Paragraph about air brakes in 1870s

Railroad accidents were frequent and deadly. Westinghouse's 1869 version, the straight or direct air brake, used air hoses to connect the cars. When the engineer turned on the brakes, air pressure turned the brakes on in each car of the train.Air brakes are used in trucks, buses, trailers, and semi-trailers. George Westinghouse first developed air brakes for use in railway service. He patented a safer air brake on March 5, 1872. Originally designed and built for use on railroad train application, air brakes remain the exclusive systems in widespread use.A railway air brake is a railway brake power braking system with compressed air as the operating medium. Modern trains rely upon a fail-safe air brake system that is based upon a design patented by George Westinghouse on April 13, 1869.

Explanation:

Explanation:

1. Riding on trains before the 1870's was very dangerous. There were many deaths of passengers and employees. Prior to air brakes, railroad employees had to manually apply the brakes by means of a brake wheel that tightened the amount of pressure the brake pad put on the wheel.

“It was taken as a matter of course that railroad men of necessity be maimed or killed.” Lorenzo Coffin, first railroad commissioner of Iowa.

Freight and passengers were not moving as quickly or as efficiently as they could have because of slower speeds on mainlines and poor performance with braking.

The need of a continuous train-brake, operated from the locomotive and under the immediate control of the engine-driver, had been emphasized through years by the almost regular recurrence of accidents of the most appalling character." Charles Francis Adams. Note on Railroad Accidents.

2. Before the invention of the air brake, railroad trains crashed frequently, like this wreck on the Maine Central near Bangor in 1871. Courtesy New York Public Library1872: George Westinghouse Jr. receives patent No. 124,405 for the automatic railroad air brake.

Before the air brake, railroad engineers would stop trains by cutting power, braking their locomotives and using the whistle to signal their brakemen. The brakemen would turn the brakes in one car and jump to the next to set the brakes there, and then to the next, etc. The system was dangerous (brakemen died or were maimed), imprecise (the train might stop too soon or too late for the station) and unreliable (the train sometimes didn't stop before running into another train or anything else on the tracks). Railroad accidents were frequent and deadly.