OMNIBUS (Lat. omnibus, "for all,"), familiarly contracted into "bus," is the largest kind of public street conveyance, and is appointed to travel between two fixed stations, starting at certain fixed hours, and taking up or setting down passengers at any point on its route. Vehicles of this sort were first started in Paris in 1662, when it was decreed, by a royal edict of Louis XIV., that a line of caresses a cinq sou.s (" twopence-halfpenny omnibuses"), each containing eight places, should be established for the benefit of the infirm, or those who, requiring speedy conveyance from one part of the town to another, were unable to afford a hired carriage for themselves; these " carosses" were bound to run at fixed hours from one station to another, whether full or empty. The public inauguration of the new conveyances took place March 18,1662, and was the occasion for a grand Me; and the novelty took so well with the Parisians, that the omnibuses we7c for when the rage for them died away, it was found for whose special benefit they were instituted made no use of them, and they, in consequence, gradually disappeared. The omnibus
was not revived in Paris till 1827, when it was started in its present form, carrying from 15 to 18 passengers inside, with only the driver above and the conductor behind; and on July 4, 1829, they were introduced into Loudon by a Mr. Shillibeer's conveyances, which for some time afterwards were known as shillibeers (an epithet still in common use in New York), were of larger size than the French ones, carrying 29 passengers inside, and were drawn by three horses abreast. The omnibus was intro duced into Amsterdam in 1839, and since that time its use has been extended to all large cities and towns in the civilized world. The seats of the omnibus are generally placed lengthwise, and the door behind. The omnibus is managed by a driver and a conductor. In New York, omnibuses are drawn on street-railways; and this practice is now being extensively employed in the chief towns of Great Britain, where the omnibuses are called tramway cars, and the railway a tramway.