Sometimes one comes across a bit of information that makes one raise an eyebrow in surprise then, a moment later, makes one wonder why one was surprised in the first place. So it was when I discovered that the first motorised ambulances in Manila were not run on petrol or diesel but on electricity and steam.
Today, much is made of the new electric-powered jeepneys on city streets today, but the basic technology is more than 125 years old.
When I think of electric vehicles I think not of Tesla’s battery-powered sportscars but the humble British milk float. Early each morning this once-common vehicle delivered bottles of milk to nearly everybody’s doorstep from a little before dawn. Its characteristic sound was a faint thump as the drive engaged then a quiet hum and a rattle of glass bottles as it set off to its next delivery.
The loudest noise about it was often the whistling of the milkman.
Having once earned pocket money helping a milkman on his rounds, I still rescue a dropped bottle by putting my foot underneath it.
It was that silence that made electric ambulances ideal in the first two decades of 20th century Manila. But electric ambulances were not the only driving force in town, as we shall see.
It was steam-powered vehicles that gave us the word chauffeur, derived from a French term meaning someone who heats up the boiler for a steam-engined vehicle it lives on in Tagalog as tsuper.
And we may have a few more surprises.
Continue reading “The Shocking Case of the Manila Ambulance”
Bob's Histories & Mysteries 