A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from October 11, 2013
Speed Bump

Entry in progress—B.P.
sleeping policeman
 
Wikipedia: Speed bump
A speed bump, speed hump or rampsleeping policeman in British English and Caribbean English and a judder bar in New Zealand English. A speed bump is a bump in a roadway with heights typically ranging between 3 and 4 inches (7.6 and 10 cm). The depth of speed bumps is typically less than or near to 1 foot (30 cm); contrasting with the wider speed humps which are typically 10 to 14 feet (3.0 to 4.3 m) in depth.
 
Speed bumps can be made of recycled plastic, metal, asphalt or rubber. Speed bumps of various sizes can be placed on a road, from using two four foot or six foot devices on it with a space on either side for drainage, and not designed for avoiding the bump on one side of the car. It may also be connected across the entire road surface.
(...)
History
On June 7, 1906, The New York Times reported on an early implementation of what might be considered speed bumps in the U.S. town of Chatham, New Jersey, which planned to raise its crosswalks five inches above the road level: “This scheme of stopping automobile speeding has been discussed by different municipalities, but Chatham is the first place to put it in practice”. The average automobile’s top speed at the time was around 30 mph.
 
Arthur Holly Compton was a physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1927 for his discoveries resulting in major changes in electromagnetic theory. He is commonly known for his work on the Compton Effect with X-rays. He also invented what he called “traffic control bumps,” the basic design for the speed hump, in 1953. Compton began designs on the speed bump after noticing the speed at which motorists passed Brookings Hall at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was chancellor.
 
(Oxford English Dictionary)
speed bump  n. colloq. = sleeping policeman n. at sleeping adj. 1f.
1975 Public Wks. Aug. 73/1   Speed bumps had been installed in many apartment complexes and shopping center parking lots.
1978   T. L. Smith Money War (1979) i. 59   As he approached the speed bumps, Hogan slowed… They took the bumps gently and then pulled off the road.

Posted by Barry Popik
New York CityTransportation • Friday, October 11, 2013 • Permalink


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