Gardner of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, invented the first cable car and was granted patent #19736 for his “improvements in tracks for city railways.” His cable streetcar was to run on an endless cable loop centrally housed in an underground tunnel with a series of pulleys inside. Gardner’s conceptualization was not immediately put into practical use for transporting people. It was a few years later, in 1873, that Andrew Hallidie put his own cable car system into service on Clay Street in San Francisco, California. Both gentlemen’s cable cars were based on the concept of placing a continuously moving wire rope in a conduit underneath a slot between the rails, all beneath the surface of the street. A gripping attachment connected to the cable car above could engage or disengage the cable to move the car. An engine in a centrally located powerhouse kept the cable in continuous motion. Caesar Salad The first Caesar salad was the 1924 creation of Italian immigrant Caesar Cardini, who had a small hotel in Tijuana, Mexico, not far from the California border.
