Travel around the globe at 7,200 km/h. From London to New York in less than an hour. And all by train, not by plane. This is the proposed concept of the “Hypersonic Train” that German engineer Andreas Scholz describes in his new book “The Hypersonic Railway”.
On a recent visit to Nuremberg, Germany, I had the opportunity to ride a driverless train on the Nuremberg subway.{{ double-space-with-newline }}It is the only fully automated subway in Germany. And although the first automated subway line opened in 2008, not all lines are automated today. I asked myself: Why is it that fully automated subways are not more widespread, even though the technology has been around for more than 15 years?
The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn is a public transportation system in the city of Wuppertal, Germany. It has been connecting the city’s major destinations for more than a hundred years. Because of its ingenious design, it is loved by the people of Wuppertal as well as by visitors from all over the world.{{ double-space-with-newline }}How did such a marvelous piece of engineering develop in an otherwise little-known area of Germany, and not in the big cities of today? In this article, we examine the history of the Wuppertal suspension railway and the unique situation that led to its creation.
When you think of modern concepts for transportation, you are probably thinking of the Hyperloop. It promises to connect the centers of major cities much faster than air travel. The idea is to run magnetic levitation trains in a vacuum inside a tube. Many people find this idea fascinating because it sounds like science fiction come true. But is the idea really that new? In this article, I will show you some historical projects that predate the idea of the Hyperloop by more than a hundred years.
The invention of the railroad has changed the world. For the first time, both people and goods could be transported fast, long-distance and in great numbers. Almost 200 years later, the Internet started a similar revolution. Today information travels the globe with lightning speed. The first revolution was powered by steel and steam. The second revolution was driven by cables and electrons. But both of them followed similar patterns. This article analyses the similarities of both systems and what we can learn from them.
The architecture of a computer system is defined by its components and their interactions. There are interfaces, definitions and roles. This article has a look on another system. It is more than 200 years old. It has interfaces, services and roles, just like a computer system. And it is still evolving. It is the Railway System. We will examine the parallels between both worlds. We will see which components make up Railway System has and how the interfaces between them look like. Then we have a look at the evolution of this system, from which we can take some lessons for the evolution of computer systems.