Transportation

Transportation is the act of transporting or conveying. Throughout history, transportation has developed into increasingly efficient means. The most basic yet most enduring form of human transportation is, of course, walking. Since the beginning of the species, humans have powered their own bodies, one foot in front of the other.

Even at the onset of what many feel to be a major advance in transportation—the wheel, around 3500 BCE—people still had to walk in order to use the wheel, which was set below pull carts. Even the early chariots were pulled by people. It was not until much later that humans were able to step off their own feet and onto a nonhuman powered, wheel-based device. This came in the way of the horse-drawn chariot around 2000 BCE.

Around the same time the wheel was being put to its first uses in carts and human-drawn chariots, the first boats were entering the water. These were used in river travel and again were powered by people through the use of oars, and later by the capture of wind power through the use of sails.

Only in the modern era was a major advance made in the development of boats, with the advent of the steam engine. This was an extremely slow process, as the first steam-powered paddle boat was demonstrated around 1783, with its first practical appearance 4 years later. The steam engine was adapted for use on land nearly 20 years later, with the invention of a primitive, not very practical steam-powered locomotive intended for use on roadways.

[Page 1377]Meanwhile, some other variations of travel had emerged. Primitive oar-powered submarines were first used around 1620. Iron horseshoes had dramatically improved the ability of horses to pull carriages, carts, and buses by 1662. And hot-air balloons first took flight in 1783.

Except for wheelbarrows and simple carts, many of the primitive sources of transportation have been replaced. Again, walking remains the most primitive and to some extent the most popular mode of transport even in contemporary times. The wheel, ironically, came full circle more than 5,000 years after its invention. It was 1790 when the bicycle was invented. The first bicycles were powered simply by pedals that turned a larger wheel to create motion. Today there are many varieties, mostly chain-driven and many with multiple gear speeds.

By the end of the 18th century the steam engine had been perfected, and the first steam-powered passenger boat was introduced by Robert Fulton. A few years later, the first practical locomotive was designed, this time intended for use on rails.

The first rumblings of a gasoline-powered automobile were heard in the mid-1800s from Jean Lenoir. Karl Benz improved the idea and put the first practical automobile, equipped with a combustion engine, on the road in 1885.

Henry Ford would advance the science of automobiles, particularly their manufacture. He is well-known for the design of his Model T automobile, but in fact it was the assembly line from which the Model T was manufactured that made the automobile much cheaper to make and thus more affordable for individuals to own. The first Model T rolled off the line m 1908.

...