When was the idea for the hyperloop first mooted? Have a guess, I dare you.

[wilfred]

Still trawling through the link Mikeselectricstuff posted in this thread
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/cyclopedia-of-applied-electricity-from-1908/msg1142019/#msg1142019

If your answer was anything less than over 100 years ago, you were wrong. It was a Russian Boris Petrovik Weinberg in 1917 as far as I can find. Maglev trains is also discussed in the article I link below.
I am stuck in a whirlpool of confirmation bias. The more things change the more they stay the same. It's just astonishing.
Here are the two relevant pages from the document Mike referenced.
https://archive.org/stream/electricalexperi04gern#page/794/mode/1up
https://archive.org/stream/electricalexperi04gern#page/851/mode/1up
And a link from a particularly long lived New Zealand newspaper. The Oamaru Mail of 3 March 1917.
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/OAM19170303.2.47.4


If you go on to the next page (pp852) They are discussing the invention of Bakelite and TNT (Trinitrotoluene) and Russia has 80MW of electric power generation. There is an ad for the Gilson pocket slide rule that can find the cube root of 817.49 in only 15 seconds. It came complete with imitation leather case. Which is the surprising part. I would not have thought imitation leather was a thing yet.

[DimitriP]

Wait until you stumble on the first electric car ...

[brucehoult]

Interesting guy. Contrary to the Oamaru Mail, he doesn't seem to have ever lived in Moscow. Mostly Siberia and St Petersburg. Remarkably, being not only an academic but also (looking at his surname) Jewish, he survived the revolution and the numerous purges until the siege of St Petersburg in 1942, when he was 71.

http://www.lib.tpu.ru/ap/document/index.tal?docid=RU%5CTPU%5Cpers%5C28202