The History of Transportation

From the wheel to the supersonic jet, humanity has made leaps and bounds in
transportation. Here is a brief look at some of those inventions, and how they've
changed the way we look at the world.

Many people today take for granted the very means of travel available to them. Few
stop to think of how life would be different had man never tamed that first wild horse, or
shaped that very first wheel. How did ancient man hit on these life-altering ideas?
Where did the thought first originate? How have the advances of time led humanity from
the ground to the stars?

Archaeologists believe that the very first step toward man-made transportation began in
either Mesopotamia or Asia, sometime around 4000-3500 BC, with the invention of the
wheel. By this point, man had long since domesticated the horse, and was using it to
help him till the soil and plant crops. But the invention of the wheel would eventually
make man's ability to transport his crops from one place to another less awkward, and
birth the idea of trade and exchange. The invention of the wheel would lead to the
development of mass transportation, as man put his new invention to practical uses.

The next logical evolutionary step from the wheel was the invention of the cart and
chariot. The two-wheel chariot found its birthplace in Sumeria, and is believed to be the
world's first form of wheeled transportation. Built around 3500 BC, this chariot increased
the speed of travel over land, and eventually led to the four-wheeled cart, which took the
burden of carrying supplies and equipment off of the shoulders of the common man.

As man overcame the boundaries of land travel, his curiosity about the world around
him increased. To his aid, man had developed a means of traveling on water even
before he had domesticated the horse. The origin of the dugout boat is one of history's
great mysteries. Historians are unable to pinpoint when or where the very first water
vessel was set afloat, and even speculate that it might have been purely an accident the
first time. But, however it happened, the addition of the boat changed the face of
transportation. Boats allowed man to, for the first time ever, cross bodies of water
without getting wet.

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Over time, the simple boat evolved to include a large square of cloth mounted on a
central pole. This cloth, called a sail, would turn the boat into a sail-propelled ship. This
new addition gave man the ability to use waterways as a means of swift travel from one
place to another, and even to travel against the current of rivers. However, the evolution
of water travel didn't stop with the sail. Ships would eventually take on a sleekness as
they increased in size. Before long, they would add oars and rudders, then deck covers.
By Greek and Roman times, ships had grown clunky shipboard towers, as well, which
developed, over time, into the Medieval stern- and forecastles. By the late Medieval era,
these castles were built solid, as a part of the ship's basic structure. Then, by the
Renaissance and the Age of Exploration which followed, ships had gained tiers of
rigging and sails, becoming sleek and speedy.

Then, in the 1800s, ships began to shed their sails on the rivers once again. The advent
of automation was changing transportation forever. The very first automation in ships
was the cumbersome paddlewheel. Due to their bulky form and inability to turn easily,
paddlewheel boats were confined to river travel, where they would experience calmer
currents and need less maneuverability.

After the paddlewheel came the steamship. These vessels used coal or wood, burned
to heat water, which in turn created the steam pressure used to work the pistons which
moved the ship. The steamship was to enjoy a long and trusted run on both rivers and
seas. Then, in 1912, the first diesel-powered ship, the Danish Selandia, was launched.
That diesel engine design was to become the industrial and military standard until after
World War II.

Then, in 1958, the first nuclear powered ship was launched. However, nuclear power
was soon discarded by industry as too expensive and risky, though it would continue to
find use in the military community.

Automation also improved travel by land. Mass transit became a standard, originally
through the steam engine of the eighteenth century. But these early trains were slow
and very often dangerous. Then, in 1804, locomotives, which used steam to power a
series of pistons (much like a steamship), came into use. These locomotives were
powerful enough that one engine could pull several cars, a feat hopelessly beyond the
capacity of the earlier steam engines.

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Over the next one hundred years, various improvements would be made to the
locomotive, speeding up transit and attempting to make train travel safer. Then, during
World War II, the diesel engine came into widespread use, and steam was almost
completely forgotten. Even electricity had been experimented with in the running of
trains, as early as 1895, but was considered too expensive and unreliable to run until
the advent of the subway, when electricity became the easiest and cleanest means of
underground motion.

Automation was not, however, reserved exclusively for mass transit. As early as 800
BC, there is some evidence that steam powered vehicles were used in the Orient. But
these were not used for mass transit, but rather for individual travel. However, the first
actual surviving record of a powered vehicle is from AD 1670, when a Jesuit missionary
in China built a cart driven by a steam turbine. By 1840, this concept had developed into
the "road locomotive," a contraption not very unlike the modern-day bus.

In 1860, a Frenchman named Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir devised an internal

combustion engine which ran on illuminating gas. The first actual automobile, however,
wasn't patented until the 1890s. Advancements have continued to be made in the time
since. The automobile was the single most important development in the history of
transportation since the invention of the wheel. Automobiles increased personal mobility
and permitted people to live at greater distances from their work, leading to the
formation of suburbs.

The next stride in transportation looked not to the land, or even to the seas, but to the
sky. Although many people have toyed with flight over the millennia, the first sustained,
controlled flight didn't take place until December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North
Carolina. The inventors of this new flying machine were brothers Orville and Wilbur
Wright, two bicycle makers. Their invention would eventually grow from a bicycle-
propelled contraption to, after World War II, jet-propelled aircraft capable of world-wide
mass transit. The aero plane allowed people to cover great distances in less time,
cutting transatlantic travel time in half.

Having conquered flight, man's gaze turned toward the night sky, and the stars. After
centuries of rockets unable to pierce the atmosphere and escape the gravitational pull
of the earth, the United States announced the formation of the Vanguard Satellite
Program (VSP) in 1955, and began exploring what it would take to break away from the

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Earth. On October 4, 1957, however, the USSR succeeded in launching to very first
earth-orbiting satellite, Sputnik I. The first manned space-flight, however, did not take
place until April 12, 1961, when the Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth
in the Vostok I.

Then, on July 16, 1969, American astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to set
foot on the moon. In July of 1975, a joint American-Russian venture began, docking
spacecraft together in space. Then, on February 18, 1977, space-flight took another
stride with the test flight of the very first reusable space shuttle, the US craft Enterprise.

From the wheel to the stars, man's travel has only ever been limited by the scope of his
imagination. As each new challenge is conquered, humanity looks beyond it, to the next
challenge. The annals of history are evidence that humanity will continue to stride
forward, particularly when faced with challenges in transportation.

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