The ideas behind the Hyperloop concept aren’t new. Ahlborn, who now serves at HyperloopTT’s Chairman, explained: “This is not something Elon invented. The concept has been around about 200 years, and got its start in science fiction. In 1817, there was a first attempt at it in New York, with an idea to connect to San Francisco with underground tunnels and capsules moved with differential pressure. The idea of moving them through a vacuum first showed up in 1908.” The linear induction motor was first patented in 1905. British engineer Eric Laithwaite built the first full-size version in the 1940s, and its first uses for transportation began in the 1960s.

Of course, obviously none of those early efforts ever led to complete Hyperloop-style solution. But today we’ve had revolutions in technologies and materials that allow us to do things that could never be done before–both physically and organizationally.
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