Early innovations in cargo transport

12 Feb Early innovations in cargo transport

For most of human history, both the speed and efficiency of transportation were staggeringly low, and the costs of overcoming the friction of distance were exorbitantly high. Even as late as the nineteenth century, the means of transportation were not greatly different from those prevailing in biblical times. The major leap came with two closely associated innovations: the application of steam power as a means of propulsion and the use of iron and steel for trains, railway tracks, and oceangoing vessels. These, coupled with the linking together of overland and oceanic transportation, enabled the far corners of the earth to become more closely linked.