history of transportation

…production heightened demands on the transportation system to move raw materials and finished products. Massive road and canal building programs were one response, but steam engines also were directly applied as a result of inventions in Britain and the United States. Steam shipping plied major waterways soon after 1800 and…

…rail, barge, ship, and road transportation. The new transport companies not only enabled factories to obtain raw materials and to ship finished products over increasingly large distances, but they also created a substantial demand for the output of the new industries.

The railroad, the steamship, and the telegraph had a profound impact on logistic method during the last half of the 19th century. Beginning with the Crimean War (1854–56), telegraphic communication became an indispensable tool of command, intelligence, and operational coordination, particularly in

in agriculture and transportation. As farming became more productive, it produced a surplus of food. The development of means of transportation, dating from the invention of the wheel about 3500 bce, made it possible for the surplus from the countryside to feed urban populations, a system that continues…

…costs of overcoming frictions in transport and communications and (2) maximizing internal economies of scale and external economies of agglomeration. Although the intellectual and social prerequisites for industrialization were not uniquely present in any one nation, an unusual confluence of commercial, geographic, and technological factors in Britain led to far-reaching…

…of the contemporary city was transportation technology. The evolution of transport modes from foot and horse to mechanized vehicles facilitated tremendous urban territorial expansion. Workers were able to live far from their jobs, and goods could move quickly from point of production to market. However, automobiles and buses rapidly congested…

…of an Austrian infrastructure of railroads and water transport. The first railroad on the European Continent appeared between Linz (Austria) and Budweis (now Ceské Budejovice, Czech Republic); it was a horse-drawn railway between the Danube and the Moldau (Vltava) rivers, which in fact was a connection between the Danube and…

…in the size of its transportation infrastructure. Japan, South Korea, China, and the Philippines rank high in ship ownership, and Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are among the world’s major shipbuilding countries. In addition to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the other major ports in the eastern…

Transportation facilities improved, allowing production away from the sources of supplies and making products available to distant regions. The state maintained highways, with staffed stations, for official travel and a courier service network, the latter being an index of centralized government control. Along the highways…

Additions to transportation infrastructure also contributed to greater integration of isolated population clusters. The most essential rail lines had already taken shape by 1910, but the coming of automotive transport led to a major upgrading and extension of highways, and the airplane introduced an entirely new mode…

Transport, again, followed earlier precedents, the sailing ship emerging as a seagoing vessel with a carvel-built hull (that is, with planks meeting edge-to-edge rather than overlapping as in clinker-built designs), and a fully developed keel with stempost and sternpost. The Greek sailing ship was…

Automation has been applied in various ways in the transportation industries. Applications include airline reservation systems, automatic pilots in aircraft and locomotives, and urban mass-transit systems. The airlines use computerized reservation systems to continuously monitor the status of all flights. With these systems, ticket…

Roman roads and bridges were products of military engineering, but the pavements of McAdam and the bridges of Perronet were the work of the civil engineer. So were the canals of the 18th century and the railways of the 19th, which, by providing bulk…

…service industries, such as air transportation, the division and specialization of skills can be observed among ticket agents, pilots, navigators, baggage handlers, flight attendants, maintenance crews, and traffic controllers. All major engineering projects in both design and manufacture generally require a complement of engineering specialties including chemical, mechanical, and electrical…