well of course there were horse drawn carriages and even just jumping on someone’s camel or horse or whatever else was probably a thing. but before driving as a paid service, i doubt it was called a taxi or anything like we call it today or since the invention of the automotive. 1635 was the first horse-drawn carriage as a paid service in england at least. without doing more research i’d assume you would just ask to ride with someone and offer money as compensation. something we see today as how taxi service is known, but hardly the oldest concept in civilization when civilization spans back thousands upon thousands of years before the last 500 or even thousand years we are talking about right now.
what i’m saying is that the concept of how a taxi functions, yes no refuting it’s existence for as long as civilizations and something to ride has existed. but the word or an equatable older word that transitioned into the modern word of taxi or cab? not even close to as old as civilization existence.
EssentialCoffee@midwest.social 1 year ago
Sure, carriages and stagecoaches existed. Rickshaws too for that matter, depending where you were in the world.
We also called them carriages, stagecoaches, and rickshaws, not taxis.
There were also handsom cabs, but I don’t know if they used taximeters before they became electric in 1897, as they are not referred to as ‘taxis’ until 1897. The modern taximeter was invented in 1891, but the first taxicab to be equipped with it was in 1897 (and it was gas powered, not electric).
The ‘taxi’ part in taxicab doesn’t refer to driving someone around, btw. It refers to the meter used to derive how much you pay. Nowadays, we would use it to to refer to someone driving you around though, because that’s how language changes.