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Today is the one hundred and second anniversary of the opening of New York City's first official underground subway system. On October 27, 1904, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) began operations along the 9.1-mile long line from City Hall to 145th Street and Broadway. Although the new line was the city's first official subway system, the IRC was not New York's first underground subway. According to the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), Alfred E. Beach built a 312-foot tunnel under lower Broadway and operated a subway car from 1870 to 1873. Unlike the electrically-powered IRC, Beach's train used "pneumatic pressure" from a giant fan. Helen C. Weeks, a writer for The Youth's Companion, described Beach's fan in 1871 as "the greatest blower ever seen on this continent; not, however, a New York politician, as you may have supposed, but a rotary blower".
New York's first official subway system opened during the final phase of the "War of Currents", a conflict which began in the late 1880s and pitted inventors instead of politicians against each other. Although Thomas Edison's direct current (DC) was America's first standard for electricity distribution, Nikola Tesla's alternating current (AC) gradually replaced DC in many systems - but not the IRC. According to the MTA, power substations once housed mechanical rotary generators that converted AC to DC to drive New York City's subway system.
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Re: October 27, 1904: New York’s First Official Subway System
