One take on tube travel

As short histories go, this is one of the most interesting that you’ll read all day. It starts with a current day concept from Elon Musk and continues back the past, then onward into the future.

As Elon Musk announces the next in a series of increasingly ambitious projects, Hyperloop, I thought I’d look over the history of travelling, quite quickly, through tubes. The idea as a form of transport has always been placed firmly in The Future, both in media references (Futurama, The Jetsons) and in design speculation. The thought that we could travel at hundreds of miles an hour excites us; ever since the invention of the bicycle, we’ve always dreamed about going that fast.