alfred beach needed such a space for his new business. the beach pneumatic transit company. after scouting for real estate all on broadway, when he saw the basement of devlin's yo you note it could be accessed from the sidewalk and he negotiated deal with her brothers. for $4000 a year released their entire basement for period of five years starting in 868. he spent the measure focused on a single piece of machinery he would need to be kissed him. the device he came up with ingenious and resembled a hollowed out better and used a water pump. he also designed a hood over the edge of the shield to protect its workers from falling debris, or in a catastrophic event of a collapse. before he could start digging out a different kind of catastrophe nearly derailed his project. a pair of cronies in boston we scheme to drive up the price of gold by buying in bulk. by mid-september the price had risen to astronomical $137 per ounce and by the morning of friday september 24, 250. frenzy in the wall street and riots nearly broke up in the national guard was put on notice. ted gold kept

if you think about what alfred beach did even though he did not build the first subway because it only went one block and didn't really become a subway but what alfred h. did was set in motion a dream. he set in motion this idea that we can do something big. he made new yorkers believe that this could happen even though it didn't happen for another 40 years or so. just the idea that he put out there that we can build a subway and we can do this was the deal. people like elon musk who put forth similar bold ideas that some people laughed at and mocked and he put this idea of building a supersonic electromagnetic train that would go between northern and southern california. a lot of people laughed and said it would never happen and it's impossible. it's not going to happen probably in any of our lifetimes but those sort of people, people who put forth those ideas for big dreams and big ideas are critical today. even if they don't achieve their dream someone else might take it up another generation behind them. the book in the end does address that. there was a guy at the rand corp. in ca