Alfred Beach retained his interest in the _Sun_ for several years, but he is best remembered for his inventions and for his connection with scientific literature. In 1853 he devised the first typewriter which printed raised letters on a strip of paper for the blind. He invented a pneumatic mail-tube, and a larger tube on the same principle, by which he hoped passengers could be carried, the motive power being the exhaustion of air at the far end by means of a rotating fan. He was the first subway-constructor in New York. In 1869 he built a tunnel nine feet in diameter under Broadway from Warren Street to Murray Street, and the next year a car was sent to and fro in this by pneumatic power. A more helpful invention, however, was the Beach shield for tunnel-digging--a gigantic hogs-head with the ends removed, the front circular edge being sharp and the rear end having a thin iron hood. This cylinder was propelled slowly through the earth by hydraulic rams, the dislodged material being removed through the rear. Mr. Beach was connected with the _Scientific American_ until his death in 1896. His son, Frederick Converse Beach, was one of the editors of that periodical, and his grandson, Stanley Yale Beach, is still in the same field of endeavour. CHAPTER VII “THE SUN” IN THE MEXICAN WAR _Moses Y. Beach as an Emissary of President Polk.--The Associated Press Founded in the Office of “The Sun.”--Ben Day’s Brother-in-Law Retires with a Small Fortune._ The Beaches, father and sons, owned the _Sun_ throughout the Mexican War, a period notable for the advance of newspaper enterprise; and Moses Yale Beach proved more than once that he was the peer of Bennett in the matter of getting news. Shortly before war was declared--April 24, 1846--the telegraph-line was built from Philadelphia to Fort Lee, New Jersey, opposite New York. June found a line opened from New York to Boston; September, a line from New York to Albany. The ports and the capitals of the nation were no longer dependent on horse expresses, or even upon the railroads, for brief news of importance. Morse had subdued space. For a little time after the Mexican War began there was a gap in the telegraph between Washington and New York, the line between Baltimore and Philadelphia not having been completed; but with the aid of special trains the _Sun_ was able to present the news a few hours after it left Washington. It was, of course, not exactly fresh news, for the actual hostilities in Mexico were not heard of at Washington until May 11, more than two weeks after their accomplishment.