Throwback: Walk This Way
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This article originally appeared in The Technology Issue of APEX Experience.
In 1871, wine merchant and inventor Alfred Speer filed a patent for a system of moving sidewalks that would revolutionize pedestrian movement in New York City. Meanwhile in France, an engineer named Eugene Henard proposed a similar moving platform system for the 1889 Paris Fair.
It wasn’t until 1893, at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, that the first moving sidewalk actually materialized. For five cents, passengers arriving by steamboat could travel the 2,500 feet down the pier on the moving sidewalk – if it was working. At the 1900 Paris Exposition, another moving boardwalk was unveiled to great fanfare. Thomas Edison even sent a colleague to capture it with another new technology: film. The preoccupation with World Wars left moving walkways largely forgotten until the late 1940s and ’50s, when Goodyear and writers such as Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke picked up the idea again.
Moving sidewalks didn’t find their way into airports until 1958, when Dallas’ Love Field opened on January 30. Costing a reported $234,704 and measuring approximately 1,400 feet, the mechanized sidewalk installed by Hewitt-Robins traveled at a snail’s pace of 1.5 mph. Despite its slow speed, the modern convenience caused several accidents, including a dog suffering a broken leg, a skirt being pulled clean off and, tragically, a death.
Now common in most airports, with the longest ones ranging from 200-300 meters, moving sidewalks (or travelators, in British English) provide tired travelers with momentary respite. But contrary to common belief, they may not actually get you through the airport faster. Studies have found that even on an empty walkway, passengers gain only a few seconds.
In the future, we may see high-speed “Hexilators” take shape: This vertical, flexible moving walkway technology could travel at speeds of up to 7.5 mph, or ascend one story every five seconds.