Electric busses were poised to take the world by storm 100 years ago, if only their fate hadn’t been sealed by a bunch of crooks. Green vehicles are finally making a comeback, but there were plenty of other modes of transport that became buried in the annals of history.

Read more: How crooks stalled the rise of electric cars for 100 years

Beach Pneumatic Transit

The first subway in the US was the brainchild of inventor and publisher Alfred Beach, and it was literally a blast. Tunnelling for the Beach Pneumatic Transit began beneath New York in 1869. By the following year, the first fare-paying passengers were being hurled in comfort along a 95-metre-long demonstration line running underneath Broadway. The carriage was propelled by a massive blower, dubbed the Western Tornado, and was pulled back by suction when the blower was thrown into reverse.

In the first two weeks, more than 11,000 New Yorkers rode the pneumatic transit. Some 400,000 tickets were sold in the single year it was operational. Beach had planned to extend the line by 8 kilometres, to Central Park, but had trouble getting permission. He finally succeeded in 1873, by which time public and financial support had drained away. Still, Beach’s vision had a practical legacy in the New York pneumatic tube mail system, which ran until 1953.


Aérotrain

All the comfort and speed of a magnetic levitation train, but without the technical complexity and expense – that was the aim of Aérotrain, a hovertrain developed in France from 1965. Five prototypes were built. This stylish Aérotrain 02 engine carried a crew of two and was powered by turbojets. A later version, the I-80 HV, established the world speed record for air cushion vehicles on land when it reached 430.4 kilometres per hour in March 1974. American company Rohr Industries was so impressed that it licensed some of the technology in the hopes of making one of its own.

If Aérotrain had so much going for it, what went wrong? First, there was the death of its lead engineer Jean Bertin. Lack of funding was another problem. And the final nail in the coffin came when the French government decided to adopt the TGV for its high-speed rail network. Aérotrain was abandoned in 1977. Rohr had mothballed its version two years earlier. So, despite all the promise, the technology never went mainstream.

Transit elevated bus

China’s “straddling bus” is the latest in a long and glorious line of failed mass transport. Conceived in 2000, and road tested last year, the Transit Elevated Bus came to the end of the line this July amid allegations of financial shenanigans. Not surprisingly, this bizarre prototype attracted considerable attention when it made its maiden voyage in Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province. China badly needs green transport solutions, and a huge, electric powered, traffic-jam-skipping bus has obvious appeal. There was even talk of linking four carriages to create a mega-train capable of carrying 1600 passengers.

Unfortunately, funding wasn’t the only obstacle. The bus would probably have needed to recharge at every station. And with a clearance of just 2.1 metres, it would do damage to a large car, let alone a truck. Rails would need to be fitted; bridges, lampposts and road signs moved. With a projected cost of $4.5 million per carriage, you could buy 11 regular electric buses for the same price. And as for cornering – don’t even mention it.

Ithacus

It seemed like a good idea back in 1966 when the cold war was hot. To reduce the need for overseas US army bases, why not build an intercontinental rocket capable of carrying a battalion of 1200 soldiers? Ithacus Senior was conceived as a 6400-tonne behemoth, standing 64 metres tall and powered by eight hydrogen drop tanks. Aeroengineer Phillip Bono saw it as a practical application for his orbital launch vehicle ROMBUS (Reusable Orbital Module, Booster, and Utility Shuttle). Its rocket-powered vertical take-off and landing would provide a rapid-strike capability for “rocket commandos”. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, for a start, flying Ithacus home would be impossible without a custom-built launch pad. A convoluted solution was dreamed up. It entailed flying the rocket in short, low-powered hops to the coast, transporting it onto a barge and sailing it back to the US. The smaller, nuclear-powered Ithacus Junior, launched from an aircraft carrier, posed even more logistical problems. Perhaps unsurprisingly, neither made it past the drawing board.

Gyro monorail

On 10 November 1909, Irish inventor Louis Brennan gave the first public demonstration of his gyro monorail in the grounds of his house in Gillingham, Kent, UK. The track was designed to show off the cornering ability of a vehicle balanced by two vertical gyroscopes mounted side-by-side and spinning in opposite directions. Although he had filed his first monorail patent in 1903, Brennan was rushed into this unveiling when German philanthropist August Scheri announced he would soon be showing off his rival gyro monorail at the Berlin Zoological Gardens.

Brennan’s proper public debut came the following year at the Japan-British Exhibition in London. There, a monorail car carrying 50 people at a time traversed a circular track at over 30 kilometres per hour. Winston Churchill was among the passengers and expressed his enthusiasm. Even so, government funding for the venture soon dried up and Brennan’s monorail was abandoned. Just two vehicles had been built. One was scrapped, the other was repurposed as a park shelter.

Moving sidewalk

The first moving walkway was unveiled at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1890. Invented by engineer Max Schmidt, it consisted of three concentric rings, the first stationary, the second moving at 4 kilometres per hour and the third at 8 km/h, allowing walkers to adjust to the slower speed before moving to the faster one. It proved a huge success at subsequent expositions in Berlin and Paris, where in 1900 the trottoir roulant (pictured) circled the fair in a 3-kilometre loop. Nearly 7 million visitors hopped on. A few even brought folding chairs.

Persuaded by this success, officials in New York proposed several high-profile moving walkway schemes for the city including one over Brooklyn Bridge and another running down Broadway. None materialised, perhaps because they were scuppered by established transport providers. It would be half a century before moving walkways started to appear in sprawling airports and railway stations. However, these single-track conveyor belts are a pale shadow of the original idea. The modern moving walkway is not a transport system in its own right, more a minor supplement to other forms.

Space elevator

It’s been a good idea for more than a century. A space elevator would be a cheap alternative to rockets for carrying cargo, and even humans, into space. These days, the dream machine takes the form of a cable anchored to Earth’s surface and stretching 35,000 kilometres, beyond geostationary orbit. Gravity and centrifugal force would keep it taut and lasers on the ground would beam power to “climbers” that would crawl up the cable with their load. Unfortunately, some big problems still need to be overcome before the first space elevator achieves lift-off.

Could we build an elevator to the moon? Find out more at New Scientist Live in London

For a start, there are currently no materials strong enough to handle the strain on the tether. Carbon nanotubes might work if we could make them longer and purer. Second, gravitational tugs from the moon and sun, and pressure from gusts of solar wind, would cause the cable to shake. It would probably need thrusters to keep it in line and stop the elevator crashing into satellites or space junk. Also, as a climber ascended, its motion would cause the Coriolis force to pull it and the cable in the opposite direction to Earth’s rotation. Fixing that problem could require ridiculously slow trips lasting nearly a month, or the careful choreography of multiple climbers. Space elevators might still become a reality, but don’t hold your breath.