PBA Galleries

4 pp, the 1st 2 pp. being printed advertisement/letters testimonial for the Wire Rope, p.3 an autograph letter, the final page blank.

Rare advertising lettersheet with letter from the man who would create the famed San Francisco cable car system. Andrew Smith Hallidie came to California in 1852 at age 16 with his father, an engineer who held patents on wire rope manufacture. His father soon became disenchanted with the prospects in California, but young Andrew stayed, mining with moderate success before returning to San Francisco and opening up A.S. Hallidie & Co., manufactures of wire rope, increasingly useful in mining operations, as surface panning gave way to tunnels, and elevators were needed to get the miners up and down the shafts. The wire rope was, of course, to prove invaluable some years hence when the cable cards were built.