A.'s bday invite sent via socializr

The invite list was re-used from our Solstice party, so we're inviting people primarily from the East Coast. If you're willing to travel a lot further for a party than I think you are, let me know and I'll add you. I haven't gotten around to doing phone invites, so if I don't have your e-mail and you aren't on FB, then I wouldn't have gotten around to inviting you yet.

Socializr e-mail may get filtered by spam blockers.

the first of a large number of comments on the Encyclopedia of North American Railroads

From page 5, in the essay "Development of North American Railroads" by Keith L. Bryant, Jr.:

"A through route from New York City to Philadelphia opened in 1833, with the English-built locomotive John Bull making the trip in seven hours."

It seems at least possible that someone has since bicycled that route in approximately the same amount of time in the not-quite-two-centuries since.

standards wars: more from the Encyclopedia of NARR

p 6 (this is slow reading): "Only three connections existed between the railways north of the Ohio River and those in the South. Some cities prevented carriers from linking to create jobs for local drayage firms and to force travelers to spend a night waiting for connecting trains."

totally loving Pelosi's new hairstyle

However, R. infinitely prefers the old one, and thought it was more age-appropriate.

Colonel John Stevens

If you are familiar with the Stevens Institute of [ETA: Technology in] Hoboken, yes, that Stevens. [ETAYA: Or, at any rate, that Stevens' father.]

James E. Vance, Jr., in _The North American Railroad_ reproduces a couple of paragraphs by Stevens in 1812 on the subject of Why Rail Instead of Canals. I'm going to pass them along as well:

"The extension and completion of the main arteries of such a system of communication would by no means be a work of [an extended] time."

Compared to canals, no.

"It would be exempted totally from the difficulties, embarrassments, casualties, interruptions, and delays incident to the formation of canals. Requiring no supply of water -- no precision and accuracy in levelling, the work could be commenced and carried on in various detached parts [RLA: indeed, the transcontinental would be] -- its progress would be rapid, and its completion could be ascertained with certainty. Innumerable ramifications [RLA: he means extra bits added later on] would from time to time be extended in every direction. Thus would the sources of private and public wealth, going hand in hand, increase with a rapidity beyond all parallel. For every shilling contributed towards the [public -- RLA: means taxes] revenue, a dollar at least would be put in the hands of individuals."

Then a bit later [ETA: earlier, actually]:

"The celerity of communication it would afford with the distant sections of our wide extended empire, is a consideration of the utmost moment. To the rapidity of the motion of the steam-carriage on these rail-ways, no definite limit can be set. The Frying Proas, as they are called by voyagers, belonging to the natives of the Islands of the Pacific Ocean, are said at times to sail at the rate of more than twenty miles an hour. But as the resistance of the water to the progress of a vessel increases as the square of her velocity, it is obvious that the power required to propel her must also increase at the same ratio. Not so with a steam-carriage -- as it moves in a flui 800 times more rare than water, the resistance will be proportionably diminished. Indeed the principal resistance to its motion arises from friction [RLA: he _got_ that! Then! Yes, duh, physicists knew about friction. But he didn't dismiss it out of hand!], which does not even increase in a direct ratio with the velocity of carriage. If, then a Proa can be driven by wind (the propulsive power of which is constantly diminishing as the velocity of the Pro increases) through so dense a fluid as water, at the rate of twenty miles an hour, I can see nothing to hinder a steam-carriage from moving on these ways with a velocity of one hundred miles an hour."

That's right up there with Arthur C. Clarke and satellites, IMO. Freaking brilliant. This guy looked at a _very_ immature technology and _saw_ the future. In detail.

[ETA: note sez Stevens weaseled -- my term -- and said 30, 40, 50 more likely. Which was also accurate.]