The World’s First Bus Service
According to an article in Wired, Paris can claim to be the birthplace of the world’s first bus service, started by the prodigiously talented scientist, theologian and entrepreneur Blaise Pascal as far back as 1662:
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…King Louis XIV granted a royal monopoly: Try to compete, and your horses and vehicles would be taken away.
No-one likes a bus. Whether you’re queuing for a red double decker or a green parisian hopper, bus travel can be a frustrating experience - and the good people of the 17th century agreed. Pascal’s game was up in only a few years: by 1675 the scheme was out of business. France’s strict social code ensured his ‘Five Penny Coaches’ were off limits to peasants, and could only be available to the nobility and gentry - who presumably had more comfortable means of getting around town.
“A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus, can count himself as a failure.” So said British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (or so the story goes) - seems the people of Paris found it hard to disagree.
