Article January 10, 1901 Issue

Century Retrospects

Progress in Methods of Travel in a Hundred Years.

Boston Transcript

The caravan was typical of the Middle Ages, and survived even in brand-new America until the continent was spanned by railroads and the waterways so united that from the sea we can now in steam vessels penetrate the very heart of the new world. It is in this new world that the most important transportation innovations have originated and been worked to something near perfection. And the beginnings of real progress to wards present completeness are not much older than our national life. But the experimental stage, without which nothing could have been accomplished, began much earlier, for Sir Isaac Newton comprehended in some sort the practical power of steam, and it, 1680 suggested a way by which steam locomotion was really achieved. From then till boats were propelled by it in the water and carriages driven over the roads, the ingenious minds of the world were busy trying to carry out in practical ways the suggestion of this greatest scientist of the seventeenth century. Indeed, it may be said with entire truth that the record of improvements in the steam engine and steam locomotive is also the history of travel during the two centuries just past. The eighteenth century was that of experiment; the nineteenth that of accomplishment.

During the century of experiment the travel by sea was in sailing vessels; by land in wagons drawn by horses and on horseback. For more than one third of the century of accomplishment these methods were unchanged, though on the eve of change. They were not to any great extent superseded till half the nineteenth century was gone. Now they are all but obsolete. It is quite true that sailing vessels are still numerous on all the seas, but they are not used to any extent for travel. So, also, are horses used in greater numbers than ever before; but they, too, are no longer employed in the service of travel in a large sense. But during all the one hundred and fifty years, from 1680 to 1830, efforts were courageously made so to harness steam as to make it useful in transportation.

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