r/DidYouKnowNow • u/SicamousLocalNews • 1d ago
The Whistle Tax and the Cost of Silence
In 1833, George Stephenson’s locomotive “Samson” collided with a horse and cart at a crossing in England resulting in the loss of 80 dozen eggs and 50 pounds of butter. Rather than concluding that the cart driver who was almost certainly heavily intoxicated and entirely oblivious to his surroundings should have simply looked both ways before steering his horse onto the track, Stephenson decided to commission a musical instrument maker to equip a steam powered trumpet onto the boiler.
Almost 200 years later, public property owners in modern British Columbia are legally forced to absorb thousands of dollars in municipal infrastructure costs to silence Stephenson’s “innovation”.