hello and salut it is May 20-22 come out
of lockdown in Paris and this is a
lamppost or at least to you and me it's
a lamppost
but - one French inventor in the 1880s
it was the transport of the future this
is the story of Edward mozzie and his
incredible plan for a floating aerial
lamppost boat bus metro train tramway
system thing
[Music]
I've come to the plasti lapa in central
Paris which is the place where the Opera
is and it's also the place for Museum as
I wanted to put his lump post boats but
to understand more about that let's go
right back to 1873 it is 10 years since
London opened its Metropolitan Railway
and Paris still doesn't have one yet
everyone agrees that they need one but
if there's one thing the French hate
it's a lack of debate so they spend the
next decade arguing how it should be
done underground or over ground steam
trains or electric a government
Commission set up specially to make a
final decision on the issue looks at
seven different proposals and finally
decides that it doesn't like any of them
the simplest solution would be to copy
London by going underground but there's
strong public opposition to that the
architect Louis Jose argued no new Zambo
ziba lapa okay basically what he's
saying is you can't make us go
underground
we've got standards and then he put
forward his own plan for an aerial
railway that would cut through the city
above new pedestrian streets but that
meant demolishing every building in its
path and people liked that idea even
less is he still going on about it in
1881 the engineer Jacque Whittier drew
up his proposal for a network of aerial
railways it ran along existing
boulevards featured clean electric
trains and to be honest it might have
worked until Parisians saw what he
wanted to do to the plaster lapa half
katia thought they were overreacting and
argued nil Nina on a fig connects a long
way out of basically what he's saying is
what's the problem if anything I've
improved it but it's fair to say that
the press and the general public didn't
quite agree with him they thought
defacing a National Monument by putting
a railway viaduct in front of it was
absolutely scandalous and Claire Jones
project quickly ground to a halt so the
citizens of Paris wanted a Metropolitan
Railway but they didn't want an
underground railway and they didn't want
an aerial railway and they probably
didn't want to demolish half the city to
build a surface railway so what did they
want well it turns out there was an
obvious solution that everyone had
missed step forward our hero Edward
mozzie we don't know a lot about mozzie
but he was a captain in the Navy and his
solution was boats floating in the air
above the streets gliding gracefully
from one lamppost to the next you know
floating lamppost boats in October 1884
mazhai published his proposal under the
ambitious title new Metropolitan Railway
without rails nor wagons nor bridges
naught Una's so it was a railway in the
same way that I'm a packet of biscuits
each boat was double decked and was long
enough to be supported constantly by at
least two posts it would be propelled by
motorized rollers mozzies illustration
shows a motor on board the vehicle but
he suggested that alternatively the
rollers could be fitted to the posts
instead the posts themselves would also
be fitted with gas lamps and could house
kiosks at street level so they would fit
right in with the existing Parisian
streetscape it was in many ways a
brilliant idea there were a few problems
they the illustrations only show
vehicles and posts going in straight
lines it's unclear exactly how the
system would turn corners or go uphill
and Monsieur Mercier was a little hazy
about how exactly it would be powered
but I guess someone else could figure
out those little details
unfortunately though in the end no one
could mozzies system was never built and
after only two more decades of rejected
plans and ideas including avatar style
suspended railway and the Lartigue style
monorail Paris did what it probably
should have done all along and copied
London which is why in 1900 Paris
finally opened an underground railway
and called it the mythical paleta if
you'd like to ride on the famous
floating lamppost boats of Paris
unfortunately they don't exist and never
have done the next time you're here why
not look up and take a moment to imagine
what it could have looked like if Ed
Wawa's a stream had become reality a big
thank you to Caroline Grubbs of SN you
for helping me research this story thank
you all for watching and I will see you
soon