Everyone knows the story about the horse car accident that Andrew Smith Hallidie witnessed in 1869 that purportedly set his mind in motion to develop the cable car. This is a wonderful story and surely helped sell the idea to a nervous public but the reality is that Hallidie, and his father before him, spent much of their lives mulling over the problem of how to move people and things using the family's signature product: wire rope. Watch historian Taryn Edwards in a recording on Vimeo of a talk she gave on July 11 to the San Francisco Historical Society, exploring the inventive life of Andrew Smith Hallidie and outlining the evolution of thought that led to the development of San Francisco's most distinctive transportation system - the cable car!