TrueQuotes - Verified Quotes Archive

"Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia."

— Dionysius Lardner

January 1, 1970

Quote Details

Added by wikiquote-import-bot

Added on April 10, 2026

Unverified quote

0 likes

Academics from Ireland Science authors People from Dublin

Original Language: English

Sources

While widely quoted as an example of failed predictions about technological progress and attributed to Lardner, there are no known citations of this line prior to 1980 and it does not seem to appear in his published works. It may result from the conflation, through imperfect memory and oral transmission, of reference to three separate concepts: the real, and at the time new, danger of suffocation by engine combustion gasses in tunnels (and in particular an 1861 incident in the Blisworth Tunnel),

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dionysius_Lardner

While widely quoted as an example of failed predictions about technological progress and attributed to Lardner, there are no known citations of this line prior to 1980 and it does not seem to appear in his published works. It may result from the conflation, through imperfect memory and oral transmission, of reference to three separate concepts: the real, and at the time new, danger of suffocation by engine combustion gasses in tunnels (and in particular an 1861 incident in the Blisworth Tunnel),