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Wednesday, March 23, 2011

March 18, 1662: The Bus Starts Here ... in Paris

by By Randy Alfred

1662: Bus service starts in Paris, a brilliant idea that didn't catch on.
Blaise Pascal -- mathematician, inventor, physicist, philosopher, author and general savant -- hatched the idea and secured financing from some friends in the nobility. King Louis XIV granted a royal monopoly: Try to compete, and your horses and vehicles would be taken away.
The system started with seven horse-drawn vehicles running along regular routes. Each coach could carry six or eight passengers. Some sources specify three routes; others say there were six, and that one of them was a circular route.

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