Allan Lockheed, Jack Northrop, John Northrop, Kenneth K ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John F
John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second Epistle of John, often shortened to 2 John * Third Epistle of John, often shortened to 3 John People * John the Baptist (died c. AD 30), regarded as a prophet and the forerunner of Jesus Christ * John the Apostle (lived c. AD 30), one of the twelve apostles of Jesus * John the Evangelist, assigned author of the Fourth Gospel, once identified with the Apostle * John of Patmos, also known as John the Divine or John the Revelator, the author of the Book of Revelation, once identified with the Apostle * John the Presbyter, a figure either identified with or distinguished from the Apostle, the Evangelist and John of Patmos Other people with the given name Religious figures * John, father of Andrew the Apostle and Saint Peter * Pope Jo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Passenger Railroad
In rail transport, a train (from Old French , from Latin , "to pull, to draw") is a series of connected vehicles that run along a railway track and transport people or freight. Trains are typically pulled or pushed by locomotives (often known simply as "engines"), though some are self-propelled, such as multiple units. Passengers and cargo are carried in railroad cars, also known as wagons. Trains are designed to a certain gauge, or distance between rails. Most trains operate on steel tracks with steel wheels, the low friction of which makes them more efficient than other forms of transport. Trains have their roots in wagonways, which used railway tracks and were powered by horses or pulled by cables. Following the invention of the steam locomotive in the United Kingdom in 1804, trains rapidly spread around the world, allowing freight and passengers to move over land faster and cheaper than ever possible before. Rapid transit and trams were first built in the late 1800 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rapid Transit
Rapid transit or mass rapid transit (MRT), also known as heavy rail or metro, is a type of high-capacity public transport generally found in urban areas. A rapid transit system that primarily or traditionally runs below the surface may be called a subway, tube, or underground. Unlike buses or trams, rapid transit systems are railways (usually electric railway, electric) that operate on an exclusive right-of-way (transportation), right-of-way, which cannot be accessed by pedestrians or other vehicles, and which is often grade-separated in tunnels or on elevated railways. Modern services on rapid transit systems are provided on designated lines between rapid transit station, stations typically using electric multiple units on rail tracks, although some systems use guided rubber tires, magnetic levitation (''maglev''), or monorail. The stations typically have high platforms, without steps inside the trains, requiring custom-made trains in order to minimize gaps between train a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Regional Plan Association
The Regional Plan Association is an independent, not-for-profit regional planning organization, founded in 1922, that focuses on recommendations to improve the quality of life and economic competitiveness of a 31-county New York–New Jersey–Connecticut region in the New York metropolitan area. Headquartered in New York City, it has offices in Princeton, New Jersey, and Stamford, Connecticut. Regional plans RPA has produced four strategic regional plans for the New York metropolitan region since the 1920s. The chronology of their plans is as follows: # The First Plan in 1929, developed under the leadership of Thomas Adams, provided a guide for the area's road and transportation network. # The Second Plan, published as a series of reports in the 1960s, aimed at restructuring mass transit and reinvigorating deteriorating urban centers. # The Third Plan in 1996, "A Region at Risk," recommended improving regional mass transit, increasing protection of open space and maintaining ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state of New York. Located near the southern tip of New York State, Manhattan is based in the Eastern Time Zone and constitutes both the geographical and demographic center of the Northeast megalopolis and the urban core of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass. Over 58 million people live within 250 miles of Manhattan, which serves as New York City’s economic and administrative center, cultural identifier, and the city’s historical birthplace. Manhattan has been described as the cultural, financial, media, and entertainment capital of the world, is considered a safe haven for global real estate investors, and hosts the United Nations headquarters. New York City is the headquarters of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vacuum
A vacuum is a space devoid of matter. The word is derived from the Latin adjective ''vacuus'' for "vacant" or "void". An approximation to such vacuum is a region with a gaseous pressure much less than atmospheric pressure. Physicists often discuss ideal test results that would occur in a ''perfect'' vacuum, which they sometimes simply call "vacuum" or free space, and use the term partial vacuum to refer to an actual imperfect vacuum as one might have in a laboratory or in space. In engineering and applied physics on the other hand, vacuum refers to any space in which the pressure is considerably lower than atmospheric pressure. The Latin term ''in vacuo'' is used to describe an object that is surrounded by a vacuum. The ''quality'' of a partial vacuum refers to how closely it approaches a perfect vacuum. Other things equal, lower gas pressure means higher-quality vacuum. For example, a typical vacuum cleaner produces enough suction to reduce air pressure by around 20%. But hig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gravity
In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the strong interaction, 1036 times weaker than the electromagnetic force and 1029 times weaker than the weak interaction. As a result, it has no significant influence at the level of subatomic particles. However, gravity is the most significant interaction between objects at the macroscopic scale, and it determines the motion of planets, stars, galaxies, and even light. On Earth, gravity gives weight to physical objects, and the Moon's gravity is responsible for sublunar tides in the oceans (the corresponding antipodal tide is caused by the inertia of the Earth and Moon orbiting one another). Gravity also has many important biological functions, helping to guide the growth of plants through the process of gravitropism and influencing the circ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stanford
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considered among the most prestigious universities in the world. Stanford was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Leland Stanford was a U.S. senator and former governor of California who made his fortune as a railroad tycoon. The school admitted its first students on October 1, 1891, as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. Stanford University struggled financially after the death of Leland Stanford in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, provost of Stanford Frederick Terman inspired and supported faculty and graduates' entrepreneurialism ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Holt Ashley
Holt Ashley (January 10, 1923May 9, 2006) was an American aeronautical engineer notable for his seminal research of aeroelasticity."National Academy of Engineering, Memorial Tributes: Volume 15 (2011):Holt Ashley" Levy, Dawn (May 24, 2006). Stanford Report. Early life and education He was born in , California. Ashley attended the |
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