Volume 11 , Issue 38

1882 - Transportation

1882 - Transportation -- The St. Gothard tunnel that opened May 20, 1882 was the first great railroad tunnel through the Alps.

Union Switch and Signal Company was organized to manufacture railroad signals invented by George Westinghouse who had made a fortune from his Westinghouse Air Brake Company.

"The public be damned," says U.S. railroad magnate William H. Vanderbilt to a Chicago Daily News reporter who asked, "Don't you run it for the public benefit?' when told that the fast Chicago Limited extra-fare mail train was being eliminated. "The public be damned," says Vanderbilt October 8, 1882 to reporter Clarence DResser. "I am working for my stockholders. If the public want the train, why don't they pay for it?"

Electric cable cars were installed in Chicago where they travel 20 blocks along STate STreet in 31 minutes, averaging less than 2 miles per hour.

Matson Navigation Company was started by a 33 year old Swedish sailing captain with a loan from California sugar magnate Claus Spreckels. Matson buys shares in a ship he names the Emma Claudine after Spreckels's sister and he begins to build a near-monopoly in San Francisco-Honolulu shipping as trade booms in Hawaiian sugar.
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