Pedestrianism

Pedestrianism PDF Author: Matthew Algeo
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1613744005
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Strange as it sounds, during the 1870s and 1880s, America’s most popular spectator sport wasn’t baseball, football, or horseracing—it was competitive walking. Inside sold-out arenas, competitors walked around dirt tracks almost nonstop for six straight days (never on Sunday), risking their health and sanity to see who could walk the farthest—more than 500 miles. These walking matches were as talked about as the weather, the details reported in newspapers and telegraphed to fans from coast to coast. This long-forgotten sport, known as pedestrianism, spawned America’s first celebrity athletes and opened doors for immigrants, African Americans, and women. But along with the excitement came the inevitable scandals, charges of doping and insider gambling, and even a riot in 1879. Pedestrianism chronicles competitive walking’s peculiar appeal and popularity, its rapid demise, and its enduring influence.

Pedestrianism

Pedestrianism PDF Author: Matthew Algeo
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1613744005
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book

Book Description
Strange as it sounds, during the 1870s and 1880s, America’s most popular spectator sport wasn’t baseball, football, or horseracing—it was competitive walking. Inside sold-out arenas, competitors walked around dirt tracks almost nonstop for six straight days (never on Sunday), risking their health and sanity to see who could walk the farthest—more than 500 miles. These walking matches were as talked about as the weather, the details reported in newspapers and telegraphed to fans from coast to coast. This long-forgotten sport, known as pedestrianism, spawned America’s first celebrity athletes and opened doors for immigrants, African Americans, and women. But along with the excitement came the inevitable scandals, charges of doping and insider gambling, and even a riot in 1879. Pedestrianism chronicles competitive walking’s peculiar appeal and popularity, its rapid demise, and its enduring influence.

Pedestrianism

Pedestrianism PDF Author: Matthew Algeo
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1613743971
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Strange as it sounds, during the 1870s and 1880s, America's most popular spectator sport wasn't baseball, football, or horseracing-it was competitive walking. Inside sold-out arenas, competitors walked around dirt tracks almost nonstop for six straight days (never on Sunday), risking their health and sanity to see who could walk the farthest-500 miles, then 520 miles, and 565 miles! These walking matches were as talked about as the weather, the details reported in newspapers and telegraphed to fans from coast to coast. This long-forgotten sport, known as pedestrianism, spawned America's first celebrity athletes. The top pedestrians earned a fortune in prize money and endorsement deals. The sport also opened doors for immigrants, African Americans, and women. But along with the excitement came the inevitable scandals, charges of doping-coca leaves!-and insider gambling. It even spawned a riot in 1879 when too many fans showed up at New York's Gilmore's Gardens, later renamed Madison Square Gardens, and were denied entry to a widely publicized showdown. Pedestrianism: When Watching People Walk Was America's Favorite Spectator Sport chronicles competitive walking's peculiar appeal and popularity, its rapid demise, and its enduring influence. In many ways, pedestrianism marked the beginning of modern spectator sports in the United States. Matthew Algeo is the author of Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure, The President Is a Sick Man, and Last Team Standing. An award-winning journalist, Algeo has reported from three continents for public radio's All Things Considered, Marketplace, and Morning Edition.

The Lost Art of Walking

The Lost Art of Walking PDF Author: Geoff Nicholson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781594489983
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
How we walk, where we walk, why we walk tells the world who and what we are. Whether it's once a day to the car, or for long weekend hikes, or as competition, or as art, walking is a profoundly universal aspect of what makes us humans, social creatures, and engaged with the world. Cultural commentator, Whitbread Prize winner, and author of Sex Collectors Geoff Nicholson offers his fascinating, definitive, and personal ruminations on the literature, science, philosophy, art, and history of walking. Nicholson finds people who walk only at night, or naked, or in the shape of a cross or a circle, or for thousands of miles at a time, in costume, for causes, or for no reason whatsoever. He examines the history and traditions of walking and its role as inspiration to artists, musicians, and writers like Bob Dylan, Charles Dickens, and Buster Keaton. In The Lost Art of Walking, he brings curiosity, imagination, and genuine insight to a subject that often strides, shuffles, struts, or lopes right by us.

America on Foot

America on Foot PDF Author: Kerry Segrave
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786425598
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Hippocrates, one of history's earliest known physicians, once asserted, "Walking is man's best medicine." Over the last three centuries, people have endorsed walking for a variety of reasons--health among them. Before the 1700s, people walked as an essential part of their lifestyle. With the coming of the transportation revolution--and the advent of such conveyances as horse-drawn coaches, railways and automobiles--walking became something that was done increasingly out of choice rather than necessity. England's fashionable society engaged in afternoon promenades as a stylish fad. While America's vast distances and sparse settlements made this activity impractical, Americans nevertheless took to walking in other ways, including engaging in long distance walking competitions complete with spectators and prize money. Thus, for most of the twentieth century, the activity of walking was much more than a means of transportation. Beginning with the history of walking as a social activity, the book discusses the various issues which have affected walkers, including increased automobile traffic, the attention of the marketing industry and pedestrian regulations. The work examines the contemplative, psychological and observational qualities of walking as well as famous personalities--including Leonardo da Vinci, William Shakespeare, John Keats and John James Audubon--who endorsed these intellectual qualifications. During the 1970s fitness boom, walking was reinvented yet again, becoming an activity of numbers and equations as participants fought to maximize health benefits. The book concludes with a legal analysis of pedestrianism as it relates to sharing space with the automobile.

The Pedestrian

The Pedestrian PDF Author: Ray Bradbury
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573632839
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description


Romantic Writing and Pedestrian Travel

Romantic Writing and Pedestrian Travel PDF Author: R. Jarvis
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230371361
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Romantic Writing and Pedestrian Travel is an exploration of the relationship between walking and writing. Robin Jarvis here reconstructs the scene of walking, both in Britain and on the Continent, in the 1790s, and analyses the mentality and motives of the early pedestrian traveller. He then discusses the impact of this cultural revolution on the creativity of major Romantic writers, focusing especially on William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Coleridge, Clare, Keats, Hazlitt and Hunt. In readings which engage current debates around literature and travel, landscape aesthetics, ecocriticism, the poetics of gender, and the materiality of Romantic discourse, Jarvis demonstrates how walking became not only a powerful means of self-enfranchisement but also the focus of restless textual energies.

Pedestrian Dynamics

Pedestrian Dynamics PDF Author: Pushkin Kachroo
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1439805202
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
Homeland security, transportation, and city planning depend upon well-designed evacuation routes. You can’t wait until the day of to realize your plan won’t work. Designing successful evacuation plans requires an in-depth understanding of models and control designs for the problems of traffic flow, construction and road closures, and the intangible human factors. Pedestrian Dynamics: Mathematical Theory and Evacuation Control clearly delineates the derivation of mathematical models for pedestrian dynamics and how to use them to design feedback controls for evacuations. The book includes: Mathematical models derived from basic principles Mathematical analysis of the model Details of past work MATLAB® code 65 figures and 400 equations Unlike most works on traffic flow, this book examines the development of optimal methods to effectively control and improve pedestrian traffic flow. The work of a leading expert, it examines the differential equations applied to conservation laws encountered in the study of pedestrian dynamics and evacuation control problem. The author presents new pedestrian traffic models for multi-directional flow in two dimensions. He considers a range of control models in various simulations, including relaxed models and those concerned with direction and magnitude velocity commands. He also addresses questions of time, cost, and scalability. The book clearly demonstrates what the future challenges are and provides the tools to meet them.

Pedestrianism

Pedestrianism PDF Author: Walter Thom
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 118

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Book Description
"Pedestrianism" by Walter Thom. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

Rights of Passage

Rights of Passage PDF Author: Nicholas Blomley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136891358
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
Although a powerful form of governance, pedestrianism tends to be obscured by grander and more visible forms of urban regulation.

King of the Peds

King of the Peds PDF Author: P. S. Marshall
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781434334671
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 768

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Book Description
Did you know that in the late 1800's athletes walked up to 100 miles per day for 6 days?! Famous sporting personalities have been around for a long time. However, few will be aware that during the 1870's and 1880's, professional pedestrians or "peds" as they were fondly referred to, competed against each other in gruelling races for up to six days - and nights - on indoor sawdust tracks, getting just a few hours rest per day in makeshift huts beside the track, literally "eating on the trot" and undergoing tremendous hardships, all in the name of sport This book provides a fascinating insight into this hugely popular 19th century sport where massive amounts of prize money, a share of the gate receipts, and dazzling ornamental gold belts, were offered to successful athletes by ruthless promoters who made lucrative livings from the thousands of people who flocked to see them perform. You will journey into a world where men competed in appalling conditions, but exhibited unbelievable courage. This is a world which attracted the likes of to take each other on in front of thousands of screaming fans. This is a world which could provide incredible riches, but at a terrible price for those willing to push themselves to the limits of physical endurance. This is a world influenced by money and suffering; a world which had to end because its limits had been reached. After considering all the evidence, I invite you the reader to decide who deserves to be crowned King of the Peds