 rates very similarly to a ski lift. A few years and a few patents later, it was a natural progression of thought that would lead to the below ground endless ropeway that we are all so familiar with, the cable car. So Hallity would test the first cable car on Clay Street in August of 1873, and it was a roaring success. And it led to several other lines that would crisscross the north part of the city. Are you all fascinated by cable cars? Yeah, okay, you've got to go to the cable car museum. They do it right, and you can see cable cars in action, and it's a free museum. It's a great place to take your family when they're visiting, and afterwards, you can take the cable car down the hill and have a nice drink along the waterfront. And by the way, they have an extraordinary exhibit of old cable cars, new cable cars, and a picture exhibit of how it actually evolved. So the man in front with the stovepipe hat with the circle around him, that's Hallity himself. And the lady sitting on his right is his wife, Martha. And I suspect the guy in the middle is her father, but I'm not sure. So Andrew Hallity likely only went to a traditional school for a few years. We know he studied drafting under the tutelage of his older brother who managed the drawing office of their father's factory. He probably also attended the free lectures, scientific and technical lectures that were at the Mechanics Institutes that were within walking distance of their home. Because of this lack of formal education, Hallity loved libraries. He recognized that they were essential for a informed and democratic society, and in fact, critical for those that were interested in self-improvement. And this was especially important in the frontier environment of San Francisco because it did not have any educational facilities for adults in place yet. So in 1864, Hallity would start his first term as on the board of regents of the Mechanics Institute as vice president. He was instrumental in acquiring this plot of land and making sure that our building, which then was 31 post, was built. And due to his tremendous energy, he would be elected shortly after in 1868 as president. And his first task as president was to set the Mechanics Institute on a firm financial footing. At the time, Mechanics Institute was organized upon a stockholder system, which wasn't working the way it should. And we were in a deep financial hole. Hallity would abolish the stockholder system and make the property of the Institute a public trust. This change, along with the financial success of the 1864 fair, the Industrial Fair, would help set Mechanics on a, put them into a positive fiscal environment. And it was so positive that Hallity felt the room that he had room to dream about the future of Mechanics. So at the same time, unfortunately the 60s were tremendously busy for Hallity, at the same time in March of 1868, Governor Henry Haight signed into law the bill that outlined the criteria for the new University of California. And the bill also specified who should be on the Board of Regents. On that list was the president of the Mechanics Institute. Hallity, who had just assumed the position of president here, aptly took to the role of regent and would ultimately serve 32 years in that capacity, helping design its mechanical arts program and overseeing the university's finance. Okay, so Hallity was such an amazing regent that upon his death, the university would commission this building to honor him and it's straight through the Crocker Galleria on Sutter. This is the Hallity building designed by Willis Polk and it opened in 1917. And if you've never been there, you've got to walk by on a sunny day because it's impossible to see in this black and white photo, but it's a blue and gold building and the gold on a sunny day will dazzle you. And the curtain wall glass will too as well. All right, so the notion of a state sponsored university may have stimulated Hallity's thinking about directing public funds to libraries. The problem facing San Francisco's libraries and virtually every library in the country was that there was no mechanism in place for funding them other than the rich person model where a wealthy person gives money to help make the library happen or the membership model. So in February 1875, Hallity took a trip to the Eastern U.S. and Europe on a fact-finding study of the best practices in place at municipal libraries, mechanics institutes and universities that offered technical programs. The facilities that he visited in the U.S. included the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the New York Public Library, the Cooper's Institute and the Boston Public Library. And Hallity was particularly impressed with Boston's system because they were funded by tax dollars. Incidentally, they initially were funded by the rich person model and then that was not stable enough for them. So they set up this tax system. So Hallity saw this as a possible solution to the San Francisco's library woes and he returned to San Francisco charged with a mission to gain for its residents a free library. Scarcely a year later, Hallity and his compatriot, Senator George Rogers, would organize a community meeting on August 3rd, 1877 at Dashaway Hall with the object of drafting legislation that would help fund a free library for San Francisco. The fruit of that meeting became Senate Bill Number One, submitted on December 5th, 1877, and that was signed into law the following year by Governor William Irwin. So the Rogers Free Library Act basically granted authority to municipalities to impose a tax upon its residents for the establishment of a free public library and reading room. And this afforded many struggling libraries a stable source of income.