How San Francisco's cable car system came to be built requires more than one stop from where the story begins and where it ends. This history winds upwards and downwards, folks jump on and off, as it wends past cityscapes of wealth and waste. Before the advent of this wondrous contraption that could conquer the hills of this city, the task for getting to the top of Nob Hill was relegated to the business of paying for a ride in a horse-drawn cab. On October 11, 1869, this necessary yet wanton cruelty changed for the good. The San Francisco Chronicle had on its front-page an article on the life and death of a city horse.

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The incident took place when a horse slid backwards and was dragged downhill by the conveyance this beast was pulling. There were no human fatalities that day but the poor animal was throttled by the harness and met its death symbolically in front of the steps to Old St Marys Church, some two blocks down from where the horse had finally lost it.

 

When Andrew Smith Hallidie read about this tragedy, he paused at his desk and got up to pace his inner office, reflecting on what if anything he could learn from this story. Late in life, he told a reporter that the animal had haunted him night and day and that he would return to the newspaper article often. 

 

At that time Hallidie was already very prosperous but not yet famous. He had family wealth and a thriving business, and though his name is often mentioned as that of an inventor, that honor might actually belong to his father, an engineer of some repute. While there is no definitive answer as to who actually first invented it, the senior Hallidie is known to have taken out a patent (1835-1849) in the making of metal wire ropes now known as a steel cable.

 

It was a breakthrough in rope design: instead of using fiber, the usual material, multiple strands of thin wire were instead lined up together, and braided into a super strong rope. This innovation allowed for greater power needed to exert a lift (ideal for mining), was pliable besides and -- most importantly -- durable.

 

From this invention his father left Andrew well off; the steel cable became indispensable to those working the Comstock Lode. Young Hallidie had himself started his career in the inhospitable world of a bridge builder, having followed in his father's footsteps and becoming an engineer too.

 

The cable car as an idea in-the-round had already been thought up, by one Benjamin H. Brooks, native son of San Francisco. Using Hallidie's very own steel cable, Brooks had already envisioned laying down an “endless cable of steel” under the surface of the city streets, with the whole being operated on by a stationery engine housed nearby.

 

With these hidden components in place to control the vehicle, tracks that were parallel to the underground cable could then be lain along designated routes to allow for trams to wend their way to distant destinations. With input from a civil engineer by the name of W.H. Hepburn, Brooks set about perfecting his model.

 

Then, with three partners, he formed the Clay Street Hill Railway Company. But in 1872, following repeated and unsuccessful attempts to gain secure financial backing, he was forced to sell his franchise to Andrew Hallidie, fresh still with the memory of that dead horse.

 

Brooks's original plan would have laid down a complicated system of tracks in order to link Portsmouth Square and the western neighborhood of Cow Hollow, a distance covering some five miles over several hills and valleys. Hallidie took the operating manual and started on page one: In May 1873, he built a sample length of tracks complete with cable assembly up the middle of Clay Street, from Kearny to Leavenworth, an endurance climb of seven punishing city blocks.

 

Still, Hallidie missed the city-imposed deadline to be in operation by one day. It was something to be taken seriously. Missing it by even one day could cause the company to forfeit its right to operate on the city's streets, such was the law. But in the wee hours of the very next morning, August 2 1873, a prototype tram was finally wheeled into place and, guided by lit lanterns, Hallidie stepped on board. Activating the grip lever which attaches to the moving cable, he drove the tram up to Leavenworth on that peril-prone maiden voyage.

 

Very few people were awake to witness this milestone, yet by its opening day on September 1, the Clay Street line started to make money. In 1880 alone more than one million ride tickets were sold. The newly-christened cable car was “ ... decorated w/ scrollwork and gold trim, using ornate glass transoms and, for paint, maroon and cream.”

 

Overnight, the cable car model was adapted worldwide, from New York to Hong Kong. Naples crowned the opening of its cable railway by commissioning a song, “Funiculi, Funicula”, and that day was a signature occasion for civic celebration.