Japanese Maglevs

The Japanese maglev system with its superconducting magnets relies heavily on the Brookhaven and Bitter Labs concept and on the fact that like magnetic poles repel one another. 

But there it will be. And when you get on that vehicle, it will say Invented by an American Scientist. Made in West Germany. And if anyone would like to watch a video cassette of the Japanese maglev demonstration model at the Miyazaki test track, write and I will pass on the request. You can watch the video tape—invented in the U.S. in 1956—on your VCR. Your VCR, made only in Japan. 

The best and most up-to-date references are Internet websites. Most of these can be reached via links from the U.S. Department of Transportation site . This site has links to the Federal Railroad Administration and the Federal Transit Administration, each of which has links to other national and international maglev sites. Additional maglev sites can be reached from the Innovative Transportation Technologies site . More details on EMS, LSM, and LIM can be found on the German Transrapid and Japanese HSST sites. More details on EDS and LSM can be found on the Japanese Railroad Technical Research Institute (RTRI) site. 

The Japanese alternative is the maglev system, and several prototype trains have been tested successfully by the country s engineers. What is maglev, however, and how does it work And how will the new superconducting materials contribute to giving us a transportation system that would be a realistic version of the fabled flying carpet ... 

Fascinating it was, but few people paid attention—except for the Japanese. They had read Powell and Danby s paper with the same keen interest with which years later, they would read the obscure journal detailing the discovery by IBM scientists of a ceramic compound superconducting at a record-high Kelvin. In 1970, they exhibited a model of the train at the Osaka World s Fair. By 1979, they tested another at speeds that hit a top of 321 miles per hour, a world record. In 1985, another maglev carried more than a half-million passengers on short runs at the science fair at Tsukuba. 

The Japanese government has poured about 1 billion into maglev research the West German government, an estimated 700 million. Bonn plans to spend another 320 million over the next... 

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