Lesson 2

History of Transportation
Prepared by: Elmer Linga
 Introduction

The history of transportation can be conveniently—if

over-simply--divided into period during which motive
power was most characteristically furnished by human
and animal muscle, by such natural forces as wind and
gravity, and by fuel-operated machines.
Manpower
Stone Age man’s transportation of firewood and of animals killed in the hunt
probably led to the invention of the sled. From the sled early man may have got the
idea for ski pieces of smooth board resembling sled runners but worn on the feet of
the hunter—and later of snowshoes. The first watercraft, the man-powered raft and
canoe, probably evolved from the floating log. The greatest advance in land
transport after the sled was the wheel, probably first invented in the
TigrisEuphrates Valley sometime before 3500 BC. The ancient Egyptians took little
or no part in the invention. The great blocks of stone that went to make the
pyramids were floated on barges down the Nile River and then moved over land on
sleds running on rollers. Gangs of slaves dragged the blocks of stone by means of
large ropes, while other slaves at the rear of sled picked-up the rollers over which
the sled had passed and hurried around and place them at the front. To raise the
blocks of stone to their positions in the pyramids, the Egyptian built ramps.
Animal Power
But while human muscle power was still in widespread
use for transport in ancient Egypt, animal muscle power
was being widely exploited in the other river valley
civilizations. The ox, the ass, and the camel were tamed
somewhere in the Middle East by 3000 BC. In arctic
snows the reindeer, which can carry a load of about 130
lbs. (60 kg.) without much effort, is still widely used. In
the higher altitudes of the Himalayas the yak, a species
of ox, is used as pack animal. In India the beast of burden
is often the elephant. In Peru the llama is domesticated
and used as pack animal.
Animal Power
The horse was tamed somewhere in its native habitat on the
steppes of Central Asia. The invention of the bit and bridle
before 3000 BC gave steppe folk control of the horse for riding.
The stirrup was not invented until Roman times, probably
somewhere in Western Asia. The earliest known stirrups have
been found in South Russia in tombs dating from between 100
BC and 400 AD. Until the invention of horse collar, about 900
AD, horses were harnessed like oxen. A yoke passed over the
withers, and a strap tightened on the horse’s chest when it
pulled, half strangling the animal. The Romans, knowing little
anatomy, did not realize that a good harness for the ox was a
very poor harness for the horse.
Animal Power
This fact explains why the horse was little used as a draft
animal until late in the middle ages, whereas the ox almost
universally used as draft animal from 3000 BC. Where the
horse was used for transportation during the middle ages, it
was mainly as a pack carrier at its sides. Another invention
that played a great part in the history of transportation was
the horseshoe. In its wild state the horse can gallop for long-
distance on soft grass of the Asiatic steppes. But if it is
driven on a hard, metal road its soft hoofs soon become
broken and it goes lame. An iron horseshoe, mailed around
the edge of the hard hoof, stops the hoof from breaking
away. It appears that the iron horseshoe was invented in
Gaul about the time of Julius Caesar, and taken to Britain
soon afterward.
Wind Power

Primitive man may have hoisted crude sails of skins on his

rafts of canoes, for there is clear evidence of the migration
of peoples over wide stretches of ocean long before 3000
BC. The ships of Egypt, Phoenix, and Greece were driven
partly by a large square sail of mid ships and partly by
oars. The war gallery, in which a greater degree of
maneuverability was needed, had narrower lines and
depended more on oars than did the trading vessels. In
other parts of the world the original dugout canoe
developed into different kinds of watercraft. In the North
Sea a ship that was sharp at both ends, like canoe,
developed, where as the Mediterranean type of vessel had
a rounded stern. In the Pacific, through rafts remained in
the use in some regions, a completely different type of
 Wind Power

In Chinese waters at junk appeared. Mediterranean ships were all carvel

built, that is, the planks were placed side by side like the boards on a floor,
and the cracks between the boards made watertight with tar. The ships of
the North Sea, however, were made of overlapping planks, or clinker built.
North Sea ships had only one steering oar, placed on the “steer board”, or
starboard, quarter, whereas the Mediterranean ships had two steering
oars one on each side of the stern. The rudder that is used for steering in
modern ships did not make its appearance until about 1200 A.D. A great
aid to sea transportation reached Europe about 1300 AD in the form of the
ships compass, a device first known among Chinese sailors and then
transmitted by the Arabs. An important improvement in ship-building took
place about 1450 AD with the development of the three-master ship.
Thereafter the story of sea transportation is largely the story of the
conquest of the whole globe by the three mastered skin.
Roads and Vehicles

The Romans brought road building to its highest point of

perfection in ancient times. The Roman road network
reached a total of about 50,000 mi. (80,000 km.), with
“feeder” roads branching out from the main highways.
The roads were costly because Roman road engineers
assumed that deep foundations, formed by layer after of
heavy stones were necessary to make roads that would
carry heavy traffic for many years. This theory was not
completely abandoned until John L. Mc Adam perfected
the macadamized road in England about 1815.
Roads and Vehicles
Realizing that dry native soil would support any weight. Mc
Adam made the surface of his roads completely watertight and
curved so that main would run off them as off a roof. He did this
pounding and rolling a layer of small stones into a hard surface.
This road remained the best that could be devised until the
rubber tires of the last country. Significant improvement of road
vehicle began with the adoption of coach spring about 1650. In
the mid 18th century English roads were so bad that coaches
could average only about 4 mph (6.4 km/h), and the mail was
usually carried by boys on horses for delivering the mail. The first
mail coach run in March 1785 and by 1800 the English mail
coach system was in full swing.
Roads and Vehicles
Canals, railways, and steamboats. The improvement in roads, in the
horses and in coaches had solved the problem of fast transportation of
passengers and light freight, but there still remained the problem of
heavy transportation. This problem was met first by the development
of canals and later by railroads. In 1761, the Duke of Bridgewater
arranged with an engineer, Jones Brindley, to Manchester, 7 mi. (11 km)
away. As a result the price of coal dropped by half, while still allowing
the Duke plenty of profit on his investment. Brindley’s success led to
England, in particular was covered by a network of canals. The first
American canal, opened in 1825, connected Lake Erie with the Hudson
River at Albany. English canals fell into decay with the coming of the
railroad. William Mardlock and Richard Trevthick had made early types
of locomotives before 1800.
Roads and Vehicles
But it was George Stephenson who pushed through the final stages of the
fully developed railway locomotive. Stephenson built his first model in
1814 for use in hauling trucks of coal. The first railroad was the Stockton
and Darlington Line, begun in 1825. The second, the Liver Pool and
Manchester, followed in 1829. At first, it was certain that these early
crude locomotive should be more satisfactory than horses. It was
assumed that locomotives would not be able to haul heavy loads up an
incline, since the wheels, it was thought, would spin without gripping the
rails. This theory was later found to be false, but only after long sections
of English lines, at great cost, had been made as near horizontal as
possible. By 1840 the English railways had put nearly all the main
coaching companies out of business, and the road ceased to be an
important factor in inland transportation until the automobile era began
about 1900. In the USA, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company began
work on the first American railroad in 1828.
Roads and Vehicles
Construction of Canada’s first railroad, the Champlain
and St. Lawrence, began in 1832. The development of
the steamboat proceeded simultaneously with the
development of the steam locomotive. Here the
steam engine was to impart a rotary motion to
paddle wheels. The first successful steamboat journey
in USA was made by Robert Fulton’s Clermont up to
the Hudson River in 1807. By 1811 the first steamboat
appeared on the Ohio River, inaugurating the great
steam boating era on the inland waterways.
 The Automobile
In England for some times after 1800 it seemed that the future
of mechanical road transportation with the steam carriage.
Stem traction engines were a familiar sight on many roads
throughout the world toward the end of the 19th century. The
future of mechanical road transport, however, lay with vehicle
driven by the internal combustion engine, the invention of
which usually attributed to the FrenchmanEtiene Lenoir. By
1865 there were 400 Lenoir gas engines in France doing such
light work as cutting chaff and driving of the modern
automobile when he put toward the invention ofthe modern
automobile when he put one of this as engines in a carriage
and drove around his factory.
The Automobile
This carriage also made a journey of some miles to
Paris. Two German inventors, Nicolaus Otto and
Gottlieb Daimler, also pioneered the manufacture of
gas engines, and Daimler later became a successful
manufacturer of automobiles. At the same time a
small array of inventors was at work in various
countries on the development of early types of
automobiles. The invention of the pneumatic bicycle
tire by Scott, John Boyd Dunlop in 1988 gave a
tremendous impetus to this early work.
Air Transport
Not until the development of the internal combustionengine can the era
of air transportation be said to have begun. Men were making balloon
and flights, however, or more than a century before Wilbur and Orville
Wright made their famous first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, USA,
in 1903. The progress of air transportation was hastened by World Wars I
and II. An important advances in aircraft propulsion occurred with the
invention of the jet engine. Until this invention practically every great
advance in transportation techniques had been the result of the
application of the principle of rotary motion. The jet engine has made
possible speeds that could never had been attained by the rotary action
of the air-crew is effective only in the earth’s atmosphere. The rocket,
however is effective beyond the earth’s atmosphere, and its development
has opened up the era of space exploration and interplanetary travel.