Moving sidewalks

[ffutures]

I just spotted this on the paleofuture blog

http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/2007/5/29/moving-sidewalk-1900.html

Maybe Heinlein's The Roads Must Roll or Asimov's The Caves of Steel weren't quite as huge a leap of the imagination after all...

Comments

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

I never thought of them as a leap of the imagination at all, having been on a moving walkway at Heathrow Airport, and many times used escalators, long before I ever read The Caves of Steel (one of my favourite books in my school days, BTW). =:o} The idea of a *complete network* of them was intiguing, though...

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I've used them in many airports. Admittedly only single speed, the ones I've seen, but having multiple speeds side by side never seemed to me any great leap. I'm not sure whether I encountered the Heinlein or Asimov ones before the real ones (quite possibly, since I didn't fly from a major airport until the late 1980s) but I had certainly encountered the flat part of escalators in the Underground (to me a "moving sidewalk" is just a special case of an escalator).

The only part we couldn't do was getting on from the side and changing speed, but I'm familiar with the "lean forward or back" when getting on or off an ordinary one anyway.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I've only ever come across the single-level variety.