The Acceleration of Transportation History
After the steam engine, new devolopments come one after another.
Human Transport was predominately carried by horses, sails, and rafts on river currents for thousands of years, but the 19th and 20th Centuries have seen a tremdous number of new developments in transportation technology. The dazzling speed with which these technologies built upon each other and developed into something new is amazing when put into perspective by the length of time horse and sail reamained at the technological peak.
It wasn't even a century from the time that men scoffed at the Wright Brothers as foolish dreamers in the early 1900's until men were travelling in outer space in the 1960's. Yuri Gagarin rode his Vokstat spacecraft into orbit in 1961. From Kitty Hawk in 1903 thats only 58 years.
The technological advances that made all this possible all start with James Watt and his steam engine. From 1769 transportation technology moves forward so rapidly that it totally changes the view of the possible in the human world several times, but suprisingly enough, the Queen Elizabeth II was first built in 1969 as a steam ship, and only later converted to diesel electric. There is some continuity within this change, but the horse and sail world of the not so distant past seems entirely alien to many a modern urbanite.
