Alfred Ely Beach

Alfred Ely Beach
Alfred Ely Beach
Born	September 1, 1826 (1826-09) Springfield, Massachusetts
Died	January 1, 1896 (1896-02) (aged 69) New York City, New York
Nationality	United States
Education	Monson Academy, Massachusetts, now Wilbraham & Monson Academy
Known for	New York City's first subway
Children	Frederick Converse Beach
Parent(s)	Moses Yale Beach

Alfred Ely Beach (September 1, 1826 – January 1, 1896) was an American inventor, publisher, and patent lawyer, born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He is most known for his design of New York City's earliest subway predecessor, the Beach Pneumatic Transit. He also patented a typewriter for the blind.

Beach was born in Springfield, Massachusetts and was the son of a prominent publisher, Moses Beach. Alfred Beach worked for his father until he and a friend, Orson Desaix Munn, decided to buy Scientific American, a relatively new publication. They ran Scientific American until their deaths decades later, and it was carried on by their sons and grandsons for decades more. Munn and Beach also established a very successful patent agency. Beach patented some of his own inventions, notably an early typewriter designed for use by the blind. After the Civil War he founded a school for freed slaves in Savannah, the Beach Institute, which is now the home of the King-Tisdell Cottage Foundation.

Beach's most famous invention was New York City's first subway, the Beach Pneumatic Transit. This came about during the 1860s, when traffic in New York was a nightmare, especially along the central artery, Broadway. Beach was one of a few visionaries who proposed building an underground railway under Broadway to help relieve the traffic congestion. The inspiration was the underground Metropolitan Railway in London but in contrast to that and others' proposals for New York, Beach proposed the use of trains propelled by pneumatics instead of conventional steam engines, and construction using a tunnelling shield of his invention to minimize disturbing the street.