Show I Getting Ahead I A STREETCAR that runs on auto tires instead A I of steel tracks is being installed on Staten island New York Unlike motor busses it has hasa a trolley pole that takes electric power from overhead wires It i is expected to develop cheaper cheap cheap- S er swifter more elastic transportation Are we weon on the verge of a day when streetcar tracks will willbe b be torn up and the rubber tire take the place of steel tracks Fifteen years ago you you'd d ha have ve laughed at the idea Now you say Well why n not t In the days when Coal Oil Johnny was flinging fling fling- ing his fortune to the four winds all oil tanks were sunken in the ground like ci cisterns terns Oil W was poured in and pumped out when needed A Abright Abright bright young man working for the Standard Oil company at the now extinct Pit Hole Pa suggested suggested suggested sug sug- building tanks above ground on stilts Then he proposed we can build a slantIng slanting slant slant- ing bank of earth alongside the tank A wagon can drive up and dump its barrels of oil Well We'll tap a hole and draw out the oil at the bottom bottomS S of of the tank by the force of gravity That'll save pumping it out of the buried tanks now used An uproar started Whoever heard of ofa a cistern being built above ground The yo young ng man got his idea across but he learned that its it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks Most of us find it difficult to imagine anyS anything anything any any- S thing new That's why we ve cling to old ways and andare are suspicious of n new w methods particularly ones involving revolutionary changes in the way of doing the common things of life tife The brain progress to new methods is slow That's why the first railroad passenger coaches looked like stage coaches Even the inventor despite his vision couldn't couldn t get the stage coach idea the old way entirely out of his head The first phonographs were rigged up with large orns iorns because folks were accustomed to using a megaphone to io make small voices sound loud In the patent office you'll see one of the pioneer typewriters patented in 1868 Its key keyboard keyboard keyboard board looks like the keys of a piano even to the short short black keys and long white ones The inventor inventor in- in had seen een pianos and the old time tim way of making a keyboard r refused fus d to get out of his brain cells S Elias Howe almost failed at the inventing sewing sewing sew sew- ing machine because he couldn't conceive a needle with the eye ye at t t the e point His wife had more vision told him to put the eye at the sharp end and he got his patent in n 1846 t Times are different now Living in an age of constant c changes anges in which each each year brings revolutionary n new w ide ideas s and ways of doing things the tile old do dogs s are eager to try every new trick proposed posed T That's ats at's why w iv we move faster than our ur ancestors and ancestors and get further That's why the Staten t ten island people dont don't throw a fit at new neVI str streetcar et ar arand and s say y Whoever heard of a i 1 streetcar system without tracks |