History of infrastructure
In 1811 John Blenkinsop designed the first successful and practical railway locomotive,[1] and a line was built connecting the Middleton Colliery to Leeds.
[2] It entered commercial use on the Great Western Railway over the 13 miles (21 km) from Paddington station to West Drayton on 9 April 1839.
Soon, a bell was added for signaling, and then a switch-hook, and telephones took advantage of the exchange principle already employed in telegraph networks.
The Indus Valley civilisation in India and Pakistan from c3300 BCE had a sophisticated canal irrigation system.
[7] In ancient China, large canals for river transport were established as far back as the Warring States (481-221 BCE).
In France, Pierre-Marie-Jérôme Trésaguet is widely credited with establishing the first scientific approach to road building about the year 1764.
John Loudon McAdam (1756–1836) designed the first modern highways, and developed an inexpensive paving material of soil and stone aggregate known as macadam.
[4] In Europe, particularly Britain and Ireland, and then in the early US and the Canadian colonies, inland canals preceded the development of railroads during the earliest phase of the Industrial Revolution.
In the United States, navigable canals reached into isolated areas and brought them in touch with the world beyond.
By 1825 the Erie Canal, 363 miles (584 km) long with 82 locks, opened up a connection from the populated northeast to the fertile Great Plains.
In 1811 John Blenkinsop designed the first successful and practical railway locomotive,[1] and a line was built connecting the Middleton Colliery to Leeds.
In the following years, railways spread throughout the United Kingdom and the world, and became the dominant means of land transport for nearly a century.
[2] It entered commercial use on the Great Western Railway over the 13 miles (21 km) from Paddington station to West Drayton on 9 April 1839.
Within 29 years of its first installation at Euston Station, the telegraph network crossed the oceans to every continent but Antarctica, making instant global communication possible for the first time.
Soon, however, a bell was added for signalling, and then a switch-hook, and telephones took advantage of the exchange principle already employed in telegraph networks.
[11][12] Yablochkov candles required high voltages, and it was not long before experimenters reported that the arc lights could be powered on a seven-mile (11 km) circuit.
The first electricity system supplying incandescent lights was built by the Edison Illuminating Company in lower Manhattan, eventually serving one square mile with six "jumbo dynamos" housed at Pearl Street Station.
The first transmission of three-phase alternating current using high voltage took place in 1891 during the International Electro-Technical Exhibition in Frankfurt.
A 25 kilovolt transmission line, approximately 175 km (109 mi) long, connected Lauffen on the Neckar with Frankfurt.
By 1914 fifty-five transmission systems operating at more than 70,000 V were in service, the highest voltage then being used was 150,000 V.[14] In the 19th century major treatment works were built in London in response to cholera threats.
[16] Piero Puricelli, a civil engineer and entrepreneur, received the first authorization to build a public-utility fast road in 1921, and completed the construction (one lane in each direction) between 1924 and 1926.
