Transportation

Steamships

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the steam-driven ship appeared on

the horizon. From 1770 onward various men had experimented with engines in

boats in England, Scotland, and the United States. When Robert Fulton's Clermont

travelled up the Hudson to Albany, tradition has it, people on the bank seeing the

sparks from the smokestack thought the Devil had gone by on a raft. In 1811 Bell

built the Comet and ran it for eight years between Glasgow and a port twenty-five

miles distant. Two basic economic problems in connection with steam vessels soon

came to light. First, the self-propelled ship was more expensive to build and operate than sailing vessels; 

and second, its boiler and machinery were so bulky that there was little room left for passengers.

The technical problems were solved shortly, but the economic aspects took more time. Yet the steamship 

had some undeniable advantages: lt could not be becalmed, it was not helpless in a storm, and it could 

arrive and depart under its own power. By the 1840's the North Atlantic was crossed regularly by steamship.

In 1839 Sir Samuel Cunard secured from the British government a contract to carry mails between Liverpool, 

Halifax, and Boston. The run was a great success, and soon Cunard was operating a regular schedule. The

tremendous growth of steamship traffic in the last half of the nineteenth century was accompanied by 

significant improvements in hull design, engines, and fuel. By 1839 the propellor had replaced the paddle 

wheel, steel replaced iron in the hull, and multi-cylinder engines became available. After 1920 the

diesel engine, much smaller and lighter than a steam unit of equal power, marked another major 

changeover.

Railroads

The coming of the railroads greatly facilitated the industrialization of Europe. At mid eighteenth century

 the plate or rail track had been in common use for moving coal from the pithead to the colliery or furnace. 

After 1800 flat tracks were in use outside London, Sheffield, and Munich. With the expansion of commerce, 

facilities for the movement of goods from the factory to the ports or cities came into pressing demand. In 

1801 Richard Trevithick had an engine pulling trucks around the mine where he worked in Cornwall. By 

1830 a railway was opened from Liverpool to Manchester; and on this line George Stephenson's ''Rocket'' 

pulled a train of cars at fourteen miles an hour.

The big railway boom in Britain came in the years 1844 to 1847. The railway builders had to fight vested 

interests-for example, canal stockholders, turnpike trusts, and horse breeders-but by 1850, aided by cheap

iron and better machine tools, a network of railways had been built. By midcentury railroad trains travelling 

at thirty to fifty miles an hour were not uncommon, and freight steadily became more important than 

passengers. After 1850 in England the state had to intervene to regulate what amounted to a monopoly of 

                                                       inland transport. But as time went on the British railways

                                                         developed problems. The First World War (1914-1918) 

                                                        found them suffering from overcapitalization, rising costs, 

                                                        and state regulation.

                                                        British success with steam locomotion, however, was enough 

                                                        to encourage the building of railroads in most European countries, 

                                                        often with British capital, equipment, and technicians.

                                                         Railroads became a standard item of British export. After 1842 France 

began a railroad system which combined private and public enterprise. The government provided the 

roadbed and then leased it to a private company which provided the equipment. In Russia, Canada, and the 

United States, railways served to link communities separated by vast distances. In Germany there were no 

vast empty spaces, but railroads did help to affect political and economic integration.

Canals

Canals were another important type of transportation. It was much cheaper to carry goods on barges 

because mules pulled them by walking along side the canals. Canals were dug to join other bodies of 

water in order to make trips to other places shorter. One canal is called the Morris Canal. The most 

important job for the Morris Canal was to carry coal from Pennsylavina to New Jersey.

Cars

Benz Karl, 1844-1929, German engineer, credited with building the first automobile powered 

by an internal-combustion engine. The car, driven in Mannheim in 1885 and patented in 1886, 

had three wheels, an electric ignition, and differential gears and was water-cooled. As a result 

of a merger in 1926, Benz's company became Daimler-Benz AG, the manufacturer of the 

Mercedes-Benz automobile. The invention of the single-cylinder engine started a new form of 

land transport.

Planes

The Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville, built the 1903 Flyer in sections

in the back room of their cycle shop at 1127 West Third in Dayton. When

completed, it was shipped down to Kitty Hawk and assembled. On

December 14, 1903, Wilbur won a coin toss and made the first attempt

to fly the machine. He stalled it on take-off, causing some minor damage. The plane was repaired, 

and Orville made the next attempt on December 17. At 10:35 a.m., he made the first heavier-than-air, 

machine powered flight in the world. In a flight lasting only 12 seconds and covering just 120 feet, Orville 

did what men and women had only dreamed of doing for centuries, . . .he flew. Air transport started 

after his success in 1903.

Content       Development     Technological Change