LONDON, THE FIRST CITY TO HOST LICENSED TAXICABS

Today, The Grandma has been reading about taxicabs, that were licensed in London on a day like today in 1897.

A taxi, also known as a taxicab or simply a cab, is a type of vehicle for hire with a driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride.  

A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of their choice. This differs from public transport where the pick-up and drop-off locations are decided by the service provider, not by the customers, although demand responsive transport and share taxis provide a hybrid bus/taxi mode.

There are four distinct forms of taxicab, which can be identified by slightly differing terms in different countries:

-Hackney carriages, also known as public hire, hailed or street taxis, licensed for hailing throughout communities

-Private hire vehicles, also known as minicabs or private hire taxis, licensed for pre-booking only

-Taxibuses, also come in many variations throughout the developing countries as jitneys or jeepney, operating on pre-set routes typified by multiple stops and multiple independent passengers

-Limousines, specialized vehicle licensed for operation by pre-booking

Although types of vehicles and methods of regulation, hiring, dispatching, and negotiating payment differ significantly from country to country, many common characteristics exist. Disputes over whether ridesharing companies should be regulated as taxicabs resulted in some jurisdictions creating new regulations for these services.

The word taxicab is a compound word formed as a contraction of taximeter and cabriolet. 

Taximeter is an adaptation of the German word Taxameter, which is itself a variant of the earlier German word Taxanom. Taxe is a German word meaning tax, charge, or scale of charges. The Medieval Latin word taxa also means tax or charge. Taxi may ultimately be attributed to Ancient Greek τάξις from τάσσω meaning to place in a certain order, as in commanding an orderly battle line, or in ordaining the payment of taxes, to the extent that ταξίδι (taxidi), meaning journey in Modern Greek, initially denoted an orderly military march or campaign. Meter is from the Greek μέτρον (metron) meaning measure.

A cabriolet is a type of horse-drawn carriage; the word comes from French cabrioler (to leap, caper), from Italian capriolare (to somersault), from Latin capreolus (roebuck, wild goat). In most European languages that word has taken on the meaning of a convertible car.

The taxicabs of Paris were equipped with the first meters beginning on 9 March 1898. They were originally called taxamètres, then renamed taximètres on 17 October 1904.

Harry Nathaniel Allen of The New York Taxicab Company, who imported the first 600 gas-powered New York City taxicabs from France in 1907, borrowed the word taxicab from London, where the word was in use by early 1907.

A popular but erroneous account holds that the vehicles were named after Franz von Taxis from the house of Thurn and Taxis, a 16th-century postmaster for Philip of Burgundy, and his nephew Johann Baptiste von Taxis, General Postmaster for the Holy Roman Empire. Both instituted fast and reliable postal services (conveying letters, with some post routes transporting people) across Europe. Their surname derives from their 13th-century ancestor Omodeo Tasso.

Horse-drawn for-hire hackney carriage services began operating in both Paris and London in the early 17th century.  

The first documented public hackney coach service for hire was in London in 1605.

In 1625 carriages were made available for hire from innkeepers in London and the first taxi rank appeared on the Strand outside the Maypole Inn in 1636.

In 1635 the Hackney Carriage Act was passed by Parliament to legalise horse-drawn carriages for hire. Coaches were hired out by innkeepers to merchants and visitors. A further Ordinance for the Regulation of Hackney-Coachmen in London and the places adjacent was approved by Parliament in 1654 and the first hackney-carriage licences were issued in 1662.

A similar service was started by Nicolas Sauvage in Paris in 1637. His vehicles were known as fiacres, as the main vehicle depot apparently was opposite a shrine to Saint Fiacre. The term fiacre is still used in French to describe a horse-drawn vehicle for hire, while the German term Fiaker is used, especially in Austria, to refer to the same thing.

The modern taximeter was invented and perfected by a trio of German inventors; Wilhelm Friedrich Nedler, Ferdinand Dencker and Friedrich Wilhelm Gustav Bruhn. The Daimler Victoria -the world's first motorized-powered taximeter-cab- was built by Gottlieb Daimler in 1897 and began operating in Stuttgart in June 1897.

Gasoline-powered taxicabs began operating in Paris in 1899, in London in 1903, and in New York in 1907. The New York taxicabs were initially imported from France by Harry N. Allen, owner of the Allen-Kingston Motor Car Company. Their manufacturing took place at Bristol Engineering in Bristol, Connecticut where the first domestically produced Taxicabs were built in 1908, designed by Fred E. Moskovics who had worked at Daimler in the late 1890s.

Albert F. Rockwell was the owner of Bristol and his wife suggested he paint his taxicabs yellow to maximise his vehicles' visibility. Moskovics was one of the organizers of the first Yellow Taxicab Company in New York.

Electric battery-powered taxis became available at the end of the 19th century. 

In London, Walter Bersey designed a fleet of such cabs and introduced them to the streets of London on 19 August 1897. They were soon nicknamed Hummingbirds due to the idiosyncratic humming noise they made.

In the same year in New York City, the Samuel's Electric Carriage and Wagon Company began running 12 electric hansom cabs. The company ran until 1898 with up to 62 cabs operating until it was reformed by its financiers to form the Electric Vehicle Company.

Taxicabs proliferated around the world in the early 20th century. The first major innovation after the invention of the taximeter occurred in the late 1940s, when two-way radios first appeared in taxicabs. Radios enabled taxicabs and dispatch offices to communicate and serve customers more efficiently than previous methods, such as using callboxes. The next major innovation occurred in the 1980s when computer assisted dispatching was first introduced.

More information: Science Museum

Where I grew up in South East London
you became a cab driver 

or worked in a flower market.

Rob Beckett