JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post      Tech Quiz/What is It? series

This is an addition to the infrequently-seen What is It? series of this blog…

Okay, so I’ve given it away in the title–if not for that, this wouldn’t be a very obvious contraption, would it?  

There must have been a lot of people who had a problem with street cars in the 19th and early 20th centuries because in my meanderings through the Scientific American I have seen quite a few suggestions for dealing with the pedestrian vs the heavy moving metal problem. Many of them have to do with the humanified locomotive cow-catcher–that is an apparatus that would somewhat safely scoop up the unfortunate pedestrian before they became very fatally unfortunate.  Here’s just one example, found in the February 3, 1894 issue:

Neither the scoopee nor the scooper look pleased.  

This problem is better illustrated by an early film of street traffic–it is amazing in a way that the orchestration of non-fatalities is so seemingly superb, the coercive element of the destruction of liminal space pretty well hidden in the seeming confusion. 

 [Via youtube, “From trolley, down Broadway and Union Square. Street scenes, stores, crowds, carriages.–Early 1900’s”]