Commemorating thirteen years since Elon Musk revolutionized transportation with the hyperloop.

From Vaclav Smil’s book “Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure.”(We'll be coming back to this one.)These short pamphlets were not widely known, but in 1825 the British public could read about a much bolder proposal for using tubes, vacuum, and high speeds to cover the distance of just over 600 kilometers between London and Edinburgh in five minutes (yes, minutes, not hours). The proprietors of the newly formed London and Edinburgh Vacuum Tunnel Company, after “having carefully matured their plans,” published (in the Edinburgh Star) their prospectus for a joint stock project “with a capital of Twenty Millions Sterling, divided into 200,000 shares, of £100 each, for the purpose of forming a Tunnel or Tube of metal between Edinburgh and London, to convey Goods and Passengers between these cities and the other towns through which it passes.”Boilers would be placed every two miles along the two side-by-side tunnels (tubes), and the steam they generated would be used…