Alfred Ely Beach (September 1, 1826 – January 1, 1896) was an American inventor, entrepreneur, publisher, and patent lawyer, born in Springfield, Massachusetts.

[9][10] Alfred worked for his father at the "Sun" until he and a friend, Orson Desaix Munn, decided to buy Scientific American, a relatively new publication, becoming the early founders of that company.

[11] Scientific American is now the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States, and has featured prominent scientists over time such as Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, and Thomas Edison.

He received the gold medal by the American Institute at the New York Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1853, and his invention served as the prototype for typewriters over the next century.

He invented a cable traction railway system, and designed and built one of the world's first tunnelling shields in the same year as famed engineer James Henry Greathead.

Construction of the tunnel was obvious from materials being delivered to Warren Street near Broadway, and was documented in newspaper reports, but Beach kept all details secret until the New York Tribune published a possibly planted article a few weeks before opening.

[31] The Mayor of New York, Abraham Oakey Hall, grew suspicious and sent an aide over to the construction site with a written order to inspect Beach's work, but his workers blocked the inspectors.

[27][32] Beach hosted a gala on February 26, 1870, to which he invited city and state officials, enraging "Boss Tweed" for not having profited from the venture, and for challenging his monopoly on streetcars.

[32][13] In less than a year, Beach's underground system was used by 400,000 people, and he requested his line to extend to Central Park, with an injection of 5 million dollars in capital, hoping to get financiers such as John Jacob Astor III in the venture.

[34] The real opposition to the subway was from politically connected property owners along Broadway, led by Alexander Turney Stewart and John Jacob Astor III, who feared that tunnelling would damage buildings and interfere with surface traffic.

[35] Bills for Beach's subway passed the legislature in 1871 and 1872 but were vetoed by Governor John T. Hoffman because he said that they gave away too much authority without compensation to the city or state.

In 1873 Governor John Adams Dix signed a similar bill into law, but Beach was not able to raise funds to build over the next six months, and then the Panic of 1873 dried up the financial markets.

[23] During this same time, other investors had built an elevated railway at Greenwich Street and Ninth Avenue, which operated successfully with a small steam engine starting in 1870.

[30] Beach spent $70,000 of his own savings to make the station luxurious and comfortable, with chandeliers, mirrors, a towering grandfather clock, a fountain with fish, paintings and a piano.

[39][40] The profits made by Beach from the subway were given to charities, promising to donate all the money raised to the United Home for the Orphans of Soldiers and Sailors.

[44] The British pneumatic tube also failed to attract much attention and eventually fell into disrepair and disrepute in spite of the fact that Royal Mail had contracted to use the tunnels.

[citation needed] Much of the Beach subway story was recalled as precedent by Lawrence Edwards in his lead article of the August 1965 issue of Scientific American, which described his invention of Gravity-Vacuum Transit.

[5] Beach's pneumatic system was the first air-powered train in America, a concept that would be proposed once again about 150 years later by billionaire Elon Musk, rebranded as the Hyperloop.