to take part of the weight off of the wheels while using conventional propulsion. Early United States patents for a linear motor propelled train were awarded to German inventor Alfred Zehden. The inventor was awarded (14 February 1905) and (21 August 1907). In 1907, another early electromagnetic transportation system was developed by F. S. Smith. In 1908, Cleveland mayor Tom L. Johnson filed a patent for a wheel-less "high-speed railway" levitated by an induced magnetic field. Jokingly known as "Greased Lightning," the suspended car operated on a 90-foot test track in Johnson's basement "absolutely noiseless[ly] and without the least vibration." A series of German patents for magnetic levitation trains propelled by linear motors were awarded to Hermann Kemper between 1937 and 1941. An early maglev train was described in , "Magnetic system of transportation", by G. R. Polgreen on 25 August 1959. The first use of "maglev" in a United States patent was in "Magnetic levitation guidance system" by Canadian Patents and Development Limited. New York, United States, 1968 In 1959, while delayed in traffic on the Throgs Neck Bridge, James Powell, a researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), thought of using magnetically levitated transportation. Powell and BNL colleague Gordon Danby worked out a maglev concept using static magnets mounted on a moving vehicle to induce electrodynamic lifting and stabilizing forces in specially shaped loops, such as figure-of-8 coils on a guideway. These were patented in 1968–1969. Japan, 1969–present Japan operates two independently developed maglev trains. One is HSST (and its descendant, the Linimo line) by Japan Airlines and the other, which is more well known, is SCMaglev by the Central Japan Railway Company. The development of the latter started in 1969. The first successful SCMaglev run was made on a short track at the Japanese National Railways' (JNR's) Railway Technical Research Institute in 1972. Maglev trains on the Miyazaki test track (a later, 7 km long test track) regularly hit by 1979. After an accident which destroyed the train, a new design was selected. In Okazaki, Japan (1987), the SCMaglev was used for test rides at the Okazaki exhibition. Tests in Miyazaki continued throughout the 1980s, before transferring to a far longer test track, long, in Yamanashi in 1997. The track has since been extended to almost . The current world speed record for crewed trains was set there in 2015. Development of HSST started in 1974. In Tsukuba,