Transport

This morning I strolled along the river path to the newsagent to pick up my newspapers. Exactly the same mode of transport that I would have used 5,000 years or more in the past but without the annoyance of having to read the things.

Admittedly, I could have used the river to get there. The first prehistoric boats are presumed to have been dugout canoes which were developed independently by various Stone Age populations around 10,000 years ago, but that is another article as I want to stick with land based transport.

Skipping forward though time my method of travelling would have changed with technological innovations. Let’s consider the wheel. The earliest known depictions of wheeled vehicles are on the Bronocice pot, found in a Neolithic village in Poland. 3,635 -3,370 BC and several clay tablets found in Uruk in Mesopotamia. Both illustrate 4 wheeled vehicles dated to around 3300-3100 BC probably in response to the domestication of horses and the widespread development of road infrastructure and pathways.

Bronocice Pot

The wheel changed everything, from trade and transport to agriculture and technology. Wheels allowed people to transport goods and materials farther and faster than ever before. Carts, ploughs, and other wheel-based tools made agriculture more efficient. Wheels turned long journeys into manageable trips, making trade and exploration easier. Chariots and war carts changed warfare, while carts and rollers made construction of large structures easier.

So are wheels the most important development in transport?

I’m leaping forward at the speed of a bullet train to 1830 CE and the invention of the railways. I’m not going to go over the engineering history but look at how the railways changed UK society.

Social
The railways broke down stereotypes and mixed cultures because people from different regions were able to mix more.
Time became standardised for the first time because trains had to run to a set timetable across the country.
Railways encouraged people to travel further and this meant people could move to different areas to find work.
People were able to take short holidays and day trips to the beach.
Many sports became regulated because national competitions could be set up for rugby, football and cricket.
National newspapers could now be delivered.

Political
Political movements spread around the country because they could travel around the country.
Political newspapers, pamphlets and newsletters could be delivered by train.

Economic
The transport of heavy materials became much cheaper.
Perishable food could be moved quickly, so foods such as vegetables and dairy products could now reach the market while they were still fresh.

There are other innovations in transport leading to the bicycle, motor car and plane but basically they just increase some of the three developments mentioned above.

Various web sites give different answers to the question of what was the most important invention in transport but I suppose it depends on what one is measuring. My feeling is that the wheel opened up the world for individuals but the train opened it to everyone.

Night Mail Train

Well, that seems to lead on to this poem:

The Night Mail 

This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.

Through sparse counties she rampages,
Her driver's eye upon the gauges.
Panting up past lonely farms
Fed by the fireman's restless arms.
Striding forward along the rails
Through southern uplands with northern mails.

Winding up the valley to the watershed,
Through the heather and the weather and the dawn overhead.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shoveling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheepdogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

Dawn freshens, the climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends
Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:

In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs
Men long for news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers' declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters,
Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

                                                           W.H. Auden

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.