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| TRANSPORTATION. Before There Were Automobiles. |
Long age, most people had to walk wherever they wanted
to go on land. Later, when large animals began to be domesticated, some people
rode on camels, horses, donkeys, oxen, and even elephants.
Then came the discovery of wheels. The people of
Mesopotamia (now in Iraq) built wheeled carts nearly 5,000 years ago. But so
far the earliest cart that has actually been found is one made later than those
in Mesopotamia, by people in ancient Rome. It was simply a flat board. At
first, people pulled carts themselves. Later, they trained animals to do this.
As people used more and more carts, they had to make
roads on which the carts could travel easily. In Europe and North America,
carts developed into great covered wagons and then into stagecoaches. Pulled by
four or six fast horses, stagecoaches first bounced and rolled along the roads
in the mid-1600s. They became an important method of public transport during
the 19th century.
It wasn't until the steam engine was invented that a
better means of transportation was developed. This was the railway train. Steam
locomotives used steam pressure from boiling water to turn their wheels.
TRANSPORTATION. Before There Were Automobiles.
The first passenger train service began in England in
1825. Soon trains were carrying hundreds of thousands of people wherever iron
tracks were laid.
The first motorcars were not built until the late 1890s.
Some of the earliest were made in the United States and England, though they
were slow and broke down a lot. They looked much like carts with fancy wheels.
What most of us would recognize as a motorcar wouldn't come along for several
more years.
TRANSPORTATION. Before There Were Automobiles.
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