Timeline of transportation technology

Timeline of transport technology

Contents 1 Antiquity 2 Middle Ages 3 17th century 4 18th century 5 19th century 6 20th century 7 21st century 8 Notes

Antiquity

• Stone Age – Dugout canoes
• 3500 BC – Wheeled carts are invented in Mesopotamia
• 3500 BC – River boats are invented
• 3100 BC – Horses are tamed and used for transport Botai Egypt
• 2000 BC – Chariots built by Indo-Iranians
• 6th century BC – Diolkos wagonway is built across the isthmus of Corinth.
• 500 BC – Postal system developed in Achaemenid Empire (Persian Empire)
• 332 BC – First documented use of divers or submersibles, during the siege of Syracuse. Alexander the Great, according to medieval legends, used a submersible or diving bell in 332 BC, during the siege of Tyre.
• 312 BC – One of the earliest paved roads, the Appian Way, is built; the Romans eventually built over 50,000 miles of paved Roman roads
• 236 BC – The date ascribed by Vitruvius for the first documented elevator, which he reports as having been built by Archimedes.
• 214 BC – Lingqu Canal is built in China
• 200 BC – The Kongming lantern, is invented in China

Middle Ages

• 800 – The streets of Baghdad are paved with tar
• Late 9th century – Kamal invented in India or Arab Empire
• 1044 – Compass invented in China
• 13th century (or before) – Rocket invented in China
• 1350 – Compass dial invented by Ibn al-Shatir
• late 15th century - European sailing ships become advanced enough to reliably cross oceans.

17th century

• 1620 – Cornelius Drebbel builds the world's first known submarine, which is propelled by oars (although there are earlier ideas for and depictions of submarines).
• 1662 – Blaise Pascal invents a horse-drawn public bus which has a regular route, schedule, and fare system
• 1672 – Ferdinand Verbiest may have built what may have been the first steam powered car^[1][2]

18th century

• 1740 – Jacques de Vaucanson debuted his clockwork powered carriage
• 1769 – Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot demonstrates his fardier à vapeur, an experimental steam-driven artillery tractor
• 1776 – First submarine to be propelled by screws, and the first military submarine to attempt an attack on a ship, Turtle, is built by David Bushnell. The attack fails to sink the HMS Eagle.
• 1783 – Joseph Montgolfier and Étienne Montgolfier launch the first hot air balloons
• 1783 – Jacques Charles and Les Frères Robert (Anne-Jean Robert and Nicolas-Louis Robert) launch the first Hydrogen balloon

• 1784 – William Murdoch built a working model of a steam carriage in Redruth, England^[3]

19th century

• 1801 – Richard Trevithick ran a full-sized steam 'road locomotive' on the road in Camborne, England^[3]
• 1803 – Richard Trevithick built his 10-seater London Steam Carriage^[3]
• 1803 – William Symington's Charlotte Dundas, generally considered to be the world's first practical steamboat, makes her first voyage.
• 1804 – Richard Trevithick built a prototype steam-powered railway locomotive.
• 1804 – Oliver Evans (claimed to have) demonstrated a steam-powered amphibious vehicle.
• 1807 – Robert Fulton's North River Steamboat, the world's first commercially successful steamboat, makes her maiden voyage.
• 1807 – Nicéphore Niépce installed his Pyréolophore internal combustion engine in a boat and powered up the river Saone in France.
• 1807 – Isaac de Rivas made a hydrogen gas powered internal combustion engine and mounted it on a vehicle.
• 1814 – George Stephenson built the first practical steam-powered railway locomotive
• 1816 – The most likely originator of the bicycle is the German, Baron Karl von Drais, who rode his 1816 machine while collecting taxes from his tenants.
• 1819 – SS Savannah, the first vessel to cross the Atlantic Ocean partly under steam power, arrives at Liverpool, England from Savannah, Georgia.
• 1838 – Isambard Kingdom Brunel's SS Great Western, the first purpose-built transatlantic steamship, inaugurates the first regular transatlantic steamship service.
• 1852 – Elisha Otis invents the safety elevator.
• 1853 – Sir George Cayley built and demonstrated the first heavier-than-air aircraft (a glider)
• 1862 – Étienne Lenoir made a gasoline engine automobile
• 1868 – George Westinghouse invented the compressed-air brake for railway trains.
• 1868 – Louis-Guillaume Perreaux's steam velocipede, a steam engine attached to a Michaux velocipede.^[4]
• 1880 – Werner von Siemens builds first electric elevator.
• 1894 – Hildebrand & Wolfmüller became the first motorcycle available to the public for purchase.
• 1896 – Jesse W. Reno builds first escalator at Coney Island, and then reinstalls it on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge.
• 1897 – Charles Parsons' Turbinia, the first vessel to be powered by a steam turbine, makes her debut.

20th century

• 1900 – Ferdinand von Zeppelin builds the first successful airship
• 1903
  • Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright fly the first motor-driven airplane
  • Diesel engine tested in a canal boat by Rudolph Diesel, Adrian Bochet and Frederic Dyckhoff
• 1908 – Henry Ford develops the assembly line method of automobile manufacturing
• 1911 – Selandia launched, the first ocean-going, diesel engine-driven ship
• 1912 – Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled rocket
• 1935 – First flight of the DC-3, one of the most significant transport aircraft in the history of aviation^[5]
• 1942 – V2 rocket covers a distance of 200 kilometres (120 mi)
• 1947 – First supersonic manned flight
• 1955 – The first nuclear powered vessel, the USS Nautilus, a submarine, is launched
• 1957
  • Sputnik 1, the first man-made satellite to be launched into orbit
  • Gateway City, the world’s first purpose-built container ship, enters service
  • First flight of the Boeing 707, the first commercially-successful jet airliner
• 1961 – Vostok 1, the first manned space mission, designed by Sergey Korolyov and Kerim Kerimov, makes two orbits around the Earth
• 1969
  • First flight of the Boeing 747, the first commercial widebody airliner.
  • First manned Moon landing
• 1971 – Salyut 1, the first space station, launched by Kerim Kerimov
• 1976 – Concorde makes the world's first commercial passenger-carrying supersonic flight
• 1981 – First flight of the space shuttle

21st century

• 2001 - the Segway PT self balancing personal transport was launched by inventor Dean Kamen
• 2004 – the first commercial high speed Maglev train starts operation between Shanghai and its airport.
• 2004 - the first spaceflight of SpaceShipOne, the first privately funded human spaceflight (21 June 2004).

Notes

1. ^ "1679–1681 – R P Verbiest's Steam Chariot". History of the Automobile: origin to 1900. Hergé. http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://users.skynet.be/tintinpassion/VOIRSAVOIR/Auto/Pages_auto/Auto_001.html&sa=X&oi=translate. Retrieved 8 May 2009. 
2. ^ Setright, L. J. K. (2004). Drive On!: A Social History of the Motor Car. Granta Books. ISBN 1-86207-698-7. 
3. ^ ^{a b c} C.D. Buchanan (1958). "1". Mixed Blessing: The Motor in Britain. Leonard Hill. 
4. ^ Falco, Charles M.; Guggenheim Museum Staff (1998), "Issues in the Evolution of the Motorcycle", in Krens, Thomas; Drutt, Matthew, The Art of the Motorcycle, Harry N. Abrams, pp. 24–31, 98–101, ISBN 0892072075 
5. ^ The DC-3