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The Engines of Our Ingenuity 1647: Houston Traffic, 1924
Episode: 1647 In which we study traffic problems in Houston, TX, in 1924. Today, Houston's traffic in 1924.
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Today Houston's traffic in 1924, the University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run and the people whose ingenuity created them.
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Is this episode right for you?
B1 · Intermediate
Fine if you can follow simple news
- 91% of the words are B1 or easier.
- 153 words a minute: a natural pace.
- 34 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.
Transcript
The opening of the episode. The whole transcript is in the player.
harder words (B2+)
This is the Engines of Our Ingenuity, made possible by the friends of KUHF Houston. Today Houston's traffic in 1924, the University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run and the people whose ingenuity created them. I was recently given a report that it oddly turned up in old files of Cooper Industries. It had been prepared for the city of Houston by a traffic light salesman in 1924.
It begins like this. In any growing city of over 50,000, certain traffic practices are the outgrowth of a course of least resistance from days when little attention was paid to how fast a man's horses were driven or how he tied up at the hitching rack.
He goes on to point out that downtown Houston traffic has become a mess. Greater Houston would eventually grow to 4.3 million people, some 30 times the 1924 population. And while our present traffic is bad, it's easier to get around now than it was then. The salesman sees why we had traffic problems.
That was the opening. The rest of the episode (3 min) is in the player: every word clickable, with translation, saved words and flashcards.
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