Most animals possess the power of locomotion, human beings perhaps most importantly though not perhaps most extravagantly. Some birds annually migrate over a distance approaching 40 percent of the Earth's circumference, flying over both land and water; and there are fish similarly capable of locomotion through the oceans that cover the planet's surface. Throughout history humans have been part of a much less numerous group of species capable of transporting goods in the course of their migrations. Until fairly recently humans depended upon harnessing exterior forces to aid them in their movement. Geophysical forces have always been present in currents of air and water; natural buoyancy has carried animals and humans over long distances as stowaways, and gravity has furnished considerable assistance to locomotion. All creatures may use these potential enhancements of mobility. What distinguishes humans from others is the ability to modify these natural forces in order to suit time and place objectives and ultimately to shape new and enlarged mechanical forces for locomotion.
Transportation is any clear and deliberate effort to amplify human locomotion. Today there is a tendency to restrict the term to the mechanical enhancement of moving persons and goods, but this is too narrow a definition, as adventitious use of natural forces still plays an important role. No long-distance commercial flight operates without taking into consideration the current location of the jet stream and other aiding and opposing winds. Transatlantic crossings may vary by several hours' duration, depending on where the jet stream is that day and whether the route can be flown using a course with tailwinds rather than headwinds. By harnessing nature directly and indirectly, humans have been able to explore and exploit the Earth's resources.
This article discusses the history of transportation. Coverage of the major modern means of transport is limited to mechanically powered vehicles; discussion of human-powered vehicles, such as the bicycle or canoe, as well as recreational, sporting, or pleasure craft, may be found in entries on those subjects.
Only civil and commercial vehicles are included here; for a discussion of warships, military aircraft, and similar vehicles, see tank, naval ship, submarine, and military aircraft. For full treatment of the design and operation of power plants used in transportation vehicles (such as batteries and various types of engines), see internal-combustion engine, diesel engine, jet engine, electric motor, and battery. Rocketry is discussed in space exploration. Civil engineering projects used in transportation are covered in road and highway and other articles on public works: bridge; canal and inland waterway; harbours and sea works; and tunnel and underground excavation. For a discussion of the place of transportation history in a broader context.
Primitive transportation must at a very early time have focused on the use of streams as a supplement to simple human locomotion. In ancient Egypt the quantities of sandstone necessary to build the pyramids could be accumulated only through the use of barge transport on the Nile. Even more striking was the role of river transportation to bring the stronger and more durable granite from a quarry at Aswan in Upper Egypt to be erected as single vast monoliths in Lower Egypt. In the 19th century, when these obelisks were removed to western Europe and North America, it was still true that only water transportation could accomplish the vast job of moving them. (See shipping.)
Because mass movements of goods and people relied on water transportation, the earliest cities, with only minor exceptions, were located on rivers. From those continents where history of nucleated settlement is recorded, particularly the Americas, it may be argued that the initial geographic pattern was potamic, with lines of settlement ranged along rivers approachable from the coast.
The differences among cultures based on the presence or absence of draft animals on land and primitive boats on the water were considerable; in a geographic band extending from Iceland and Norway in the north through the Shetlands, the British Isles, and Iberia, the European-based horse provided transport for people and for the carrying of goods. The Celts in particular became such skilled horsemen, notably with the creation of the harness, that they were more than a match for the Romans, who had to depend on their ability at building roads to forge an extensive empire.
In primitive transportation, vegetation also played an important role. The camel and its relatives were acclimatized to grasslands, steppes, and even true deserts. Grazing was provided in varying richness by all three vegetation areas, and each was open to a nomadic existence where dense forest was absent. In the desert regions of Arabia not only camels but also horses were found native. Natural highways; compact, readily available feed, in grasses and wild grains; and a concentration of primitive trade routes connecting some of the earliest areas of irrigation agriculture all made of this junction a knot of Asian-European-African contact. From the Isthmus of Suez, land routes and navigable narrow seas reached out to the edges of most of the known world. Thus, even under quite primitive transportation conditions there could come into existence towns based on distant rather than local trade. (See Arabia, history of.)
Among the earliest and most primitive forms of transportation was the use of narrow seas for navigation. In the absence of any well-developed system of celestial navigation, the employment of landfalls for geographic guidance was most likely, prohibiting long voyages out of sight of land. Also with the reliance on winds to carry a ship directly toward an objective, these narrow seas afforded intermediate stops in harbours of refuge. The world for successful travel encompassed the Baltic, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, the Bay of Bengal, the Strait of Malacca, and the South China Sea and East China Sea. Even in the more advanced travel of classical times, navigation depended heavily on rowed galley-style shipping, which required a nightly landfall for rest and recruitment. Only with the development of the sail could longer journeys be attempted.
Local aspects of mobility tended to play
a more important role in primitive transportation than in more advanced
stages of that activity. Innovation was often quite localized, and information
about advances in technology was slow in being disseminated. Contributing
further to this parochialism in transportation were differences in the
supplements to locomotion available at various places. Rivers supplied
the most common differential, particularly in the downstream flow of goods.
Similarly, seasonal shifts of wind encouraged the use of certain sailing
routes only at specific times of the year. Contrasts afforded by cultural
differences--in the handling of domestication; in the use of horses, camels,
elephants, and other beasts of burden; in the ability to make use of wagons
and other vehicles; and in saddles and harness and thus the application
of tractive effort to various tasks--were all markedly regional in nature.
Because solutions to transport problems dealt mainly with the case in hand
rather than with the general problem, the chance for different solutions
was enhanced. In a climate of local and single-instance solutions there
would be a richly varied array of potential innovations, but many years,
even centuries, might pass before knowledge of practice spread. Eventually
the world came to know of the Mediterranean galley, the Viking ship, the
Chinese junk, and still other boats; however, it took centuries for that
knowledge to be either comprehensive or geographically broad.
In putting the cart to use the critical question was how to attach the vehicle to a draft animal. Oxen and zebu cattle were among the earliest draft animals used, and a yoke was attached to their horns. Subsequently a neck yoke took its place as asses, mules, and horses were made to draw vehicles. To harness them, either two animals were put under a yoke attached to the cart by a single pole or a single animal was put between shafts hitched to the cart. Research has shown that the one-pole yoked pair of animals was generally used south of a line which began at the Baltic Sea, trended eastward across southern Russia to the Caspian Sea, and followed the Altai Mountains to the southern Chinese frontier; north of that line a single animal between shafts was employed, a distinction already in evidence by 1000 BC.
Vegetation also played a role: in those
parts of Eurasia where trees and stout brush were found, residents were
slow to take up carts because paths were likely to be either absent or
at best too narrow to permit their passage. A person mounted on horseback
might use a narrow path but not a draft animal drawing a cart. Thus it
was in the open grassland steppes and deserts that wheeled vehicles first
came into use.
Areas in the Middle East and along the Mediterranean Sea (Mesopotamia, Syria, and Turkey), already deforested in classical times, were the typical locale for chariot warfare, which might involve up to several thousand charioteers in important battles. Early chariots featured a dashboard where the rider secured a handhold to keep himself from being pitched off the springless vehicle. The dashboard became increasingly horizontal, perhaps anticipating a four-wheel vehicle closer in form to a wagon. The spoked wheel allowed the war chariot to be much lighter and thereby capable of being drawn by mules rather than oxen and ultimately by the much fleeter horse. The spoked wheel was introduced in the 2nd millennium BC, after which time the horse chariot was developed. In that undertaking, however, a new problem arose. Earlier chariots had been yoked to the ox at the withers, but such a yoke did not rest securely on a horse. Instead a breastband was introduced, but it had a tendency to choke the horse and greatly reduce the power transferred to the chariot. Only many centuries later, in the Middle Ages, was harnessing improved to the point where the full power of the horse was made available to gain either greater speed or a stronger pull.
The development of earlier chariots was most strongly associated with Ur and southern Mesopotamia, as well as with the nomadic steppe dwellers, but further advances were made by the Hittites and Assyrians. As bronze spokes were more commonly used (to enhance speed), the necessity for better roads increased. For military purposes, road builders used bronze pickaxes to cut into the side of a steep hill slope in the 2nd millennium BC in Assyria. By 600 BC Assyrian military domination, which had relied upon swift chariots and understanding of tactics, was over. The Babylonians and the Urartians (living in what is now Armenia) developed new forms of chariots. Somewhat later the Persians created a four-poled chariot drawn by eight horses that became a weapon of terror; it incorporated a mower with blades attached to the rotating wheels that literally slashed to shreds the opposing infantry. (See Iran.)
No doubt there were civilian uses of these vehicles, but relatively little evidence remains. It was the military and religious (to transport statues of gods) uses of chariots that assured the creation of pictorial representations. It is known, however, that Alexander the Great employed a considerable number of freight wagons on his campaigns.
The chariot was introduced in Egypt from Syria during the period 1670-1570 BC. Quickly the pharaohs adopted the vehicle, first to defend themselves against similarly equipped forces but soon thereafter as "showpieces" displaying physical evidence of Egypt's might. Once well established in Syria, Armenia, Anatolia, and Egypt, the war chariot spread farther into the Sahara, and finally across the Aegean into Greece and thence into the Roman world. There it played a significant role in the conquest that ultimately shaped the Roman Empire, the continued success of which was firmly established on a carefully planned and assiduously executed system of roads and the vehicles that circulated thereon.
The chariot was capable of speeds that could assure relatively quick communication if a firm and reasonably sloping surface could be had. The Romans accomplished such construction by devising a drained sub-base to be paved with fairly tight-fitting flat rocks. Few of these roads were wide enough to allow wagons to pass each other. In fact, the pavements were rather narrow for the passage of a single wagon; only chariots fitted comfortably.
Another reason the use of roads was strongly oriented toward the movement of people was that the Romans were not particularly successful in operating wagons or carts for the handling of freight. In common with other southern Eurasian cultures, the Romans kept oxen and knew how to employ their strength to draw loads using the horn and then the withers yoke. But they made no technical improvements on two-wheel and four-wheel carts. The wheels were rigidly fixed to the axle, forcing left and right wheels to revolve together and at the same speed but over different distances. Turning from a straight course thus forced one side to move farther than the other, dragging the wheels on one side while introducing considerable frictional resistance on the other. Furthermore, the axles were rigidly fixed to the cart's frame so any turning motion forced the cart to be dragged into a turn rather than turning into it by steering the direction of the wheels. Only the Celts had by Roman times discovered the efficiency of the pivoting front axle (see photograph), as well as a better harness to attach the horse to the cart.
The use of the cursus publicus was rigidly constrained by regulations on the size and capacity of its vehicles, who might ride on them and for what purposes, who must maintain a vehicle that might be employed in this quasi-public service, and other matters. Because construction and maintenance of roads was costly, they were carefully shielded against overuse, with light maximum loads for various kinds of vehicles. As the Roman Empire lost its vitality, the use of the cursus publicus became subject to favouritism and misuse. With the collapse of the empire the truly exceptional qualities of that system disappeared and did not emerge again until modern times.
One notable exception to the decline in transportation technology was advancement in the harnessing of draft horses. Shafts were added to allow the horse to use its chest to pull the wagon. This was accomplished by adding a breastband, which captured most of the potential tractive effort. In those applications where shafts could not be used, a specialized horse collar was devised. Adding significantly to these changes was the widespread application of the pivoting front axle, already known for some centuries among the Celts and the Chinese.
During the early Middle Ages heavy wagons of the sort known for centuries were still in use, though with improved harnessing that allowed for the replacement of two horses by a single animal. Shafts were more often used, and the distances covered could be increased to 15-20 miles a day. The higher state of Celtic carriage building and driving meant that in that period, and in Carolingian and later times, significant advances in transportation technology became possible. Another group, the Hungarians who moved into the former Roman Pannonia in the 9th century, also possessed high competence in the use of wheeled vehicles. Thus, at the onset of the high Middle Ages Europe was poised for considerable transport advances. At the beginning of that era Europe was not notably advanced in transportation, sharing with China about the same stage of development. By the end of the Middle Ages there is no question that Europe had forged well ahead in its technology to become the centre for transportation developments until the end of the 18th century, when North America began to gain an equal role. (See Hungary.)
Several factors contributed to that medieval improvement, perhaps most importantly the onset of the Crusades. In 1095 Pope Urban II called for the recapture of the Holy Land from the Muslims; the ensuing crusades lasted for more than 100 years. The knights and others accompanying them learned much about the geography and technology of the lands they visited, and they brought back to western Europe knowledge of central and eastern European vehicles and those used by the Muslims. The Venetians, who transported the crusaders to the east, diverted the flow to Constantinople, where the Fourth Crusade resulted mainly in securing a trading enclave for the Venetians and a considerable growth in Venice's "Empire of the Sea," which continued to promote trade in the Mediterranean until Napoleon extinguished the state at the end of the 18th century. Trade advanced by the Crusades was assured by the degree to which Westerners adopted eastern practices. The siege castle was introduced to France, for example, leading to a considerable transformation in the political geography of the West. The size of states began to reverse from the very parochial standard that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. Although it took several centuries before the nation-state (in France and England) arrived as the first real successors to the Roman system of administration, the stagnant world of the "Dark Ages" had run its course. (See Venice, international trade.)
Another significant craving for mobility was also an outgrowth of medieval religion. Numerous Christians wished to visit places associated with the life of Christ or the early martyrs. These visits were undertaken first by those in search of physical or spiritual succour and later for grants of indulgence in remission of sins. Subsequently pilgrimage resorts were associated with the sites of purported miracles. (See pilgrimage.)
These pilgrimages had several important effects on transportation. Because these journeys occurred outside the competition of trade, free of military and political origin, and within a context of good and pious works, there was much to encourage their undertaking. Church orders were established to seek at first limited improvements in bridge building, road construction in mountain passes, and other forms of construction to facilitate this religious travel. From the technical experience gained sprang the reappearance of an informed approach to road building and the earliest glimmerings of civil engineering as distinct from military engineering. As the movement of pilgrims increased, larger wagons and carts carried the groups, and new religious foundations provided shelter and food on the road. Any organized practices to aid travel in the long run contributed to the effort to improve wheeled vehicles. By the close of the Middle Ages rich and powerful travelers had quite elaborate carriages that provided more comfort on the emerging system of national highways. (See religious order.)
The Roman Catholic church had always had an interest in the flow of tithes to sees and, ultimately, to Rome. Within the church powerful religious orders controlled networks of monasteries in a number of countries, from which tithes were drawn and the enlargement of trade was encouraged. Two other sources of economic power similarly sought to encourage trade: the Hanseatic League, in the Baltic and North Sea areas between the 12th and the 17th centuries (though waning in economic power by the end of the 16th century), and the Venetian empire, serving the same function in the Mediterranean.
Once these powerful institutions were in place the growth of trade was rapid. Throughout the Middle Ages increased mobility had come via navigable water. Nevertheless, any increase in the transport of goods and passengers coincident upon quickened trade was felt on land as well. Wagons collected products of the land and forests for shipment from river ports and thus increased in size as trade expanded.
During the high Middle Ages there were a number of different wheeled vehicles in use in Europe, but because of the poor condition of the roads they could make no better speed than a sturdy walker could attain, some 18-20 miles a day. Carts with two wheels were most commonly used for smaller, lighter loads and four-wheeled wagons for heavier burdens, but there were considerable variations. Specialized vehicles for particular tasks lessened the cost of transport. In the Roman era the cost of a bulky commodity tended to double for every 100 miles it traveled, but by the 13th century the cost of the commodity increased by only about 30 percent for each 100 miles. With the rapid growth in the volume of shipment that accompanied the growth of towns in the high Middle Ages, handling of goods was made more efficient. The ordinary wagon was rough and uncomfortable for human transport, so there was a demand to improve the ride. Springs were not used because they were difficult to build, but straps were employed to suspend the passenger compartment and thus dampen the jolts that had characterized the rigidly built coach body (see photograph). Suspended compartments might lead to motion sickness but they seldom broke bones or severely bruised the passengers. With the improvements in suspended carriages and in road surfaces, riding in a vehicle became increasingly more comfortable. What remained to be accomplished was increased speed. (See suspension system.)
With technical improvements permitting the harnessing of more horses to a single coach, speeds were at least doubled because the more lightly taxed horses could trot or even gallop. In the 19th century coaches on main stage routes could operate at speeds of more than 10 miles per hour for long days, with frequent changes of teams at relay stations. (See stagecoach.)
Operators of stages saw practicality in improving the surface, alignment, and grades of roads to take advantage of the higher speeds available. Having at the close of the Middle Ages the largest national population, the most powerful army, and the most advanced economy, France was the first country to plan and execute a national system of roads to make best use of the improvements in harness and coaches. By the end of the Middle Ages there was a diverse and highly specialized choice of vehicles that supplied passenger as well as freight transport and anticipated common carrier transporters.
The Egyptian boats commonly featured sails as well as oars. Because they were confined to the Nile and depended on winds in a narrow channel, recourse to rowing was essential. This became true of most navigation when the Egyptians began to venture out onto the shallow waters of the Mediterranean and Red seas. Most early Nile boats had a single square sail as well as one level, or row, of oarsmen. Quickly, several levels came into use, as it was difficult to maneuver very elongated boats in the open sea. The later Roman two-level bireme and three-level trireme were most common, but sometimes more than a dozen banks of oars were used to propel the largest boats.
Navigation on the sea began among Egyptians as early as the 3rd millennium BC. Voyages to Crete were among the earliest, followed by voyages guided by landmark navigation to Phoenicia and, later, using the early canal that tied the Nile to the Red Sea, by trading journeys sailing down the eastern coast of Africa. According to the 5th-century-BC Greek historian Herodotus, the king of Egypt about 600 BC dispatched a fleet from a Red Sea port that returned to Egypt via the Mediterranean after a journey of more than two years. Cretan and Phoenician voyagers gave greater attention to the specialization of ships for trade.
The basic functions of the warship and cargo ship determined their design. Because fighting ships required speed, adequate space for substantial numbers of fighting men, and the ability to maneuver at any time in any direction, long, narrow rowed ships became the standard for naval warfare. In contrast, because trading ships sought to carry as much tonnage of goods as possible with as small a crew as practicable, the trading vessel became as round a ship as might navigate with facility (see photograph). The trading vessel required increased freeboard (height between the waterline and upper deck level), as the swell in the larger seas could fairly easily swamp the low-sided galleys propelled by oarsmen. As rowed galleys became higher-sided and featured additional banks of oarsmen, it was discovered that the height of ships caused new problems. Long oars were awkward and quickly lost the force of their sweep. Thus, once kings and traders began to perceive the need for specialized ships, ship design became an important undertaking. (See naval ship, cargo ship, shipping.)
As was true of early wheeled vehicles,
ship design also showed strong geographic orientation. Julius Caesar, for
one, quickly perceived the distinctive, and in some ways superior, qualities
of the ships of northern Europe. In the conquest of Britain and in their
encounter with the Batavian area in Holland, Romans became aware of the
northern European boat. It was generally of clinker construction (that
is, with a hull built of overlapping timbers) and identical at either end.
In the Mediterranean, ship design favoured carvel-built (that is, built
of planks joined along their lengths to form a smooth surface) vessels
that differed at the bow and stern (the forward and rear ends, respectively).
In the early centuries, both Mediterranean and northern boats were commonly
rowed, but the cyclonic storms found year-round in the Baltic and North
Sea latitudes encouraged the use of sails. Because the sailing techniques
of these early centuries depended heavily on sailing with a following wind
(i.e., from behind), the frequent shifts in wind direction in the
north permitted, after only relatively short waits, navigation in most
compass directions. In the persistent summer high-pressure systems of the
Mediterranean the long waits for a change of wind direction discouraged
sailing. It was also more economical to carry goods by ship in the north.
With a less absolute dependence on rowing, the double-ended clinker boat
could be built with a greater freeboard than was possible in the rowed
galleys of the Mediterranean. When European sailors began to look with
increasing curiosity at the seemingly boundless Atlantic Ocean, greater
freeboard made oceanic navigation more practicable.
In the earlier centuries of sailing ships the dominant rig was the square sail, which features a canvas suspended on a boom, held aloft by the mast, and hung across the longitudinal axis of the ship. To utilize the shifting relationship between the desired course of the ship and the present wind direction, the square sail must be twisted on the mast to present an edge to the wind. Among other things this meant that most ships had to have clear decks amidships to permit the shifting of the sail and its boom; most of the deck space was thus monopolized by a single swinging sail. Large sails also required a sizable gang of men to raise and lower the sail (and, when reef ports were introduced, to reef the sail, that is, to reduce its area by gathering up the sail at the reef points).
By 1200 the standard sailing ship in the Mediterranean was two-masted, with the foremast larger and hung with a sail new to ordinary navigation at sea. This was the lateen sail, earlier known to the Egyptians and sailors of the eastern Mediterranean. The lateen sail is triangular in shape and is fixed to a long yard mounted at its middle to the top of the mast. The combination of sails tended to change over the years, though the second mast often carried a square sail.
One broad classification of sails, which included the lateen, was termed "fore-and-aft" sails--that is, those capable of taking the wind on either their front or back surfaces. Such sails are hung along the longitudinal axis of the ship. By tacking to starboard (the right side) the ship would use the wind from one quarter. Tacking to port (the left side) would use a wind coming from the opposite quarter to attain the same objective. (See fore-and-aft sail.)
In rigging the Chinese junk was far ahead
of Western ships, with sails made of narrow panels, each tied to a sheet
(line) at each end so that the force of the wind could be taken in many
lines rather than on the mast alone; also, the sail could be hauled about
to permit the ship to sail somewhat into the wind. By the 15th century
junks had developed into the largest, strongest, and most seaworthy ships
in the world. Not until about the 19th century did Western ships catch
up in performance.
The story of European navigation and shipbuilding is in large part one of interaction between technical developments in the two narrow boundary seas. It is thought that sailors from Bayonne in southwestern France introduced the Mediterranean carrack (a large three-masted, carvel-build ship using both square and lateen sails) to northern Europe and in turn introduced the double-ended clinker ship of the north to the Mediterranean. This crossfertilization took place in the 14th century, a time of considerable change in navigation in the Atlantic-facing regions of France, Spain, and Portugal.
Changes in shipbuilding during the Middle Ages were gradual. Among northern ships the double-ended structure began to disappear when sailing gained dominance over rowing. To make best use of sails meant moving away from steering oars to a rudder, first attached to the side of the boat and then, after a straight stern post was adopted, firmly attached to that stern. By 1252 the Port Books of Damme in Flanders distinguished ships with rudders on the side from those with stern rudders.
The arts of navigation were improving at the same time. The compass was devised at the beginning of the 14th century, but it took time to understand how to use it effectively in a world with variable magnetic declinations. It was only about the year 1400 that the lodestone began to be used in navigation in any consistent manner.
"Full-rigged" ships were introduced because trade was becoming larger in scale, more frequent in occurrence, and more distant in destination. There was no way to enlarge the propulsive force of ships save by increasing the area of sail. To pack more square yards of canvas on a hull required multiple masts and lofting more and larger sails on each mast. As multiple masts were added, the hull was elongated; keels were often two and a half times as long as the ship's beam (width). At the beginning of the 15th century large ships were of about 300 tons; by 1425 they were approximately 720 tons.
In the 16th century the full-rigged ship was initially a carrack, a Mediterranean three-master perhaps introduced from Genoa to England. The trade between the Mediterranean and England was carried on at Southampton largely by these carracks. As the years passed the galleon became the most distinctive vessel. This was most commonly a Spanish ship riding high out of the water. Although the name suggested a large galley, galleons probably never carried oars and were likely to be four-masted.
In earlier centuries ships were often merchantmen sufficiently armed to defend themselves against pirates, privateersmen, and the depredations of an active enemy. In peacetime a ship would go about its business as a nation's trader, but it was able to become a fighting vessel if necessary. When the size of guns and the numbers involved grew to create an offensive capability, there remained little space to carry the volume of goods required by a trader. What resulted was the convoy, under which merchantmen would be protected by specialized naval ships. The distinction between warship and trading ship might have remained quite abstract had not the theory and tactics of warfare changed. Most medieval wars were either dynastic or religious, and armies and navies were small by modern standards. But beginning with the warfare between the Dutch and the English in the 17th century, conflict was the result of competition in trade rather than in sovereignty and faith. Thus, the major trading nations came to dominate ship design and construction. (See cargo ship, war.)
In the north, vessels were commonly three-masted by the 16th century. These were the ships that Cabot used to reach Newfoundland and Drake, Frobisher, and Raleigh sailed over the world's oceans. Raleigh wrote that the Dutch ships of the period were so easy to sail that a crew one-third the size used in English craft could operate them. Efforts were made to accomplish technical improvements on English copies of Venetian and Genoese traders. These ultimately resulted in the East Indiaman of the 17th century. This large and costly ship was intended to be England's entry in a fierce competition with the Dutch for the trade of India and the Spice Islands. (See Holland.)
When Europeans began to undertake trading voyages to the East, they encountered an ancient and economically well-developed world. In establishing a sea link with the East, European merchants could hope to get under way quickly using the producers already resident there and the goods in established production. What resulted were European "factories," settlements for trade established on coasts at places such as Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta. Some European merchants settled there, but there was no large-scale migration; production of the goods followed established procedures and remained in Asian hands. In contrast, in the New World of America and Australia there was so little existing production of trading goods that the establishment of ties required not only the pioneering of the trading route but also the founding of a colony to create new production. Shipping was critical in each of these relationships but became larger and more continuous in the case of the colonies. (See India, history of, Australia, history of.)
Competition was fierce among the Europeans for the riches of the overseas trade. As the voyages were frequently undertaken by trading consortia from within the chartered company, a great deal is known about the profits of individual round-trips. Standard profits were 100 percent or more. In the accumulation of capital, by countries and by individuals, this mercantile activity was of the utmost importance. Holland's "Golden Century" was the 17th, and England's overtaking of France as Europe's seat of industry also occurred then. The English realized quickly that their merchant ships had to carry enough cannon and other firepower to defend their factories at Bombay and elsewhere and to ward off pirates and privateers on the long voyage to and from the East. In India the English contested trading concessions particularly with France and Portugal; in the East Indian archipelago the contest was with the Dutch and the Portuguese; and in China it was with virtually all maritime powers in northern and western Europe. The result was that the East India merchantmen were very large ships, full-rigged and multimasted, and capable of sailing great distances without making a port.
To secure the strength and competence of these great merchant ships, advances in shipbuilding were necessary. The money was there: profits of 218 percent were recorded over five years, and even 50 percent profit could be earned in just 20 months. Among those undertaking more scientific construction was the British shipbuilder Phineas Pett (1570-1647). Much fine shipbuilding emerged, including ships of the English East India Company, but the company began to freeze its designs too early, and its operating practices were a combination of haughty arrogance and lordly corruption. Captains were appointed who then let out the functioning command to the highest bidder. Education was thin, treatment of sailors despicable, and reverence for established practice defeated the lessons of experience. The merchantmen had to carry large crews to have available the numbers to make them secure against attack. But lost in this effort for security was the operating efficiency that a sound mercantile marine should seek.
It was left more to other maritime markets to develop improvements in merchantmen after the early 17th century. The Dutch competitors of England were able to build and operate merchant ships more cheaply. In the 16th century the sailing ship in general service was the Dutch fluyt, which made Holland the great maritime power of the 17th century. A long, relatively narrow ship designed to carry as much cargo as possible, the fluyt featured three masts and a large hold beneath a single deck. The main and fore masts carried two or more square sails and the third mast a lateen sail. Only at the conclusion of the century, when the Dutch had been decisively defeated in the Anglo-Dutch trading wars, did England finally succeed to the role of leading merchant marine power in the world.
That role was gained in part because Oliver Cromwell restricted English trade to transport in English craft. In 1651 laws were initiated by Cromwell to deal with the low level of maritime development in England. The so-called Navigation Act sought to overcome conditions that had originated in the late Middle Ages when the Hanseatic League, dominating trade in the Baltic and northern Europe, carried most of Britain's foreign seaborne trade. When the Hansa declined in power in the 16th century the Dutch, just then beginning to gain independence from Spain politically and from Portugal in trade, gained a major part of the English carrying trade. The Navigation Act initiated a rapid change in that pattern. After the restoration of the Stuart monarchy, English shipping nearly doubled in tonnage between 1666 and 1688. By the beginning of the 18th century Britain had become the greatest maritime power and possessed the largest merchant marine until it lost that distinction to the Americans in the mid-19th century. (See Protectorate.)
A further factor in the growth of national merchant marines was the increasing enforcement of the law of cabotage in the operations of the mercantile powers of northern and western Europe with respect to their rapidly expanding colonial empires. Cabotage was a legal principle first enunciated in the 16th century by the French. Navigation between ports on their coasts was restricted to French ships; this principle was later extended to apply to navigation between a metropolitan country and its overseas colonies. This constituted a restriction of many of the world's trade routes to a single colonial power. It became clear that a power seeking an advantage in shipping would be amenable to supporting the cost and fighting that gaining such colonies might require.
Geographic knowledge gained economic and political value in these conditions. It was in the 17th century that the Dutch, the French, and the English began trying to fill out the map of the known oceans. Islands and coastlines were added to sailing charts almost on an annual basis. By the mid-18th century all the world's shorelines not bound by sea ice, with fairly minor exceptions, were charted. Only Antarctica remained hidden until the mid-19th century.
To understand why this was so, it should be appreciated that Britain's North American colonies were vital to its merchant marine, for they formed a major part of its trading empire as customers for British goods. Under mercantilist economic doctrine, colonies were intended as a source of raw materials and as a market for manufactured goods produced in the metropolitan country. Maine, New Hampshire, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick were rich in naval stores and timber for inexpensive hulls, masts, and spars. And the Navigation Act as amended also granted to the merchant fleets in British North America a monopoly on the transport of goods and passengers within the British Empire. When the United States became independent in 1783 the former colonies were rigidly denied access to the British metropolitan and colonial markets. The substantial trade that had tied Boston to Newfoundland and the British West Indies was severed, leaving the Americans to find an alternative trading system as quickly as possible. New England and the Middle Atlantic states, where there were significant fleets of sailing ships, turned to the Atlantic and Mediterranean islands as well as to Mauritius and to China. In this way, the merchants in the American ports created direct competition to the British East India Company. In doing so, they needed ships that could sail in the Far Eastern trade without the protection of the British navy and that could operate more efficiently and economically than those of the East India Company. (See mercantilism.)
The British East Indiamen were extravagantly expensive to build. Contracts for their construction were awarded by custom and graft. Captains were appointed by patronage rather than education or professional qualifications. And the journeys to Canton, China, from England in East Indiamen were slow in a trade where fast passages were of value, for example, in guarding the quality of the tea being carried. American merchants were fully aware of these failings of the company and its ships. They set out to gain a foothold in the trade through innovations, particularly after the East India Company's monopoly in Britain's China trade was abolished in 1833.
British shipping remained rather stagnant after the development of the East Indiaman in the 17th century. The Dutch became the innovators in the second half of the 17th century and maintained that status until the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars. The British East India Company was paying £40 a ton for ships whereas other owners paid only £25. In the 19th century American shipbuilders studied basic principles of sail propulsion and built excellent ships more cheaply. They also studied how to staff and operate them economically. The Americans began to see that even larger ships (that is, longer in relation to breadth) could carry more sail and thereby gain speed and the ability to sail well under more types of winds. For perishable cargoes speed meant that these fast ships reached British and European markets before those of their competitors and with a product in better condition.
In the 25 years after 1815 American ships
changed in weight from 500 to 1,200 tons and in configuration from a hull
with a length 4 times the beam to one with a ratio of 5
The culmination of these American innovations
was the creation of a hull intended primarily for speed, which came with
the clipper ships. Clippers were long, graceful three-masted ships with
projecting bows and exceptionally large spreads of sail. The first of these,
the Rainbow, was built in New York in 1845. It was followed by a
number of ships built there and in East Boston particularly intended for
the China-England tea trade, which was opened to all merchant marines by
the late 1840s. Subsequently the Witch of the Wave (an American
clipper) sailed from Canton to Deal in England in 1852 in just 90 days.
Similar feats of sailing were accomplished in Atlantic crossings. In 1854
the Lightning sailed 436 miles in a day, at an average speed of
18
By 1840, however, it was clear that the last glorious days of the sailing ship were at hand. Pure sailing ships were in active use for another generation, while the earliest steamships were being launched. But by 1875 the pure sailer was disappearing, and by the turn of the 20th century the last masts on passenger ships had been removed.
The earliest engines were highly inefficient. They were used to pump water from mines or to refill reservoirs and later to wind cables in elevators within mines. The Boulton and Watt steam engines developed in England in the latter half of the 18th century could produce only a modest output in relation to their fuel consumption. Improvements that increased steam pressures above a single atmosphere allowed the size and weight of engines to be reduced so they might be installed in vehicles.
Like a number of machines, the steam engine was not the invention of a single person in a single place, but James Watt, a builder of scientific instruments at the University of Glasgow, was most directly responsible for a successful design. Though it improved incrementally over a period of a generation, the steam engine was fully operable by 1788. Watt entered into a partnership in Birmingham in 1775 with the manufacturer Matthew Boulton, at whose Soho Works the firm constructed a total of 496 steam engines, many of which were used, as the earlier steam engines of the British engineer Thomas Newcomen had been, to pump water from mines or to operate waterworks. It was only at the end of Boulton and Watt's partnership that the machinery was applied to transport vehicles.
The key to that introduction was in the creation of a more efficient steam engine. Early engines were powered by steam at normal sea-level atmospheric pressure (approximately 14.7 pounds per square inch), which required very large cylinders. The massive engines were thus essentially stationary in placement. Any attempt to make the engine itself mobile faced this problem. The French military engineer Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot had made one of the first applications of higher-pressure steam when in 1769 he developed a tricycle (with two cylinders) at first intended as a tractor for moving cannon; this is commonly thought of as the first automobile. When two proponents of steam locomotion--Richard Trevithick in Wales and Oliver Evans in Delaware and Pennsylvania--conducted the earliest successful experiments with steam locomotives in the first decade of the 19th century, they both sought to use high-pressure steam. But most of the steam engines constructed and put to use in the last quarter of the 18th century were of Boulton and Watt manufacture and were large and rather weak. (See high-pressure steam engine.)
The ideal venue for steamboats seemed to be the rivers of the eastern United States. Colonial transportation had mainly taken place by water, either on the surfaces of coastal bays and sounds or on fairly broad rivers as far upstream as the lowest falls or rapids. Up to the beginning of the 19th century a system of coastal and inland navigation could care for most of the United States' transportation needs. If a successful steamboat could be developed, the market for its use was to be found in the young, rapidly industrializing country.
In the eastern United States James Rumsey, the operator of an inn at the Bath Springs spa in Virginia (later West Virginia), sought to interest George Washington in a model steamboat he had designed. On the basis of Washington's support, Virginia and Maryland awarded Rumsey a monopoly of steam navigation in their territories.
At the same time, another American, John Fitch, a former clockmaker from Connecticut, began experimenting with his vision of a steamboat. After much difficulty in securing financial backers and in finding a steam engine in America, Fitch built a boat that was given a successful trial in 1787. By the summer of 1788 Fitch and his partner, Henry Voight, had made repeated trips on the Delaware River as far as Burlington, 20 miles above Philadelphia, the longest passage then accomplished by a steamboat.
British inventors were active in this same
period. Both Rumsey and Fitch ultimately sought to advance their steamboats
by going to England, and Robert Fulton spent more than a decade in France
and Britain promoting first his submarine and later his steamboat. In 1788
William Symington, son of a millwright in the north of England, began experimenting
with a steamboat that was operated at five miles per hour, faster than
any previous trials had accomplished. He later claimed speeds of six and
a half and seven miles per hour, but his steam engine was thought too weak
to serve, and for the time his efforts were not rewarded. In 1801 Symington
was hired by Lord Dundas, a governor of the Forth and Clyde Canal, to build
a steam tug; the Charlotte Dundas was tried out on that canal in
1802. It proved successful in pulling two 70-ton barges the 19
Fulton returned to the United States in December 1806 to develop a successful steamboat with his partner Robert Livingston. A monopoly on steamboating in New York state had been previously granted to Livingston, a wealthy Hudson Valley landowner and American minister to France. On Aug. 17, 1807, what was then called simply the "North River Steamboat" steamed northward on the Hudson from the state prison. After spending the night at Livingston's estate of Clermont (whose name has ever since erroneously been applied to the boat itself) the "North River Steamboat" reached Albany eight hours later after a run at an average speed of five miles per hour (against the flow of the Hudson River). This was a journey of such length and relative mechanical success that there can be no reasonable question it was the first unqualifiedly successful steamboat trial. Commercial service began immediately, and the boat made one and a half round-trips between New York City and Albany each week. Many improvements were required in order to establish scheduled service, but from the time of this trial forward Fulton and Livingston provided uninterrupted service, added steamboats, spread routes to other rivers and sounds, and finally, in 1811, attempted to establish steamboat service on the Mississippi River.
The trial on the Mississippi was far from a success but not because of the steamboat itself. Fulton, Livingston, and their associate Nicholas Roosevelt had a copy of their Hudson River boats built in Pittsburgh as the New Orleans. In September 1811 it set sail down the Ohio River, making an easy voyage as far as Louisville, but as a deep-draft estuarine boat it had to wait there for the flow of water to rise somewhat. Finally, drawing no more than five inches less than the depth of the channel, the New Orleans headed downriver. In an improbable coincidence, the steamboat came to rest in a pool below the Falls of the Ohio just before the first shock was felt of the New Madrid earthquake, the most severe temblor ever recorded in the United States. The earthquake threw water out of the Ohio and then the Mississippi, filling the floodplain of those rivers, changing their channels significantly, and choking those channels with uprooted trees and debris. When the New Orleans finally reached its destination it was not sent northward again on the service for which it had been built. Steamboats used on the deeper and wider sounds and estuaries of the northeastern United States were found to be unsuited to inland streams, however wide. Eventually boats drawing no more than 9-12 inches of water proved to be successful in navigating the Missouri River westward into Montana and the Red River into the South; this pattern of steamboating spread throughout much of interior America, as well as the interior of Australia, Africa, and Asia.
The first commercial steam navigation outside the United States began in 1812 when Henry Bell, the proprietor of the Helensburg Baths located on the Clyde below Glasgow, added a steamboat, the Comet, to carry his customers from the city. It was followed soon after by others steaming to the western Highlands and to other sea lochs. One of these, the Margery, though built on the Clyde in 1814, was sent to operate on the Thames the next year; but so much difficulty was encountered from established watermen's rights on that stream that the boat was transferred in 1816 to French ownership and renamed the Elise. It competed with Jouffroy's Charles-Philippe in service on the Seine. Because of the generally more stormy nature of Europe's narrow seas these steaming packets were generally small and cramped but capable of crossing waters difficult for the American river steamboats to navigate.
The early 19th-century steamboat experiments were aimed primarily at building and operating passenger ships. Endowed with the Mississippi-Ohio-Missouri river system, the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes system, the Columbia and its tributaries, and the Colorado system, North America had virtually ideal conditions for the creation of an extensive, integrated network of inland navigation by shallow-draft steamboats. There was a strong geographic expansion under way in Canada and the United States that would be more quickly advanced by steamboats than by land transportation. North American transportation before the late 1850s was by river in most regions. This was not a unique situation: most areas subject to 19th-century colonization by Europeans--such as Siberia, South America, Africa, India, and Australia--had a heavy dependence on river transport.
There were some mechanical improvements that encouraged this use of steamboats. Higher-pressure steam made craft more efficient, as did double- and triple-expansion engines. Improved hulls were designed. It was, however, the general level of settlement and economic productivity that tended to bring steamboat use to an end in inland transport. A demand for shipments of coal finally made the railroad the most economical form of transport and removed steamboats from many streams.
Oceanic steam navigation was initiated by an American coastal packet first intended entirely for sails but refitted during construction with an auxiliary engine. Built in the port of New York for the Savannah Steam Ship Company in 1818, the Savannah was 98.5 feet long with a 25.8-foot beam, a depth of 14.2 feet, and a displacement of 320 tons. Owing to a depression in trade, the owners sold the boat in Europe where economically constructed American ships were the least expensive on the market and were widely seen as the most advanced in design. Unable to secure either passengers or cargo, the Savannah became the first ship to employ steam in crossing an ocean. At 5:00 in the morning on May 24, 1819, it set sail from Savannah. After taking on coal at Kinsale in Ireland, it reached Liverpool on July 20, after 27 days and 11 hours; the engine was used to power the paddle wheels for 85 hours. Subsequently the voyage continued to Stockholm and St. Petersburg, but at neither place was a buyer found; it thus returned to Savannah, under sail because coal was so costly, using steam only to navigate the lower river to reach the dock at Savannah itself.
The next voyage across the Atlantic under steam power was made by a Canadian ship, the Royal William, which was built as a steamer with only minor auxiliary sails, to be used in the navigation of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The owners, among them the Quaker merchant Samuel Cunard, of Halifax, N.S., decided to sell the ship in England. The voyage from Quebec to the Isle of Wight took 17 days. Soon thereafter, the Royal William was sold to the Spanish government. The ability to navigate the North Atlantic was demonstrated by this voyage, but the inability to carry any load beyond fuel still left the Atlantic challenge unmet.
English inventors were active, and by the 1830s the manufacture and use of steam road carriages was flourishing. James Watt's foreman, William Murdock, ran a model steam carriage on the roads of Cornwall in 1784, and Robert Fourness showed a working three-cylinder tractor in 1788. Watt was opposed to the use of steam engines for such purposes; his low-pressure steam engine would have been too bulky for road use in any case, and all the British efforts in steam derived from the earlier researches of Thomas Savery and Thomas Newcomen. (See United Kingdom.)
Richard Trevithick developed Murdock's ideas, and at least one of his carriages, with driving wheels 10 feet in diameter, ran in London. Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, the first commercially successful steam carriage builder, based his design upon an unusually efficient boiler. He was not, however, convinced that smooth wheels could grip a roadway, and so he arranged propulsion on his first vehicle by iron legs digging into the road surface. His second vehicle weighed only 3,000 pounds and was said to be capable of carrying six persons. He made trips as long as 84 miles in a running time of 9 hours 30 minutes and once recorded a speed of 17 miles per hour.
Gurney equipment was used on a regularly scheduled Gloucester-Cheltenham service of four round-trips daily that at times did the nine miles in 45 minutes. Between February 27 and June 22, 1831, steam coaches ran 4,000 miles on this route, carrying some 3,000 passengers. The equipment was noisy, smoky, destructive of roadways, and admittedly dangerous; hostility arose, and it was common for drivers to find the way blocked with heaps of stones or felled trees. Nevertheless, many passengers had been carried by steam carriage before the railways had accepted their first paying passenger.
The most successful era of the steam coaches in Britain was the 1830s. Ambitious routes were run, including one from London to Cambridge. But by 1840 it was clear that the steam carriages had little future. The decline of the steam carriage did not prevent continued effort in the field, and much attention was given to the steam tractor for use as a prime mover. Beginning about 1868 Britain was the scene of a vogue for light steam-powered personal carriages; if the popularity of these vehicles had not been legally hindered, it would certainly have resulted in widespread enthusiasm for motoring in the 1860s rather than in the 1890s. Some of the steamers could carry as few as two people and were capable of speeds of 20 miles per hour. The public climate remained unfriendly, however.
Light steam cars were being built in the
United States, France, Germany, and Denmark during the same period, and
it is possible to argue that the line from Cugnot's lumbering vehicle runs
unbroken to the 20th-century steam automobiles made as late as 1926. The
grip of the steam automobile on the American imagination has been strong
ever since the era of the Stanley brothers (one of whose "steamers" took
the world speed record at 127.66 miles per hour in 1906), and in the 1960s
it was estimated that there were still 7,000 steam cars in the United States,
about 1,000 of them in running order. (See Stanley, Francis Edgar.)
The breakthrough in personal transportation began with the development of a new type of machine and fuels different from the heavy weight and low efficiency of coal. The piston was retained, but instead of using the expansive power of steam the rapid combustion of petroleum fractions contained within the piston became the operative force.
By the mid-1800s Étienne Lenoir, a Belgian mechanic, had developed a crude two-stroke cycle internal-combustion engine that was fueled by coal gas. Rapid advances took place. The four-cycle engine was proposed by the French engineer Alphonse Beau de Rochas, and a French patent was issued for it in 1862. But only in Germany in 1878 was a successful internal-combustion engine constructed by Nikolaus Otto. At the same time a two-cycle engine was displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia by the American engineer George B. Brayton, who had designed it in 1872. (See Lenoir engine, four-stroke cycle, two-stroke cycle.)
As is frequently the case in modern technology
a number of inventors devised refinements, amplifications, and adaptations
of previous machines that produced the final successful mechanism. Although
Americans proved most adept at making practical use of the automobile,
they were not among the actual inventors of it: the Germans, Austrians,
and French earned that honour.
Benz ran his first car, a three-wheeler powered by a two-cycle, one-cylinder engine, early in 1885, and his first sale was made to a Parisian named Émile Rogers in 1887. Gradually, the soundness of his design and the quality and care that went into the material and the construction of his cars bore weight, and they sold well. By 1888 he was employing 50 workmen to build the tricycle car; in 1890 he began to make a four-wheeler. (See automotive industry.)
In 1872 Daimler became technical director of Otto's firm, then building stationary gasoline engines. During the next decade, important work was done on the four-stroke engine. Daimler brought in several brilliant researchers, among them Wilhelm Maybach, but in 1882 both Daimler and Maybach resigned because of Daimler's conviction that Otto did not understand the potential of the internal-combustion engine. They set up a shop in Bad Cannstatt and built an air-cooled, one-cylinder engine--the first high-speed internal-combustion engine that was designed to run at 900 revolutions per minute (rpm). (Benz's first tricycle engine had operated at only 250 rpm.) Daimler and Maybach built a second engine and mounted it on a wooden bicycle, which first ran on Nov. 10, 1885. The next year the first Daimler four-wheeled road vehicle was made: a carriage modified to be driven by a one-cylinder engine.
Daimler's 1889 car was a departure from previous practice. It was based on a framework of light tubing, it had the engine in the rear, its wheels were driven by belt, and it was steered by tiller. Remarkably, it had four speeds. This car had obvious commercial value, and in the following year the Daimler Motoren-Gesellschaft was founded. The British Daimler automobile was started as a manufactory licensed by the German company but later became quite independent of it. (To distinguish machines made by the two firms in the early years, the German cars are usually referred to as Cannstatt-Daimlers.) Products of the Daimler-Benz company (the two firms were merged in 1926) are sold under the name Mercedes-Benz. Oddly, Benz and Daimler never met. (See Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft.)
In France the giants were De Dion-Bouton,
Peugeot, and Renault (the last two are still in existence). The Italians
were later in the field: the Steffanini-Martina of 1896 is thought of as
the foundation of the industry in Italy, and Isotta-Fraschini was founded
about 1898. Giovanni Agnelli founded Fiat (Fabbrica Italiana Automobili
Torino) in 1899, saw it grow into one of the weightiest industrial complexes
in the world, and maintained personal control until his death in 1945.
Fabricators of lesser puissance but great repute were Lancia, Alfa Romeo,
Maserati, and Ferrari, for years the standard against which other Grand
Prix and Gran Turismo motorcars were judged.
The Daimler-Benz claim to the invention of the automobile was attacked in 1895 when U.S. patent 549,160 was granted to George B. Selden as inventor of the automobile. Selden had filed his application on May 8, 1879, although he had not at that time built an automobile. He was successful in an effort to keep the patent pending for 16 years.
Some authorities credit Charles E. and J. Frank Duryea with creating the first American gasoline-powered automobile, in 1892-93. The idea for the car apparently originated with Charles, and the machine was built by Frank. The Duryea consisted of a one-cylinder gasoline engine, with electrical ignition, installed in a secondhand carriage. It first ran on Sept. 21, 1893. Driving a later model, J. Frank Duryea won the first automobile race in America in which more than two cars competed, the Chicago Times-Herald Race from Chicago to Evanston, Ill., and return, in November 1895; the distance was 54.36 miles. Duryea cars remained on the market until 1917. Despite this, many historians are convinced that the Duryea was not the first U.S. internal-combustion automobile and that this distinction should be assigned to a gasoline-driven, single-cylinder car built in 1890 and run in 1891 by John William Lambert of Ohio City, Ohio. (See Duryea, J. Frank.)
Ransom Eli Olds, whose name survives in the Oldsmobile, was also active in gasoline-engine research in the 1890s, after initially being interested in steam; so were Alexander Winton and James Ward Packard. By 1898 there were more than 50 automobile companies in existence.
The three-horsepower, curved-dash Oldsmobile
was the first commercially successful American-made automobile: 425 of
them were sold in 1901 and 5,000 in 1904 (the model is still prized by
collectors), and the firm prospered. Its prosperity was noted by others,
and, from 1904 to 1908, 241 automobile-manufacturing firms went into business
in the United States. One of these was the Ford Motor Company, which was
organized as a corporation in June 1903 and sold its first car on the following
July 23; the company produced 1,700 cars during its first full year of
business.
In the 1890s cars were largely recreational vehicles for the wealthy. It was thought, particularly in Europe, that the motor car followed directly on the private carriage and called for a servant operator along the lines of the earlier coachman; in the case of automobiles, a chauffeur ("stoker") suggested the maintenance of some sort of heat engine. The result was that early automobiles were very expensive to buy and operate and were placed firmly in the realm of sport.
Most cars were essentially handmade from
parts that had only short production runs, so they were expensive to buy
and costly to repair. It was in the first decade of the 20th century that
beneficial changes came about, notably in the United States and at the
hands of Henry Ford. As a mechanic Ford had undertaken to build his own
car, using methods similar to those of his peers. In 1908, however, Ford
reorganized his company and his method of production. He decided to standardize
this car, producing only one or two models, painting almost all of them
black, and simplifying the parts so they were inexpensive and easy to install.
From 1908, when it was first produced, until 1927, 15 million Model T's,
or "Tin Lizzies," were produced. In 1913 the Model T accounted for 40 percent
of American production: by 1920 half the cars in the world were Model T's.
Ford had in early years said he wanted to make the Model T "the family
horse," which he succeeded in doing. By 1929 there were 26.7 million cars
registered in the United States, a swarm so great that the mileage of surfaced
roads overtook the rail mileage in 1915 and continued growing rapidly,
reaching 500,000 miles in 1925 and 1,000,000 by 1935.
The decade 1925-35 was notable not only for the appearance of many new small automobiles but also for the building of many ultralarge ones. The years from 1925 to 1942 are cited by collectors of automobiles as the classic years, a period that saw the rise of the luxurious fast motorcar to a peak it seemed unlikely to reach again.
The first name in this field was Rolls-Royce, founded in 1904. Most Rolls-Royce chassis are designed for limousine and large sedan bodies, but the firm once made a comparatively light car (called the Twenty), and it has throughout its history produced fast models in addition to its regular line--e.g., after World War II, the Continental, built under the Bentley Motors Ltd. label.
Other motorcars of this type included the Hispano-Suiza of Spain and France; the Bugatti, Delage, Delahaye, Hotchkiss, Talbot (Darracq), and Voisin of France; the Duesenberg, Cadillac, Packard, and Pierce-Arrow of the United States; the Horch, Maybach, and Mercedes-Benz of Germany; the Belgian Minerva; and the Italian Isotta-Fraschini. These were costly machines, priced roughly from $7,500 to $40,000; fast (90 to 130 miles per hour); as comfortable as the state of the art would allow; and limited in luxury only by the purse of the purchaser. The great custom coach builders of England who furnished bodies for Rolls-Royce machines, unruffled by the whims of their clients, were prepared to satisfy any request, whether for upholstery in matched ostrich hide with ivory buttons or for a dashboard in rosewood.
The most expensive standard automobile of which there exists convincing record was the Type 41 Bugatti, produced in the 1920s by Ettore Bugatti, an Italian of extraordinary gifts who built cars in France, most of them racing and sports types, from 1909 to 1939. The Type 41 Bugatti, also called La Royale, was cataloged at a chassis price of 500,000 francs, about $20,000. Only six of the cars were built. (See Bugatti, Ettore Arco Isidoro.)
The market collapse of 1929 ended the era
of the really luxurious motorcar. After World War II even Rolls-Royce abandoned
its policy of producing a standard chassis with custom-made bodies and
offered a standard sedan that could be bought straight off the showroom
floor.
The trend toward the small automobile in the United States, clear if not obtrusive after 1932, was strongly accelerated by World War II. A leading factor was the return from duty in Europe of servicemen who had previously never seen the sheer variety of automobiles the world afforded. The sports car, designed for pleasure, was particularly new to young Americans. The characteristics of automobiles such as the British two-seater M.G., plus their availability at a time of short domestic supply, made them attractive, and the importation of European-made models into the United States increased rapidly.
While the size of the standard U.S. motorcar
increased steadily from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, a small segment
of the population was demonstrating a preference for smaller cars and for
comparatively uncluttered styling. The success of the German Volkswagen
and other small cars eventually led the major U.S. producers simultaneously
to undertake the production of automobiles generically termed compact.
With a 110-inch wheelbase, they were smaller than most American cars but
still larger than the average European models. By the mid-1960s a demand
for more highly individualized luxury models of compact size had brought
in the "fastback," a two-door coupe with the roofline extending in a continuous
curve to a rear bumper, a design reflecting the European tradition of simpler,
cleaner lines. In engineering, much U.S. experimentation followed research
begun by the European industry: development of gas turbine engines; experimentation
with fuel-injection systems; disc brakes; return to body-and-frame assembly;
introduction of rear-engine and later, conversely, of front-wheel-drive
models. In Europe and in Japan (which became a major producer in the 1960s),
the small car continued to dominate, though the number of larger automobiles
increased.
In the United States the earlier creation of a mass market for automobiles meant that urban roads were crowded with cars by the 1930s. It was this demand rather than military objectives that led to the "superhighway." Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and California were leaders in this effort. Highways of four driving lanes, grade-separations at route intersections, and channelized turns at such intersections were in existence by 1937 when limited access was introduced. (See expressway.)
The dominant role of the automobile in American transportation arose despite a transportation infrastructure that was initially not at all conducive to such an outcome. Since the Middle Ages in Europe residents had been required to build and maintain roads in their own local areas. When English settlers arrived in America this system was continued. This practice assured that roads were highly parochial in interest as well as in origin. The development of railroads in the United States allowed the parochial pattern of roads to survive, because the railroads could and did provide for longer-distance connections. In essence, roads did no more than lead to the nearest railroad depot. Central governments in Europe created systems by which the local networks of roads could be coordinated. The legal structure in the United States, and the substantially larger areas to be traversed, prevented such a development in North America until after World War I.
On his return from Europe after the war, General John J. Pershing was asked to head a committee to organize a system of national defense highways. In 1922 the so-called Pershing Map was published designating roads of national importance, which were eligible for both federal designation and support. In this indirect manner a way was found to create a national highway system. Authorizations during the 1920s and '30s increased aid, but it was essentially restricted to rural roads, leaving increasingly costly urban road improvements entirely to the states or to the cities themselves.
In 1956 Congress adopted the Interstate Highway System, which was structured to meet two needs: the creation of a national system of automotive highways (which ultimately was to have within it a network of about 44,000 miles) and to allow federal financing for the extremely costly stretches of urban megahighways (which were beyond the resources of the increasingly impoverished cities).
Canada began a more modest effort fitted
to the linear nature of Canadian geography: the Trans-Canada Highway witnessed
the completion of a passable road from Cape Spear in Newfoundland to Rose
Spit in the Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia in the 1960s. (An
all-weather road to the Arctic Ocean is still somewhat in the future.)
In other parts of the world, the advent of the automobile found a similarly
primitive natural road system that has only over a full century been brought
up to the standard called for by automotive travel. Where that improvement
of infrastructure has taken place most human beings have at last gained
a level of mobility that has been an objective of human effort since before
the historical record was first kept.
Within a three-year period in the 1780s
the two types had their first successful trials--fully documented in history
for the balloon and more questionably so for the ornithopter. That flying
machine, first "successfully" flown at Giessen, was a highly specialized
form of glider, and only by using strong updrafts of air was it lifted
off the surface. For most of the time until the Wright brothers' flight
in 1903 the bubble was very much ahead in the competition for flight.
In the 19th century the balloon was an
important specialized vehicle used in warfare (for spying behind the enemy's
front lines, as did the French in the Battle of Maubeuge in 1793) and for
peacetime operations (used to take the earliest aerial photographs). Balloons
gained importance as their flights increased into hundreds of miles, but
they were essentially unsteerable.
As the experimentation on dirigibles continued, hydrogen and illuminating gas were substituted for hot air, and a motor was mounted on a gas bag fitted with propellers and rudders. Small steam engines were tried, but as progress took place first electric motors and, in Germany after 1888, gasoline engines were used. The problem remained how to maintain the shape of the gas bags. Fully filled with gas under the right pressure, a cigar shape could be maintained and steered; but a partially deflated bag was almost impossible to direct. It was Zeppelin who first saw clearly that maintaining a steerable shape was essential, so he created a rigid but very light frame. This solved many of the steering problems, but how to give the frame sufficient strength to deal with torque introduced by air currents in storms continued to be a severe challenge. (See steering system.)
At the turn of the century Alberto Santos-Dumont began experimenting with steerability (see photograph). Adopting the gasoline engine, he was able to gain enough power in 1901 for a flight of more than three miles from St. Cloud near Paris to and around the Eiffel Tower within half an hour. Santos-Dumont recognized that he was an "aerostatic sportsman" and that his dirigibles probably had limited practical applications. He began to turn his attention to a machine-powered heavier-than-air craft.
The most lasting work on the dirigible was that carried out by Zeppelin, who on July 2, 1900, near Friedrichshafen, Ger., on Lake Constance, undertook the first experimental flight of what he called an airship (Luftschiff); the LZ-l flew for 17 minutes before sinking to the surface of the lake and impaling itself on a buoy that punctured the gas bag. After years of cautious changes in design he was ready in 1908 with the LZ-4, 446 feet long and carrying more than half a million cubic feet of hydrogen. On July 1 he achieved 12 hours of sustained flight at a speed of 40 mile/h over central Switzerland.
With the LZ-5, the dirigible became a potentially practical air transport. A German company, Deutsche-Luftschiffahrts AG (Delag), was organized in 1910, becoming the first well-financed air transportation company. In the five-year period up to the outbreak of World War I Delag made 1,588 flights, safely carrying 34,228 passengers, covering a total of some 170,000 miles. During the war 88 zeppelins (as they came to be known) were constructed for military purposes, among which was the introduction of the first sustained distant aerial warfare (which included the bombing of London and a flight from Yambol, Bulg., of 2,800 miles toward German East Africa).
It was clear that zeppelins could fly at 45 to 50 mile/h over thousands of miles without having to land. Because the lofting of the craft depended on the lift of the gas bags, fuel loadings were relatively modest. When Germany was permitted to return to civilian flying in the mid-1920s, the Zeppelin Company began planning a transatlantic passenger voyage. Soon thereafter the company sent a new airship, the Graf Zeppelin, on an around-the-world flight. The circumnavigation was carried out in 21 days, 5 hours, and 54 minutes (of which only 47 hours had been spent on the ground, yielding an average speed of 70.7 mile/h).
The Graf Zeppelin in the late 1920s
and '30s successfully and safely flew more than one million miles in commercial
service. When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, interest turned
to making a larger airship to demonstrate the surpassing ability of the
Third Reich. The LZ-129 was to cruise at 78 mile/h, to be lofted by more
than 7 million cubic feet of hydrogen, and to be able to carry about 50
passengers. Named the Hindenburg, for the German president at the
time of Hitler's rise to power, the LZ-129 made its inaugural flight in
1936. Service was resumed in the spring of 1937, after a gap for the stormy
winter months; all went well until the docking procedure at Lakehurst,
N.J., on May 6, 1937, when the dirigible burst into flames and exploded
with a loss of 36 lives. That afternoon the dirigible ceased to be effective
competition for the airplane, which commenced transatlantic civil air service
only two years later.
Two problems arose: to find a favourable
ratio between the weight of the vehicle and the power applied and to find
a mechanical means to apply that power to lifting off the ground and achieving
steerable forward motion. In 1799 the English physicist George Cayley worked
out most of the aerodynamic theory. After Cayley's writing the ornithopter
experiments were largely abandoned and replaced by trials of gliders, including
Cayley's own in 1852-53. By the end of the 19th century the conditions
were nearly ready for heavier-than-air flight. The development of the internal-combustion
engine and of petroleum-based fuels (naphtha and gasoline) that were powerful
in relation to weight meant that the problem of securing lift had essentially
been solved. What remained were additional problems of applying that power
to the vehicle. It is not without reason that the successful inventors
of the airplane were two bicycle manufacturers from Dayton, Ohio: many
of the problems of developing a rider-powered bicycle were reflected in
shaping a self-powered heavier-than-air plane. (See aerodynamics.)
Wilbur and Orville Wright in the course of their experiments came increasingly to consider Cayley's diagram of how a wing works, particularly the role played by the speed of the wind passing over the top of the wing. This led them to seek a site with a strong and persistent ambient wind (the Vogels Mountain where the 1781 ornithopter may have flown has just such a high ambient wind, as do the hills near Elmira, N.Y., and Fremont, Calif., classic gliding courses). From the U.S. Weather Bureau the Wrights secured a list of windy sites in the United States, from which they chose the Outer Banks of North Carolina, specifically Kitty Hawk. On Kill Devil Hill there on Dec. 17, 1903, Orville Wright became the first man ever to fly in an aeroplane (as they were at first known), initially using as a frame a biplane of 40-foot 4-inch wingspan and equipped with the 12-horsepower engine (see photograph). He lifted off the ground in a 20-27-mile/h wind and flew a distance of 120 feet in 12 seconds. Having a strong wind certainly aided in that accomplishment, but the brothers soon demonstrated that such a wind was not absolutely essential. (See Wright, Wilbur, Wright flyer of 1903.)
After further experiments at Kitty Hawk they returned to Dayton to build a second plane, Flyer No. 2. Neither the balloons and dirigibles nor the earlier ornithopter and glider experiments had produced flight: what they had done was to harness the dynamics of the atmosphere to lift a craft off the ground, using what power (if any) they supplied primarily to steer. The Wrights initially used atmospheric dynamics to help in lifting the plane, but they subsequently demonstrated that they were able to lift a plane off the ground in still air.
In the long run their most significant invention was a way to steer the plane. After carefully watching a great number of birds, they became convinced that birds directed their flight by internally warping their wings, distorting them in one fashion or another. To do this in their plane, the Wrights constructed a ridged but distorted wing that might, through the use of wires fixed to the edge of the wing, be flexed to pass through the air in changing directions. This distortable wing was relatively misunderstood by other early plane experimenters. (See steering system.)
During the summer of 1904 the Wrights made
105 takeoffs and managed to fly on a circular course up to 2.75 miles for
a sustained flight that lasted 5 minutes 4 seconds. Because they took a
proprietary view of their invention, publicity about their work was minimal.
After further trials in 1905 they stopped their experiments, using the
time to obtain patents on their contribution. Only in 1908 did they break
their secrecy when Wilbur Wright went to France to promote their latest
plane.
Although World War I interrupted commercial developments, it led to rapid technical improvements in aircraft. In 1919 a Curtiss NC-4 flying boat accomplished the first aerial crossing of the Atlantic--between Newfoundland and Lisbon, with a stop in the Azores--under the command of Lieutenant Commander A.C. Read (see photograph). Only a month later, in June 1919, a nonstop flight from Newfoundland to Galway in Ireland was accomplished by British Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown in 16 hours and 27 minutes, making an average speed of 118.5 mile/h in a converted Vickers Vimy bomber. These tests used military aircraft, but after the war the airplane industry designed avowedly commercial planes. The French aeronaut Louis Blériot had begun the work in 1907 by building his Number VII as a monoplane, followed two years later by an improved machine in which he accomplished the first flight across the English Channel. (See Atlantic Ocean, transoceanic travel, Alcock, Sir John William, Brown, Sir Arthur Whitten.)
After the war Anthony H.G. Fokker in Holland
pursued the high-wing monoplane with a stressed wooden skin, while Hugo
Junkers in Germany used a stressed metal skin and a low wing that reduced
weight. The designer John Northrup and the Lockheed Aircraft Company in
the United States produced what in many ways became the model for modern
commercial aircraft in the Vega of 1927. As was the American practice,
the Vega was well-powered, with radial engines of either 220- or 425-horsepower,
which allowed a pilot and six passengers to be flown at between 110 and
135 mile/h at a range between 500 and 900 miles. The use of a stressed
wooden skin allowed about a 35 percent savings in weight over a stressed
metal skin. (See Fokker, Anthony Herman Gerard, Northrop, John Knudsen.)
Most of the airlines founded in the 1920s and '30s were created at least in part to encourage the purchase of aircraft of domestic manufacture; but the privately owned Swissair was the first European airline to purchase American aircraft. The intertwining of domestic aircraft manufacture and national airline operation was widely advocated as critical to national defense. In the United States airline pioneers were private operators, as were the aircraft builders, and there was no national policy concerning either operation. Throughout the 1920s there were no adequately financed airlines, and most lasted for only short periods before failing or merging. Given the large area of the United States, an airline with routes of national or even regional coverage was the exception. And it was only in the late 1920s that any thought was given to the question of encouraging a domestic aircraft industry or the promotion of domestic airline companies.
A second factor, especially in Europe, was the colonial airline. Britain, France, The Netherlands, and Germany all developed colonial airlines, with Belgium, Italy, and the United States joining the operation less extensively. Routes for national airlines were limited to destinations within a country or its possessions, except by agreement. The extensive colonial empires still in existence in the 1920s and '30s became natural sites for extended airlines. Britain, for example, created Imperial Airways by first using bilateral agreements with other European countries to reach the Mediterranean and, once there, to project a continuation based on British colonies and protectorates in Malta, Cyprus, Palestine, Trans-Jordan, the Iraq and Persian Gulf protectorates, India, Burma, the Malay Protectorate, Australia, and New Zealand. China, Central Africa, and South Africa could be reached by other routes. Only the North Atlantic and the northern Pacific resisted a "British" national airline. France shaped a colonial airline from Provence across the Mediterranean to Algeria, the French Sahara, French Equatorial Africa, and Madagascar. Working out landing rights between Belgium and France provided a route to the Belgian Congo. The Netherlands, again through trades with Britain, shaped a colonial route for KLM to the Dutch East Indies.
In the 1930s these colonial routes were the main long-distance air routes available not only because a far-flung empire simplified the problem of securing landing rights but also because the operating "stage"--that is, the maximum distance that might be flown without stopping to refuel--was then only about 500 miles. The Pacific and the Atlantic were the major "water jumps" that remained unconquered by civil aircraft in 1930. The American air routes showed the way to the solution. Pan American Airlines was first organized to fly from Miami to Key West in Florida and to Havana and by the 1930s from Brownsville, Texas, to Mexico City and Panama. Pan American founder Juan Trippe advocated the concept of the "chosen instrument"--international connections for the United States should be provided by a single American company flying only outside the country. The American "empire" in this sense was Latin America, where American investment was extensive but political control was only indirect. Germany, which after World War I lost its empire, similarly turned to South America, particularly Colombia, to shape an extensive system of air routes. In the American case, Pan American's ultimately extensive route structure in the Caribbean, on the east coast of South America, and in Central America provided experience in operating a long-distance international airline.
By the early 1930s three airlines in particular were seeking to develop world-scale route patterns--Pan American, Imperial Airways, and KLM. Such a development called for a set of aircraft that were entirely new in concept from those that had been derived from the planes of World War I. Specifically, what was needed were seaplanes, which offered some of the advantages that the Zeppelin company, Delag, had obtained with their dirigibles. They could fly stages of considerably greater length than could be flown with standard land planes because the sea-based plane enjoyed an almost infinite takeoff runway, that of a long stretch of water in a sheltered embayment. Several miles might be used at a time when a 1,000-foot airport runway was the norm. Long runways, either on land or on water, meant that planes could be quite large, use multiple engines, have large enough fuel tanks to fly an extended stage, and require less strength in the undercarriage.
The tradition of high-powered planes introduced between 1907 and 1909 by Glen Curtiss continued. In addition to the Curtiss company, Martin and Sikorsky each produced large four-engine seaplanes with the potential for stages of more than 500 miles. Because of its size, the United States showed a concern for lengthening the stage even of land-based planes. When Pan American adopted the seaplane in the early 1930s, the Sikorsky S-42 flying boat had four engines that permitted it to fly to Buenos Aires, Arg., by making a series of water crossings between Puerto Rico and the Río de la Plata.
After World War I, another factor contributed
to airline development: the desire for an air service to speed up the mails.
Unlike Europe, where the nationalized airlines carried the mail, in the
United States the Army Air Corps was assigned the job, with generally dreary
results. The problems of flying in a country the size of the United States
were considerable. Particularly in the East, with the broad band of the
Appalachians lying athwart the main routes, bad flying conditions were
endemic and crashes were frequent. The introduction of aircraft beacons
helped, but the low altitudes at which most contemporary planes could operate
continued to plague service. Commercial flying began in earnest in 1925
when, under the Kelly Act, the United States Post Office Department established
contracts for carrying mail over assigned routes. Payments were made in
return for the weight of mail carried. This practice often gave earnings
that made the difference between marginal operation and flying at outright
losses. Later, the method of airmail payments was revised; instead of paying
for the weight of mail carried, the Post Office paid instead for the space
reserved for airmail were it to be offered to the airline company to transport.
The result was an incentive to the companies to increase the size of the
planes they normally flew. (See airmail.)
In 1929 Transcontinental Air Transport and the Pennsylvania Railroad joined forces to solve, at least in part, these altitude and darkness problems. They organized a rail-plane route between New York City and Los Angeles. The "Airway Limited" departed New York's Pennsylvania Station at 6:05 PM, using a Pullman sleeper to reach Port Columbus, Ohio, a new landing field outside the Ohio capital. There passengers boarded a Ford Trimotor at 8:15 AM, which carried 10 passengers to Waynoka, Okla., by 6:24 PM, in time to board a second Pullman sleeper on the Santa Fe Railway at 11:00 PM. This was to arrive in Clovis, N.M., at 8:10 AM, when the passengers boarded a second plane to fly to Los Angeles, and, for through passengers, on to San Francisco by 7:45 PM. The route avoided most night flying and any mountains over about 5,000 feet.
Such an arrangement demonstrated the need for planes better than the Ford Trimotor, the workhorse of American carriers in the late 1920s. By 1928 Ford had improved speed on his plane from 100 mile/h on the 1926 model to 120 mile/h on the 1928 model through the introduction of stronger radial engines that were coming into use in the United States, such as that found on Charles Lindbergh's Ryan monoplane, which made the first solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927 (see photograph). By 1929 the United States was building 5,500 aircraft, up from only 60 five years earlier. The Vega of 1927 had increased cruising speed up to 150 mile/h. (See "Spirit of Saint Louis".)
In 1930, Boeing's Monomail demonstrated the virtues of all-metal planes with the installation of retractable landing gear. Most experts view the Boeing-247 of 1933 as the first modern commercial aircraft. It showed that twin-engined planes were safer than trimotors because they could be maneuvered more easily and might be flown on a single engine. So many of the planes were ordered that when Transcontinental and Western Airlines (TWA, formerly T.A.T.) sought to order some, Boeing declined. TWA turned to a smaller builder, the Douglas Company, and commissioned a similar plane as a trial. The prototype was the DXCX-l; in its developed form as the DC-2/3, it proved to be the most significant commercial plane ever built.
The plane was first introduced as a prototype (the DC-1) in 1933 and put into production as the DC-2 (and in an evolved form as the DC-3 in 1936). The first DC-2 was put in service on the Newark-Pittsburgh-Chicago run, after only 11 months' development time. In an era when American engine builders were introducing new and more powerful engines at a regular and rapid rate, the Wright Engine Company had been able to substitute an improved and more economical engine by the time quantity production began. American Airlines asked for a slight enlargement of the DC-2 (which thus became the DST, a sleeper transport built to allow space for berths for use on the circuitous transcontinental route flown by American). When fitted out with seats this enlargement held 21 passengers and was called a DC-3. As such, it was the first airliner to operate at a profit with a reasonable load factor. The DC-3 had a ceiling of above 5,000 feet, could fly on only one engine, and with a stressed aluminum sheathing was a strong plane with a retractable landing gear. In the 10 years it was in production, the DC-3 became the unrivaled master airliner, carrying the majority of American traffic. It was found on most of the world's airlines, was used for military cargo (as the C-47 in the United States and the Dakota in Britain), and was constructed in a run of more than 13,000 planes. Even 60 years after its introduction, the DC-3 is still seen in out-of-the-way places and for certain purposes. Undoubtedly its greatest contribution was that it showed with great clarity that flying could be safe, reliable, affordable, and profitable for the operator. Flying was a curiosity when the DC-3 was first built but was standard transportation when it was last manufactured. (See internal-combustion engine.)
Between 1927 and the end of the 1930s the
smaller aircraft engine rapidly advanced in its technology. Before World
War I the Russian aeronautic engineer Igor Sikorsky had constructed a 12-engine
flying boat. In the progression from DC-1 through DC-3 knowledge secured
from earlier expressions of a basic design was then used to enlarge that
design so as to gain size, speed, and economy. Certain general qualities
were standardized. The typical DC plane had a squarely rounded fuselage,
a low wing, a particular way of carrying engine pods, and other features
that had become standard. For example, if enlarging the passenger load
was sought, the fuselage would be lengthened rather than widened (which
tended to change the aerodynamic qualities of the plane). A longer plane
required no other changes than enlarging the engines. Engines could be
made more powerful by turbocharging them (supercharging them using centrifugal
blowers driven by exhaust gas turbines), enlarging the cylinders, and making
other mechanical elaborations. American aircraft builders became very adept
at securing more power to go faster, farther, or cheaper. (See airframe,
turbocharger.)
The success of these huge flying boats greatly whetted the appetite of American airline operators because it demonstrated the advantages that might be hoped for from four-engine planes, particularly in raising the ceiling on normal commercial flight so that airlines might "fly above the weather." To do so, it was necessary to artificially pressurize plane cabins above 6,000 to 8,000 feet. Half the weight of the atmosphere is normally found in the column below 18,000 feet, and most of the turbulence is located there. Early experimental flights had shown that as an aircraft rises in the atmosphere it tends to encounter less stormy conditions; most of the "weather" is found below 4,000 feet. If planes could operate at such higher altitudes, flights would be more comfortable and there would be less resistance to forward movement, allowing the same input of power to move the plane at a greater speed. The first hurdle came in securing an airtight cabin, but success in this operation had to be accompanied by better engines, as was done in the Boeing Stratoliner introduced in 1940. Capable of flying at 14,000 feet and at a speed of 200 mile/h, the Stratoliner had just begun service when war in Europe broke out; development of this pioneering four-engine plane was taken over by the government for the duration of the war. It was the only commercial aircraft to be able to fly directly from Newfoundland to Northern Ireland during World War II. With its powerful supercharged engines the Stratoliner could navigate not only above weather but over rather than around mountains. Thus routes could be chosen because they formed parts of great circles on the Earth's surface and were thereby the shortest possible distances between two points.
A second four-engine plane was designed
just before World War II when the general configuration of the DC-3 was
transformed into a four-engine size. Unlike the Stratoliner, this was not
a pressurized plane, so it represented the last phase of one line of advance
more than the beginning of a postwar design. The enlarged DC-4 was flown
throughout the war, becoming the main transatlantic aircraft, in the form
of the United States Army's C-54 troop transport.
Today the main restriction on flying appears under two headings: exception of the fifth freedom from certain specific bilateral agreements and general enforcement of the law of cabotage. This law has operated since the Middle Ages, reserving the trade within a country to that country. Thus, though a Dutch plane might land in New York City on an around-the-world flight and land again in Los Angeles, it would not be permitted to carry passengers or goods between those two cities. It was not foreseen at the time of the signing of the Chicago Convention that the stage of planes would become long enough to cross, for example, the United States.
After World War II air transportation was quickly restored to civilian life. The Stratoliner and the DC-4 began immediate service on the longer routes, even across the Atlantic and the Pacific. Even more important was the introduction of a plane that for a decade became the prime competitor of the DC-4, the Lockheed Constellation. The rapid growth in the power produced by American aircraft engines encouraged TWA to turn to the Lockheed company in search of a plane that would add more than 100 miles/h to the speed of the DC-3 (175 mile/h) rather than the marginal 25 mile/h increase of the DC-4. In addition, TWA engineers sought to lengthen the stage of planes so that a single-stop transcontinental flight was possible in either direction. When put into service, the Constellation had an 80 mile/h speed advantage over the DC-4. When the Super-Constellation went into service in 1957, it weighed twice as much as its precursor, was considerably faster, and carried a much increased payload.
The very rapid growth of air traffic in
the 10 years after 1945 called forth a number of different planes to deal
with extended routes and enlarging markets. In large part this expansion
could take place because there was a market for used aircraft. As airlines
strove to fly faster and with lengthened stages, more people switched from
trains or ships to planes. By 1953 the DC-7 was put in service with a stage
of up to 3,000 miles and a speed reaching 300 mile/h. By 1957 the number
of passengers crossing the Atlantic by air was greater than by sea. Once
jet planes came into service at the end of the 1950s, flying the Atlantic
accelerated to the point that little more than a decade of steamship service
remained before the end of the Atlantic Ferry.
The search then shifted to the British aircraft industry, which had tried throughout the postwar years to gain an important role in civil aviation. British hopes for success turned in the direction of the jet turbine engine. In the 1950s, when British competitors of the Douglas and Lockheed planes failed to find an extensive market, they advanced the theory of the turbine-engined jet plane, first proposed by Frank Whittle when he was a Royal Air Force cadet in 1927-28. In 1929 he settled on the pure gas turbine as the engine best suited to increasing the speed of flight. In the 1930s Hans von Ohain at Göttingen, Ger., and at the Heinkel Aircraft Works in Warnemünde, also worked on the jet engine. In that same period Werner von Braun in Germany and Robert Goddard at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., U.S., were experimenting with the rocket motor to accomplish the same end. By 1937 Whittle had an operating engine with all the basic features of a turbojet, and by August 1939, the German aircraft designers Ernst Heinrich Heinkel and Ohain had built the first turbine. These jet engines demonstrated the ability to operate at high speeds when there seemed not to be airframes strong enough for the task. The experiments had shown that the planes could operate effectively at high speeds but not at what might be termed intermediate speeds of 300 to 350 mile/h. The DC-7 flew at 300 mile/h using the giant piston engines built for it. (See United Kingdom, jet propulsion, Ohain, Hans Joachim Pabst von.)
Even before the ceiling on speed of the piston plane was reached in the DC-7 in the mid-1950s, the Vickers company in Britain had flown an adaptation of the turbine that used the favourable power-to-weight ratio of the jet engine harnessed by gears to a propeller and placed in an airframe that could operate as a turboprop plane at 40 or 50 mile/h faster than the fastest piston engines similarly geared. Although British, French, and American aircraft builders ultimately constructed specifically turboprop planes, most builders simply put turboprop engines in the latest models of their planes. European airlines took up the turboprop plane more enthusiastically than did American airlines. In the United States the relatively short stage of these planes and the high fuel consumption in comparison with the best piston planes never made them exceptionally popular. The Vickers Viscount was adopted for its newness and its successor the Vanguard for its large windows. Finally in 1957 the Bristol company in Britain built the Britannia, a turboprop that operated at a reasonable cost and with a longer stage than others. Unfortunately it was only a year later that the eminently successful pure-jet Boeing 707 was put in service; the British turboprop continued for some years to do yeoman service on nonscheduled charter flights and other supporting rather than starring roles.
The turboprop rather quickly disappeared when it was discovered that jet engines could be placed in planes of varying size and purpose. It was anticipated that the jet would revolutionize the speed of air travel: what was rather unexpected was that it would sharply reduce its cost when provided by a jetliner large enough to carry an economical load. The Boeing 707 was so economical when it was placed in service, by Pan American, on Oct. 26, 1958, that it played the role for commercial jets that the DC-3s had for piston planes. When the fan jet was substituted for the simple jet engine, the family of Boeing jets earned a reputation for economical working just as the DC-6 had in the last generation of piston planes. Within a few years Boeing had developed specialized jets for nearly the full range of commercial flying. The Boeing 727 became an intermediate-range jet carrying more than 100 passengers, rivaling in size the largest piston planes. Later, the Boeing 737 became the workhorse of North American airlines. When it was discovered that the cost of operating jets was considerably less per passenger mile than the cost of operating even the best piston-engine planes, flying grew rapidly and became quite common over considerably greater distances. The Boeing Company began planning what came to be known as a "jumbo jet," the 747. When placed in service in 1970, the 747 was capable of carrying up to about 500 passengers, but most models were fitted out for about 400, with substantial space allocated for baggage, mail, and freight.
The longevity of jet planes was also not
fully anticipated. The upkeep on jet engines is simpler and more long-lasting,
so considerably less time is taken up by maintenance. This is reflected
in geographic patterns of operation. The longer air route tends to be operated
with larger planes operating at a lesser frequency. Transatlantic and transpacific
air service tends toward a single flight by a company per day connecting
each pair of cities it serves. Exceptions occur mostly for London, New
York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Tokyo, where there may be two
flights between a pair. Owing to the speed of flying and the progression
of time around the world during the day, virtually all westbound flights,
from Europe to North America and North America to eastern Asia, take place
during the daylight hours, whereas eastbound flights from East Asia to
western North America and eastern North America to Europe operate during
hours of darkness. A single plane operating on one of the world's longer
runs, for example, the Paris-Los Angeles route, can leave Paris in late
afternoon, arrive in Los Angeles in the evening, and there reload for Paris,
where it returns in midafternoon, thus flying about 10,000 miles in a 24-hour
period. Unlike the early days of shorter stages using multiple aircraft
and frequent landings, only one plane and two airports are involved, but
a transfer between the west coast of North America and the west coast of
Europe of nearly 1,000 people per day may take place.
In a macroeconomic sense, transportation
activities form a portion of a nation's total economic product and play
a role in building or strengthening a national or regional economy and
as an influence in the development of land and other resources. In a microeconomic
sense, transportation involves relations between firms and individual consumers.
The demand for and supply of transportation for both passengers and freight,
transportation pricing, and the reasons why the transportation system is
both regulated and deregulated are among its concerns. Finally, the government's
involvement in each mode of transportation differs. In some instances private
enterprise is used; in others, government provides the facilities and equipment,
especially if the rationale for government involvement is that a strong
transportation system is necessary for developing the nation's economy
or for its defense. Government's involvement in transportation has both
a macro- and a microeconomic significance.
According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 1989 the typical household spent $27,810. Housing accounted for $8,609; transportation (mainly automobiles) accounted for $5,187; and food accounted for $4,152. Looking at the age of consumers, those under 25 spent the highest proportion of their income, after housing, on transportation; presumably much of this went for automobiles and for automobile insurance premiums. By almost any measure, the great significance of transportation to individuals and, aggregated together, to society is apparent.
Figures for the United States are not representative
of the world. Automobile ownership rates are not as high in other countries.
Many episodes in the history of the United States illustrate the dependence of the developing lands upon a transportation system. During the Whiskey Rebellion (1794) farmers in Pennsylvania converted their corn to whiskey because they had no other way of transporting their bulky corn crops to market. Construction of the Erie Canal from Albany to Buffalo, in New York, opened up the Great Lakes. Settlers went west, and, in a few years, their farm products started moving east. There followed a canal-building frenzy that lasted until the Civil War and a railroad-building frenzy that lasted until near the end of the 19th century. Settlers wanted to be near a canal or rail station so that they could sell their crops. In the 20th century the focus shifted to building roads and airports. Paved roads were needed by farmers to reach markets and to allow trucks and automobiles to travel between cities. Airports also became important as cities wanted to be served by airlines.
Transportation allows each geographic area to produce whatever it does best and then to trade its product with others. In addition to direct, or back-and-forth trades, it is also possible to use transportation to link together a number of different steps in the production process, each occurring at a different geographic site. Speedy modes of transportation (such as air) allow perishable foods to be distributed to wider market areas. Transportation also allows workers to reach their job sites. Lastly, because of transportation, it is possible for a producer to reach a large number of markets. This means that the quantity of output can be large enough that significant production economies of scale will result.
A transportation network makes markets more competitive. Economists often study resource allocation--that is, how specific goods and services are used. A transportation system improves the allocation process because it widens the number of opportunities for suppliers and buyers.
A transportation network also adds to a
nation's military strength. One reason is that, by strengthening the economy,
transportation places the nation in a better position to weather adversity
and to produce materials necessary to sustain its economy and military
strength. If the nation actually embarks upon war, its transportation system
is useful in moving troops. During the War of 1812, the British invaders
could travel on ocean ships and attack wherever they chose. The U.S. Army
could not move as quickly on land and had trouble keeping up with the British
invaders. After the War of 1812, the U.S. government drew up plans for
an extensive network of canals along the East Coast that could be used
for defensive troop movements. Some of these canals were constructed, although
canal construction was eventually halted for other reasons. In the early
days of World War I, German strategy involved eliminating Russia from the
war in the first few weeks, then shifting the massive German army west,
by rail, in an attempt to defeat France. In the mid-20th century, the United
States began construction of its interstate highway system, the proper
title of which is "The National System of Interstate and Defense Highways."
Clearances above the roadway on this interstate system were high enough
to allow passage of trailer-drawn military missiles used in the 1950s.
(Experience in World War II showed that it was more difficult to permanently
damage highway systems than it was to damage railroads.)
As railroads grew in the mid-19th century, development followed. Studies of population clusters in the Midwest show them located along railroad lines. As major cities expanded, streetcar lines attracted development. Streetcar firms were sometimes bribed by land developers to have new lines serve their undeveloped land, thus increasing its value. Today, roads and freeways influence patterns of suburban growth. They have made it possible for the middle class to flee the central city. Individuals who oppose further growth actively oppose politically any transportation improvements that might open up their area to more development.
Lands often contain mineral and oil resources, and transportation systems have allowed their exploitation. Some of the largest tonnages of products moved in the United States are products of mines, such as iron ore and coal. In ocean shipping, petroleum is the largest single cargo carried. The transportation system itself is the largest consumer of petroleum products; in the United States, highway vehicles consume just over half of all the petroleum. Since petroleum prices escalated in the early 1970s, there has been increased concern with the fuel efficiency of different types of transportation. As petroleum prices decline, interest in fuel efficiency slackens, and automobiles are used more and mass transit less.
Construction of transportation facilities was, in itself, destructive to the environment, but over time the adverse environmental impacts have been tempered somewhat. The best large-scale example is the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, built in the 1970s, whose routing was altered to avoid blocking migration patterns of certain species of wildlife. The construction of sound-deflecting walls near urban freeways and soundproofing structures near airports has helped to control noise. Federal regulations are phasing out the use of noisier aircraft engines.
Disposal of old and abandoned automobiles has caused another land-use problem. Some automobiles are abandoned on streets or in fields; and salvage yards are unsightly. The combination of materials used to construct automobiles often discourages recyclers from paying very much for junked cars to turn into scrap for sale and reuse.
Transportation also has altered water resources. For centuries, wetland areas in ports have been filled in for cargo handling and industrial facilities. Dams and locks have been built to harness major rivers. Flowing streams were used to carry away urban and industrial wastes before sewage treatment plants were constructed. Harbours and navigation channels must be continually dredged to remove accumulated silt. Often this dredged material is polluted, and controversies arise as to where it can be placed so as to minimize damage to the environment. Loading and unloading of dry bulk cargoes generates dust, and port facilities must install extensive systems to collect dust particles. Oil spills are usually contained now before a major disaster occurs, although every year or so there is a major oil spill somewhere in the world.
Air resources are adversely affected by
the pollutants generated by the engines that power vehicles. In the United
States, the problem is most acute in the Los Angeles area, well-known for
its smog. Pollutants come from other sources as well, but transportation
is usually acknowledged to be the major villain. Steps are being taken
to lower the emissions generated by automobiles and to change driving and
commuting patterns to use fewer vehicles. Automobiles are being modified
to produce fewer pollutants. There is increased interest in electric automobiles
because they generate almost no air pollutants. However, it is possible
that the electricity used to recharge their batteries would be produced
by a means that generates air pollution. Nonhighway types of transportation
also produce air pollutants.
In terms of sociology, teenage people in the United States view obtaining a driver's license as one rite of passage toward adulthood. The automobile is a means for them to escape parental supervision. The automobile is blamed for the decline of small towns; persons with cars are able and willing to travel longer distances to the stores and other attractions of larger communities. In the United States, the school bus also led to the decline of small towns, because it made it possible to consolidate numerous small schools. Hamlets where small schools were closed went into decline.
Transportation has increased employment opportunities, because one can travel to reach more potential jobs or a sales or professional person can cover a wider territory. In sparsely settled areas, for example, veterinarians and physicians make calls using small aircraft. Transportation activities also provide employment opportunities: working for carriers and shippers, constructing vehicles and roadways, and working in government agencies involved with transportation.
However, as transportation facilities and opportunities increase, there are some groups left behind. The poor, the feeble, the elderly, and the disabled are in danger of being bypassed because they lack equal access to transportation systems. In many locations in the United States, automobile ownership and use is virtually a requirement. Society is uncertain as to what responsibilities it has for transportation systems that can be used by those without automobiles.
Another negative impact relates to injuries
and deaths caused by transportation. While airline crashes receive the
most publicity, highway accidents cause a tremendous number of fatalities
and injuries. Fortunately the number is decreasing owing to considerable
improvement in auto safety. This includes safer roads, lower speed limits,
use of seat belts, and stricter enforcement of laws against driving while
intoxicated. Automobiles feature improved and often governmentally required
safety equipment.
In the United States, airlines are run as private firms, while airports and the air traffic control network are supplied by government. Motorists and trucks operate in the private sector and travel on highways provided by the public, largely through taxes collected on motor fuels. Barges and Great Lakes carriers and oceangoing ships are private-enterprise operations, paying low levels of user fees. They travel on waterways improved and maintained by governments. Railroads are private-enterprise ventures operating on their own roadbed and track. An exception is intercity rail passenger service, which is provided by a government agency. Oil and gas pipelines are operated by private enterprise. Mass transit operations carrying large numbers of passengers in urban areas on buses, light rail vehicles, and ferries are usually operated in the public sector. At one time mass transit was provided by the private sector, but private firms could not survive much beyond World War II, when automobiles became popular. Communities, later aided by the federal government, bought out the declining private transit operators and replaced them with public-enterprise operations. Vehicles, aircraft, and ships are usually built by firms in the private sector.
Outside the United States, public ownership and operation of transportation is quite common. Most nations own and operate their railroads and airlines. Automobiles and trucks are built in the private sector, but roads are provided by the public. Ships may be either publicly or privately owned, although virtually all nations subsidize their merchant marine.
So, in the supply of transportation services,
a mix of public and private entities is usual. Private firms are responsive
in situations where there is a profit to be made. If the market will not
support profitable operators, a variety of government subsidization schemes
are used. Ideal schemes allow the subsidized operator to develop business
to a point at which the subsidies are no longer needed. Frequently this
does not happen; the users--or the employees--of the carrier enjoy the
subsidies and assert political pressure on governments to maintain them.
Governments are confronted by groups who demand certain levels of transportation
service but are unable, or unwilling, to pay for them. Subsidized carriers
then pursue objectives that may differ from the aims of economic efficiency.
This leads to a redistribution of income from the general taxpayer to the
user of the subsidized transportation operation. Subsidized transportation
also affects decisions made by firms determining where to locate plants
or by individuals determining where to locate homes. Both groups in making
these decisions attempt to minimize transportation costs that they must
pay. If the costs these groups must pay are not the same as the true and
total costs to society, the low-transportation-cost site in their eyes
is perhaps not the same as might be chosen by one knowing--or having to
pay--all transportation costs. (See subsidy.)
Benefits are usually savings in travel
time for passenger-oriented projects and savings in transportation costs
for freight. An example of this would be dredging a harbour. If the plans
would permit a larger vessel to be used, the costs per ton for shipping
would be lowered, and this would be considered a benefit. Benefit-cost
analysis can be applied to a variety of projects and, if similar assumptions
are used in performing the analysis for each, then the projects can be
ranked in the order that should be used for getting the greatest return
for the governmental investment.
There is also work-related travel, which may be conducted in any sort of vehicle. The demand for such a trip must outweigh both the transportation costs and value of the individual's time spent while traveling. Some individuals travel in search of work. There also are migrations of people from one part of the country to another, seeking a job and a better life. There have been, and will continue to be, large migrations throughout the world.
Travel to and from school is a regular movement for many people. Buses may be provided by the school district, or public transportation may be used. Individuals also need transportation for shopping, visits to doctors, visits to friends, and other personal reasons. Some persons travel for religious purposes on pilgrimages to sites of special significance. Vacation and pleasure travel form another demand for transportation services.
Individual demands for transportation can
be aggregated into demands for larger vehicles. Examples are commuter trains
that operate near large cities or aircraft that fly coast-to-coast or across
the ocean. Most passengers have several alternative modes of transportation
or carriers from which to choose. A commuter may drive alone, be part of
a car pool or a vanpool, or ride on a bus, ferry, or train. Part of the
person's decision as to type and size of vehicle is based on the value
of his or her time and the relative comfort and convenience associated
with travel in each vehicle type.
Freight is time-sensitive. Fresh seafood is perishable; newspapers must be delivered promptly. Shippers have money invested in inventory and often want to use faster modes of transportation to reduce the amount of time they must wait for payment.
For some goods, the cost of transportation
is nearly the same as the cost of the product, and it thus influences demand
for both the product and its carriage. Steel-mill slag (a by-product of
the steel-making process) has almost no market value, and sometimes steel
mills must pay to have it carried away. It can be used as an aggregate
in concrete but competes with other materials, such as sand, which are
very low in cost. Many recycled products also have almost no market value,
and transportation costs become the major factor viewed by those who may
want to buy the recycled products for some subsequent use.
Carriers set their rates between two limits. The upper limit is the value of service to the user, meaning that, if the carrier knew the true value of the service to an individual shipper or passenger, that is the amount they would charge. They could not charge more than the value of service, because the customer would not use it. Carriers would like to analyze the needs of each potential user and place each in a group where the charges would equal the total value of the transportation service. Carriers cannot do this, but they do place users into groups. Airline passengers sitting in the same row on a single plane may each pay a different fare, depending on how far in advance they were willing to buy a ticket and what kind of restrictions on the use of the ticket they were willing to accept. Freight shipments also are divided into many classifications, and one factor influencing the freight rates is the value of the product, with higher-valued products paying more. Part of the rationale for this is that higher transportation costs have less impact on an expensive good's final selling price; hence they can stand to pay the higher rates. In a sense, they help subsidize the carriage of less valuable freight.
The lower limit of a transportation rate is the cost of service--that is, the carrier should not charge less than the cost of service or it will lose money on the business. It is difficult, however, for many carriers to know or determine their costs. Railroads and pipelines have large overhead, or fixed, costs. These are costs to which the carrier is already committed without regard to the level of current business. The other form of cost is known as out-of-pocket, or variable, costs, that are related to current business. If a shipper wants to ship four railcars of freight, the railroad's fixed costs--e.g., interest and taxes on its roadbed--continue without regard to whether the railroad decides to move the shipper's four cars. If the railroad decides to move the cars, it incurs variable expenses, such as fuel for the engine and salary for the crew. The shipper may be willing to pay only a little more than the variable costs. The railroad will consider any payments received that are greater than its variable costs as a contribution to overhead.
Even the distinction between overhead and variable costs is subject to debate. With respect to the shipper with four freight cars, it might also make a difference whether the direction he wanted to send his freight was the same as most railroad traffic (a forward haul) or a flow in the reverse of the major haul (a backhaul). If the shipment is a backhaul, the railroad might have been planning to move empty cars anyway, and the variable costs of moving the shipper's freight might be only the costs of moving loaded, rather than empty, cars.
Carriers are often uncertain how to determine the costs of individual hauls. An American railroad does not know how much of its overhead costs to allocate, for example, to a shipment of coal from Cheyenne, Wyo., to Duluth, Minn. Sometimes the concepts of "joint products" and "by-products" are used. A joint product is essential to the long-term survival of the firm, while a by-product is nonessential. The carrier must have a strategy to keep the joint-product types of traffic and be certain that their rates on this traffic are compensatory.
Carriers also enjoy economies of scale, although this varies with mode of transportation. Railroads benefit the most; a stretch of track between two cities has the same fixed daily costs whether it handles 1 or 10,000 cars per day. Airliners have a break-even point, at a load of about 70 percent of capacity. Revenues from any passengers carried above this amount flow almost directly into the firm's profits. A carrier enjoying economies of scale tries to increase volume by lowering rates to attract additional traffic. In transportation, the phrase "economic density" is used to describe benefits to carriers of having certain heavily used routes that are full, or dense, with traffic. (See economy of scale.)
If the shipper plans to use a motor carrier rather than a railroad, the motor carrier is likely to ignore completely the costs to the public of building and maintaining the highway and concentrate solely on the costs of operating the truck. It may be that the motor carrier contributes taxes that help improve and maintain all highways, but that is not likely to affect day-to-day business decisions concerning whether to haul specific loads of freight for a customer.
A carrier's "ideal" rate would maximize a figure that represents a volume of traffic expressed in units multiplied by a rate per unit that is higher than costs. To maximize that figure, either a large volume of traffic units or a wide gap between revenues and costs per unit is needed.
Associated with carrier costs are costs of congestion. Most people like to travel at certain hours or on certain days; the same holds for some types of freight. This phenomenon is known as peaking. Carrier costs increase during peak periods because they must provide extra equipment. Congestion itself adds to operating costs because vehicles may not be able to depart on time and must move slowly because of heavy traffic. Because of these added costs associated with congestion, many carriers charge more for operations during peak hours. The increased charges reflect two factors: the carrier's higher costs and higher demand by passengers and shippers. Most users are willing to pay higher charges for service during peak periods even though they also incur additional costs in terms of waiting time.
Carriers charge lower rates for "off-peak" periods. This reflects their lower costs and is an effort to entice users away from the peak periods. Mass transit systems often charge lower fares from 9:00 AM until 3:00 PM on weekdays, for example, encouraging shoppers to travel when a system is not filled with commuters. Carriers have "incentive" rates to encourage increased utilization of equipment, and they will charge less per unit of weight for larger shipments.
User charges are fees levied for using
transportation facilities operated by government agencies. Aircraft pay
landing fees to use airports, and vessels pay dockage and wharfage fees
to use public port facilities or lockage fees to transit locks along a
waterway. Motorists and trucks pay fees to use toll roads or toll bridges.
The nation's oil pipelines were regulated in 1906, as a reaction to John D. Rockefeller's use of them as a tool for monopolizing the oil industry. Some motor carriers were regulated in 1935. In this situation, the problem was too much competition, rather than too little. Truckers engaged in what was referred to as "cutthroat" competition. They charged rates that did not even cover their operating costs and tried to make up for this by avoiding maintenance on their trucks and tires and driving long hours. Motor carrier regulation attempted to provide stability to the industry, although not all motor carriers were subject to regulation.
In 1938, domestic airlines were placed under the purview of the new Civil Aeronautics Board, which regulated routes, service, entry and exit, and rates. Some segments of the inland waterways industry were regulated in 1940. Freight forwarders--intermediaries who accepted small shipments from many shippers and consolidated them into larger shipments to tender to carriers--were regulated in 1942. In 1948 carrier rate bureaus, committees representing carriers that would meet to agree on rates for the industry to charge, were given immunity from antitrust prosecution.
In the post-World War II era, it became apparent that regulation was not working well. Those segments of the truck and inland waterways industry that had not been regulated grew in size and took considerable traffic away from the railroads. Most railroads in the Northeast were bankrupt. One of these was the Penn Central, and, in financial terms, this had been the nation's largest bankruptcy to date. In some transport modes, the workers' unions were very strong, and management would award union members wage increases which the regulatory body would then allow carriers to pass on to shippers as increased rates. In markets where rates were set by regulatory bodies, the carriers did compete, but not by driving costs down; instead, they would add services and increase costs up to the point at which they equaled the regulatory agency's approved rate. About 1970, the United States passed a number of laws that removed many economic regulatory shackles from the nation's carriers. Included in this wave of deregulation were airlines, motor carriers of freight, railroads, intercity buses, and household goods movers. Deregulation has caused difficulties for carriers and carrier labour. Individual carriers, and the industries they are part of, are not as stable as they were prior to deregulation. Many carriers have gone bankrupt, and carrier labour has lost much of its economic and political clout. However, and as a result, charges for freight and passenger carriage have dropped.
In addition to economic regulation, all levels of government regulate transportation safety and movements of hazardous materials. Testing transportation operators to detect possible drug use is a controversial matter. States also limit the lengths, weights, and axle spacings of heavy trucks.
Economic regulation is handled differently
in various other countries. A common pattern is for the government to own
the railroads and airlines and to restrict other carriers if they appear
to be capturing traffic from the government operations. International airline
operations and services are regulated by strict treaties between the nations
exchanging airline service. Actual fares are established by the International
Air Transport Association (IATA), a cartel (or organization) of all the
world's air carriers. Cartels known as conferences also regulate the rates
charged by ocean liners that carry cargo on a regular basis. Each conference
is made up of member lines that serve certain routes, say, between U.S.
gulf ports and ports along the Baltic. Over the years, the U.S. government
has attempted to control practices of both airline and ocean liner cartels
serving the United States, but it has had limited success because it must
share jurisdiction with other nations.
(D.F.W.)
Development of the wheeled vehicle is introduced in László Tarr, The History of the Carriage (1969; originally published in Hungarian, 1968). James J. Flink, The Automobile Age (1988), is a broad and detailed sociocultural history of the period dominated by motorcars and the automobile industry. The use of waterways is the subject of Charles Hadfield, The Canal Age, 2nd ed. (1981); and L.T.C. Rolt, From Sea to Sea: The Canal du Midi (1973). Christopher Lloyd and J. Douglas-Henry, Ships & Seamen: From the Vikings to the Present Day (1961), is a pictorial history of ships and those who sailed them. Histories of railroads frequently address their social and political impact, as in Nicholas Faith, The World the Railways Made (1990); Patrick O'Brien, Railways and the Economic Development of Western Europe, 1830-1914 (1983); Albro Martin, Railroads Triumphant: The Growth, Rejection, and Rebirth of a Vital American Force (1992); and Clarence B. Davis et al. (eds.), Railway Imperialism (1991). For the history of aviation, see C.H. Gibbs-Smith, Flight Through the Ages: A Complete Illustrated Chronology from the Dreams of Early History to the Age of Space Exploration (1974); L.T.C. Rolt, The Aeronauts: A History of Ballooning, 1783-1903 (1966, reissued 1985); Carl Solberg, Conquest of the Skies: A History of Commercial Aviation in America (1979); R.E.G. Davies, A History of the World's Airlines (1964); and John Toland, Ships in the Sky: The Story of the Great Dirigibles (1957).
Modern domestic and international transportation
industries are discussed in Donald F. Wood and James
C. Johnson, Contemporary Transportation, 3rd ed. (1989).
Transportation systems and regulation prior to deregulation are studied
in D. Philip Locklin, Economics of Transportation,
7th ed. (1972). Paul Stephen Dempsey and William
E. Thoms, Law and Economic Regulation in Transportation (1986),
offers an analysis of transportation regulation in the era of deregulation
in the United States. Hans A. Adler, Economic Appraisal
of Transport Projects: A Manual with Case Studies, rev. and expanded
ed. (1987), demonstrates the application of cost-benefit analysis to projects
in different nations. A classic treatment of overhead cost allocation is
provided in J. Maurice Clark, Studies in the Economics
of Overhead Costs (1923, reissued 1981). Clifford Winston,
"Conceptual Developments in the Economics of Transportation: An Interpretive
Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, 23(1):57-94 (March 1985),
offers an analysis of current thought in the economics of transportation.
Economic statistics pertaining to automobiles and trucks are collected
in a publication by Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association, MVMA Motor
Vehicle Facts & Figures (annual). David L. Lewis
and Laurence Goldstein (eds.), The Automobile and
American Culture (1983), explores the influence of the automobile on
all aspects of American life.
(D.F.W.)