Transportation
“The Industrial Revolution had two ways of transportation. The ways of transportation are on land and on sea. The invention of the steam locomotive helped transportation a lot. It was the invention that helped the growth of railroads. George Stephenson developed the steam locomotives to pull carriages along iron rails. The railroad did not have to follow the course of the river. This meant that tracks could go where rivers did not, allowing factory workers and merchants to ship goods over land. The world’s first major rail line from Liverpool to Manchester, opened in England in 1830. Railroad travel and railroad building boomed" (Ellis).
"The first modern steam engine was built by an engineer, Thomas Newcomen, in 1705 to improve the pumping equipment used to eliminate seepage in tin and copper mines. Newcomen's idea was to put a vertical piston and cylinder at the end of a pump handle. He put steam in the cylinder and then condensed it with a spray of cold water; the vacuum created allowed atmospheric pressure to push the piston down" (Professor Gerhard Rempel).
"The earliest of railways were wagonways linking the coal mines to the rivers. The railroads were made up of wooden rails on which the wheels ran. In the 1760's, cast iron plates were laid on top of the wooden rails providing and smoother ride. The cast iron wasn't a very good material, it could catch stones, debris, and was weak and brittle" (Wikipedia).
"Railroads became a standard item of British export. After 1842 France began a railroad system which combined private and public enterprise. The government provided the roadbed and then leased it to a private company which provided the equipment. In Russia, Canada, and the United States, railways served to link communities separated by vast distances" (Professor Gerhard Rempel)
“In 1807, an American, Robert Fulton, used Watt’s steam engine to power the Clermont up on the Hudson River in New York. The steamboat traveled at a record breaking speed of 5 miles per hour. This helped because the steam-powered freighters with iron hulls were carrying 10 to 20 times the cargo of wooden ships” (Ellis).
Problems occured with the steamboat. First of all, self-propelled was more expensive than to build and operate sailing ships; Secondly, its boiler and engine took up most of the room so there was really no room for passengers. The steamboat had some advantages also. It was not helpless in a storm and it could arrive and depart on its own.
By the middle of the ninetineth century, the middle and working class had automobiles in Europe and The United States. The automobile provided more investment, produced different kinds of jobs, and increased the road-making.
Sources:
Modern World History Book
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