All the Basics were available: earlier cable traction?

By the early 1850s, all of the elements that ultimately went into cable traction (that is, cable cars) were available:

* Low rpm steam engines
* Wire rope
* Girder rail
* Mass production of cast iron

At the time, the city of Baltimore was the second-largest in the nation, with a recently-established horsecar system. The streets were and are reasonably straight with gradual changes in gradient (rather than undulating terrain). It was also an established industrial and railroad center.

Suppose some unnamed inventor, watching (say) bucket hoists got the idea that a looped cable could be applied to moving people through the streets of Baltimore? And suppose that same inventor developed the first renditions of the conduit and the grip, the two necessary-and-sufficient devices for cable traction? How would the history of the cable car been affected, coming into being roughly 20 years earlier?

I don't think it's much of a stretch that Andrew Smith Hallidie (who devised the first cable line IOTL) would see the extension of the technology to steep hills as in San Francisco, so cable lines there are almost a natural (not so Pittsburgh: the streets have too many curves to have made cable traction particularly attractive). I also suggest that it would have spread fairly quickly to Philadelphia, New York, and perhaps Cincinnati, based on the relatively straight streets / favorable terrain arguments.

Would it be possible for cable systems beyond Frisco to survive in the US until now (and don't forget: Seattle and Tacoma had cable cars until 1940; the demise came only as a function of getting rid of all rail transit, including streetcars)?
 
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