“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”~Neil Armstrong~
Early Transportation
With the beginning of human settlement, people needed more efficient ways of transportation instead of walking. As animals became domesticated, horses, oxen, and donkeys became transportation elements of man-made tracks. With the growth of trade, tracks often had to be leveled or widened to allow for animal traffic.
The first mode of transport was created as an attempt to navigate the water: boats. The oldest boats were simple log boats, also known as excavations, which were made by drilling a hole in a tree trunk.
The invention of the wheel
The wheel is one hundred percent homo sapiens innovation. It was not inspired by nature such as airplanes from gliding birds. The wheel was the base for rising of many industries apart from transportation. According to archaeological records, the first wheeled vehicles were in use around 3500 BCE. The first man-made tool for transportation was the wheelbarrow. Following carts as the combination of animals and wheels and then vehicles. Tires are improved mechanisms of wheels made by using rubber chemicals.
Rails
The history of rail transport goes back nearly 500 years, including man-made horsepower systems and wooden rails (or occasionally rocks). This is usually to carry coal from the mine to a river, and from there it can be carried forward by boat, with a wheel running on a rail. The use of cast iron sheets as rails began in the 1760s, and systems (plates) that were part of the Flange Railroad were adopted. However, with the introduction of rolled iron rails, these became obsolete.
The invention of the steam engine
The steam engine ushered in a new era of transportation. It allows passengers to travel easily and quickly with a host of features never seen before. Even the original steam engines could tow up to thirty cars, and the steam engine was extremely powerful, facilitating the transport of goods across the land, and was powered by air pressure, pushing a piston into the vacuum created by the condensing steam instead of pressure. In 1698, Thomas Savery patented a pump with a hand-operated valve to draw water from the mines by suction produced by condensing steam. Around 1712, another Englishman, Thomas Newcomen, invented a more efficient steam engine with a piston that separated the condensate from the water.
In 1769 the Watt steam engine changed everything. Boats were among the first to take advantage of steam-generated power. In 1783, Claude de Jouffroy, a French inventor, built the world’s first steamship, the “Pyroscaphe”. But as part of the exhibition, passengers were taken up and down the river, but there was not enough interest in funding further development.
George Stevenson, the father of the train, is said to have built 16 experimental locomotives for use from 1814 to 1826. The last train he introduced was the Killingworth Billy, which ran until 1881. The first intercity train was built by Stevenson in 1830, between Liverpool and Manchester. These systems, which use the steam locomotive engine, were the first practical mode of mechanical land transport and will be the basic form of mechanical land transport for the next 100 years.
Development of road locomotives
“Roper Steam Velocipede” was the result of another attempt to redesign the steam engine for another private mode of transport. Built-in 1867, the two-wheeled steam-powered bicycle is considered by many historians to be the world’s first motorcycle.
Although ideal for trains, the original steam engines were heavier and proved to be inefficient for vehicles traveling on normal tracks rather than on rails. As a result, some observers argue that the first real car was powered by petrol.
Innovators: Karl Friedrich Benz and Gottlieb Daimler, never met before, and on the same day – January 29, 1886 – filed their patents in two different German cities. In 1885 he drove the first Benz three-wheeler, the first to combine an internal combustion engine with an integrated chassis, and Daimler’s car was the world’s first four-wheel-drive car to include the first high-speed petrol engine.
Water
In the Industrial Revolution, first steamboats and later diesel-powered ships were developed. The first sea-going sailing ships were built by the Austronesians in what is now Taiwan.
Earlier ships were built to sail using wind power. Eventually, the submarine was developed primarily for military purposes and for the general use of humans.
Technically, the first navigable submarine was invented in 1620 by Dutchman Cornelis Drebbel. Drebbel’s submarine, built for the English Royal Navy, could be submerged for up to three hours and was pushed by the Hubble. At the same time, the hand-operated egg-shaped “turtle” in 1776 was an important milestone, as was the launch of the first military submarine used in combat. Finally, in 1888, the Spanish Navy launched the “Peral”, the first electric, battery-powered submarine, and the first fully capable submarine.
Air
The beginning of the twentieth century truly ushered in a new era in transportation history, in 1903, when two American brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, discovered the world’s first airplane.
Around the same time as the Wright brothers were taking flight, French inventor Paul Cornu began started developing a rotorcraft. Also, on November 13, 1907, his “Cornu” helicopter, made slightly larger than some tubes, an engine, and rotating wings, reached a height of about one foot while hovering in the air for about 20 seconds. With that, Cornu would lay claim to being the first helicopter pilot.
After the end of the war, commercial aviation grew rapidly, largely using ex-military aircraft to transport people and goods. This growth was accelerated by heavy and heavy bomber aircraft such as the Lancaster, which could be converted into commercial aircraft. The first commercial jet was the British comet De Haviland. This marked the beginning of the jet era, a period of relatively cheap and fast international travel.
Space
Early humans had never thought that the beginning of transportation by foot ended up in space. It did not take long after the flights began to consider the possibility of humans going further up and into the sky.
The Soviet Union surprised many in the Western world on October 04, 1957, with the successful launch of Sputnik, the first satellite to reach outer space.
Four years later, the Russians followed suit by sending the first manned pilot, Yuri Gagarin, into space on a Vostok 1 spacecraft.
The first spacewalk to the moon was achieved on July 20, 1969, as one giant leap of mankind, with NASA’s Apollo 11 mission, and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin being the first astronauts on the moon.
By Rtr. Kavindana Nirmani
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Beautifully written! ❤