History of transport
Advances in technology have allowed people to travel farther, explore more territory, and expand their influence over increasingly larger areas.
As new inventions and discoveries were applied to transport problems, travel time decreased while the ability to move more and larger loads increased.
"[1] The sale and transportation of textiles, silver and gold, spices, slaves, and luxury goods throughout Afro-Eurasia and later the New World would see an evolution in overland and sea trade routes and travel.
With the growth of trade, tracks were often flattened or widened to accommodate animal traffic (hollow way or drover's road).
During Industrial Revolution, John Loudon McAdam (1756–1836) designed the first modern highways, using inexpensive paving material of soil and stone aggregate (macadam), and the embanked roads a few centimeters higher than the surrounding terrain to cause water to drain away from the surface.
With the development of motor transport, starting in 1886 in Germany and in the U.S. in 1908 with the production of Ford's first Model T,[2] there was an increased need for hard-topped roads to reduce washaways, bogging and dust on both urban and rural roads, originally using cobblestones and wooden paving in major western cities and in the early 20th century tar-bound macadam (tarmac) and concrete paving.
A bet between Trevithick's benefactor Samuel Homfray and Richard Crawshay prompted the key demonstration of the locomotive.
George Stephenson who went on to become known as the father of railways is said to have built 16 experimental locomotives for use from the year 1814–1826, the last train which he introduced known as the Killingworth Billy ran until 1881.
It has been argued that boats suitable for a significant sea crossing were necessary for people to reach Australia an estimated 40,000-45,000 years ago.
The Indus Valley civilization in Pakistan and North India (from c. 2600 BC) had the first canal irrigation system in the world.
[7] China's canal system, whose greatest accomplishment was the Sui dynasty's 1,794-kilometer (1,115 mi) 7th-century Grand Canal between Hangzhou and Beijing, was an essential aspect of its civilization, used for irrigation, flood control, taxation, commercial and military transport, and colonization of new lands from the Zhou dynasty until the end of the imperial era.
Pierre-Paul Riquet began to organise the construction of the 240 km-long Canal du Midi in France in 1665 and it was opened in 1681.
This world market of trade, as well as the flow of finances throughout, spanned out an interconnected throughout the entire globe, permitted the intersectoral and intersectional regional divisions of both generated competition, and labor.
Along with this, quite a large number of individuals relied on the sea and maritime trade, raiding, piracy, or smuggling for survival.
[10] Maritime traders most often congregated in ports, which were considered the point in which land and sea met that linked the hinterland to the wider world.
[10] There were some ports that were more favored than others, blessed with a good location, with sufficient warehouse facilities, accessible harbors, and adequate supplies of food and water became "entrepôts," which were essentially the super-centers for trade.
It was rare that these ports were ever considered a final destination, though, but rather central meeting points in what was an ever-changing economic and political environment.
While cities like Singapore, Bangkok, and Hong Kong remain vibrant and open to the world, similar to their early modern roles, only a few ports are as economically crucial today as they were in the past.
Caravans that contained numbers from ten, all the way to up forty thousand pack or draft animals moved overland at a time.
[9] The majority of all of the port cities were in symbiosis with the caravan routes to and from their related hinterland interiors, and sometimes even with distant transcontinental regions.
Much of the focus of early research was on imitating birds, but through trial and error, balloons, airships, gliders and eventually powered aircraft and other types of flying machines were invented.
Apart from some scattered reference in ancient and medieval records, resting on slender evidence and in need of interpretation, the earliest clearly verifiable human flight took place in Paris in 1783, when Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes went 5 miles (8.0 km) in a hot air balloon invented by the Montgolfier brothers.
All countries involved in the war stepped up development and production of aircraft and flight-based weapon delivery systems, such as the first long-range bomber.
After the war ended, commercial aviation grew rapidly, using mostly ex-military aircraft to transport people and cargo.
This growth was accelerated by the glut of heavy and super-heavy bomber airframes like the Lancaster that could be converted into commercial aircraft.
In the beginning of the 21st century, subsonic military aviation focused on eliminating the pilot in favor of remotely operated or completely autonomous vehicles.
Portolan charts rose up, plotting this linear excursion routes, making sea navigation more accurate and efficient.
