Thursday August 5th: Took a drive (borrowing Patrick's 2009 Mustang!) down to the Oakland Air Museum at the Oakland airport. Not a lot to see there that was remarkable, but I did see this:
It's a BOAC seaplane that once plied the waters between Hawaii and San Francisco.
I then went down to the Hiller museum in San Carlos, across the Bay and south of the San Francisco Airport. Stanley Hiller, Jr. was one of the true aviation pioneers who, in 1944 (when he was 19 years old) designed the first successful helicopter with counter-rotating rotors, eliminating the need for a tail rotor. The museum was pretty darn interesting with a lot of off-beat aircraft stuff, including this:
This is a model of the "Avitor", which in 1869 was the first powered, unmanned plane in the world. (Well, maybe you have to stretch a bit to call it a plane...)
Also at the Hiller museum was this piece of history:
This is the original mock up for the Boeing SST that was in development to counter the "threat" of the British-French Concorde supersonic transport airplane. The program, for those of us old enough to remember, was cancelled in 1971 because of cost projections.
Today I drove to downtown San Francisco to see a couple museums. The first was the Cable Car Museum at Mason and Washington Streets. The Museum is housed in the powerhouse for the four cable car lines that run in San Francisco, and the powerhouse is still operating. The museum was really interesting and presented a lot of information about the origin of the systems and about San Francisco around the turn of the century and immediately after the Earthquake and Fire of 1906.
Below are the four systems that power the cars, one for each of the four cable car lines:
The systems are currently powered by electric motors, but in times past would have been powered by steam engines.
And in case you've forgotten the Rice-a-Roni commercials, here is one of the cars rounding a turn at Washington and Mason Streets and loaded with turistas:
I then went down to Fisherman's Wharf to the San Francisco Maritime Historical Park, which was really worth the trip. They have a visitor's center with a lot of good information about the maritime history of the west coast, and then on the waterfront is the Park itself. The Park consists of two sailing ships, two tugboats, one of the car ferries that once plied the waters of the Bay, and a collection of smaller pleasure craft. All beautifully restored, or undergoing restoration.
The ship in the forefront is actually the hull of a sailing vessel that is being restored. To the right is the car ferry "Eureka", to the left foreground is a small tugboat, and in the rear is the ship "Barclutha", a three-masted sailing vessel. Not visible is the tugboat "Hercules", which was in service from about 1907 to 1985 or so:
I thought the "Eureka", the car ferry, was pretty cool. They had it loaded up with cars from the 1920's and 1930's and the ship was immaculate:
This is a shot of the passenger area:
And, finally of course, here is the Barclutha:
And finally, see if you can recognize what's in the background of this shot:
Anyway, that's it for the last couple days. Pat and I have always enjoyed sight-seeing in San Francisco.
