How fast could you travel across the U.S. in the 1800s?
mnn.com
mnn.com
The thing was, he lives in California, and I live in Washington. He found one last remaining seat on the last flight headed out that night and bought a ticket for me. By 9 PM, I was stepping off an airplane roughly 1600 miles from home. When I woke up that morning, I had no idea I'd sleep on a couch in a dorm room at SJSU.
We seriously live in the future.
Try to grab a train from San Francisco to LA. That's about 400 miles. How long would you expect that to take in this future of which you speak?
Regarding the article, I'd like to see them plot the rate-of-change: how long it took to go from a month to a week to a day and so on, and then continue it into the present day. I think we've hit something of a cap on speed.
The biggest thing slowing down US passenger trains is that the routes are leased from freight lines and the freight trains take priority.
Getting the Eurostar from London to Paris would take you no more than three hours (2:15 for the journey, checking in 45 minutes before departure). Flying from London to Paris would take two hours (1:15 for the journey, again checking in 45 minutes before departure), but you've got to get to and from the airport, whereas the train is taking you directly into the city.
Across medium distances (SF to LA, Paris to London, etc) high speed rail typically provides better passenger comfort, lower CO2 emissions, and travel times as fast as flying once you factor in transit.
This is made even more bizarre by the fact that St. Pancras where the Eurostar terminates is one of the only train stations in London which is located such that trains heading out need to "turn around" to get where they are going. You'd think the Eurostar would terminate south-east of London since that's where the train travels, but this one breaks the rules.
Oh, and EasyJet is probably cheaper than Eurostar to Paris if you don't have a lot of advance notice. I still love the trains, but you didn't pick the best example!
You have ebbsfleet and Ashford for passengers from south of the city.
Also, it would have cost vastly more to put full high speed lines required in most of the way to London Waterloo.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_1
" The next plan for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link involved a tunnel reaching London from the south-east, and an underground terminus in the vicinity of Kings Cross station. However a late change in the plans, principally driven by the then Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine's desire for urban regeneration in east London, led to a change of route, with the new line approaching London from the east. This opened the possibility of reusing the underused St Pancras station as the terminus, with access via the North London Line that crosses the throat of the station.[26] "
Edit: Also, I would be interested to know how long it would take by bike if you happen to know :-)
You walked to work? Good on you... ;)
It was raining in NYC in mid october (screw that) and I REALLY wanted a steak. Seeing as how a good, high quality grass fed steak can end up in the $100 range in NYC, I thought
"I wonder how much it would cost to go to Buenos Aires tonight?"
I pulled up aa.com and checked the Award Reservations---it was only 40,000 ffmiles + $42.40. For a same day reservation.
Since I run a site all about how to get unlimited free airline miles, I had several million--so the total real cost to me (to get to Buenos Aires) was $42.40. Four hours later I was boarding a plane, and 13 hours later I was eating the best steak known to mankind.
Definitely worth it :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USRail1835.jpg
What improved travel was the National Road, the Federal Roads, and the Military Road.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Road_%28United_States%...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Road_%28Cherokee_lands%...
The Federal and National Roads allowed stage travel, and that's what improved speed...for those who weren't walking. By 1850, other than the Seminoles, the Native American nations in the East had been conquered and rail road motive power had advanced.
The first railroad companies, with total individual rights of way typically of 10-30 miles, were just starting to get organized and begin operations in 1830. It wasn't for another 10-20 years that significant contiguous trackage existed. The world was very different in 1850 than it was in 1830.
What's fascinating is how little transportation changed between 200 and 1800. Sixteen hundred years pass and the basic means of getting around are still the same: foot, horse, cart, boat. Then in the hundred years after that there comes an explosion of new options: bicycle, rail, automobile, airplane. Gives some perspective on how relatively new the travel technologies we take for granted today actually are.
Bicycles on the other hand have been around for a while. Why didn't they see more prolific use in Europe between 200 and 1800? I speculate lack of good enough roads. An oxcart road would not be the most pleasant place to ride an old-fashioned bicycle.
Indeed, the work source was a major factor: before the 18th century, there was no efficient and mobile source of work... outside of people and beasts.
> Bicycles on the other hand have been around for a while.
Nope. The first recorded and verifiable ancestor to the bicycle dates back to the early 19th century: Baron Karl von Drais's Laufmaschine in 1817. It had two wheels in-line and could be steered. But users ran on it, propelling it by pushing the ground with their feet (hence the name "running machine"). Oh, and it was solid wood (22kg)
The next elements we associate with an actual bicycle only appeared in 1863: cranks and pedals attached directly to the front wheel.
And in 1885, the "rover" with its chain drive to the back wheel and equally-sized wheels would be the first one you'd recognize as a modern bicycle.
And it's a pretty good story as well.
If you gave someone a bunch of gold, the ability to speak fluent Latin, and kicked them back into ancient Rome, I am sure they could commission the creation of a bicycle. It wouldn't be very good (no rubber for the wheels for starters, maybe replace that with several layers of leather? You might be able to make a leather belt-drive too.), but the general idea should have worked.
Another example is the phonograph. You can make a rudimentary phonograph with some very very basic clockwork, some wax, a needle, and a sheet of something taught and thin (I bet parchment would work fine.) The biggest issue would probably be figuring out how to present it without being burnt as a witch. But nobody did it until the late 19th century.
Over cheaper modes of animal transportation (donkey and cow?), the bike would probably have a speed advantage.
The real downside in both cases is cargo capacity and manual effort, but I think it could have made sense as a poor-mans transport. Barring that though, it could just be a toy for the rich.
If you ever get up close and personal with a stage coach, you'll likely find the suspension interesting, though most in my experience are spring-loaded but undamped. There are reasons long land journeys weren't generally looked forward to.
Citation needed.
And even at that, the race started at 1980, but the first time a man on foot won the race was in 2004.
One "man on foot" win in 24 races and that man being a marathon runner, does not bode well with the idea that man in general can outrun horses for long distances.
It is rare for humans to actually be physically capable of it these days, but chasing animals until they collapse from exhaustion is something hairless sweating bipedal are built for. The very best horses could still do it, but attempting persistence hunting on horseback with most horses would probably injure the horse.
Of course horses have been selectively bread for endurance for thousands of years so arguably their achievements are human achievements, but that's beside the point. ;)
Look at those times: the best time ever is 1 hour, 57 minutes (horse) for a 22 mile race. That is trivial to beat on a bike.
Once built, a bike requires minimal maintenance, is vastly cheaper than a horse, can be ridden with minimal skill (and only the rider, not the bike, requires training), and can be stored in a house or small shed. Bicycle manufacture is highly amenable to mass production techniques (horses, not so much). Other than reinflating tyres and oiling chains, little maintenance is required. On good roads, a bike can easily be ridden 20-40 miles by even a cyclist of moderate skill, and single-day rides of 200-300 miles are attainable. Even loaded with camping gear, a bike can be ridden 60-90 miles per day, continuously, reasonably. Cargo bikes can carry substantial loads locally. Bike jitneys compete with horse-drawn vehicles for human carriage.
Horses or oxen, particularly teamed, can carry much heavier loads. In parts of the world, oxcarts, fitted with modern truck wheels and axles, still compete with automobiles for drayage.
This latter period is sometimes called the Second Industrial Revolution and is characterised by the invention of interchangeability, assembly lines, automated jigs for machining, and the use of electricity and non-coal petroleum fuels.
While the first industrial revolution produced coal and water powered machines, these machines were still themselves made by craftsmen. The introduction of interchangeable parts meant that it was no longer neccesary for a craftsman to hand fit the various components* together - you could make thousands of bicycle wheels and thousands of bicycles and fit them all together with almost no difficult to learn custom fitting. Automated jigs made it possible to mass produce standard sized parts.
(*) It's not even clear that the idea of a 'component' is a very useful one before interchangeable parts were invented because turning a barrel (even if it had already been bored), a stock, and various parts of the action into a rifle isn't something that a non-gunsmith can do. These were 'components' only in the sense that a felled tree is a 'component' of a timber house.
There's a video on Youtube of a gunsmith making a rifle the way it would have been made in the era of the American revolution - in the very early years of the first industrial revolution - and you can see how difficult and finicky it is.
That said, history is interesting.
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations describes mass-production techniques, including specialization, special tools adapted to single sub-tasks, and a style of production approaching an assembly-line (work produced at stations, with the pieces moving from station to station. In 1776.
The Chinese were employing mass production techniques in the manufacture of crossbos in the Warring States period (475 BC - 201 BC): http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/aaa/2008/0000000...
Modern mass production dates to 1803 and production of sailing blocks (used to raise and lower rigging on ships) in England, from which it spread to the US for clock and armaments manufacture. Eli Whitney (of cotton gin fame) attempted mass armaments production in 1798 but failed to achieve quantity output for another 8 years. Refinements in metalurgy, scientific management, steam and electric power, etc., produced further advances -- as with most developments, the seeds were planted early and incrementally developed over time.
As I note in another post, the two specific advances that really made the bicycle possible were advanced metalurgy and vulcanized pneumatic tyres. Both of these weren't particularly feasible until they actually emerged. That said, high-quality Damascus steel dates to 300 BC. The Greeks and Romans had and used coal (used in the production of both steel and synthetic rubber). Rubber was known as far back as 1600 BC, but among the Mayans in South America (it wasn't introduced to Europe until 1736): http://www.essortment.com/history-rubber-21100.html
But the biggest trigger for widespread bicycle adoption was probably socioeconomic, not technological. By the late 19th Century, a middle class with both discretionary income and free time had emerged. And though bikes were used for utility (commuting, errends, light transport), the real driver was recreation. The presence of intense socioeconomic stratification, slavery, feudal systems, and the like, had a serious damping effect on both creation and adoption of new technolgies and products.
1) Husky Airless Street = from $19
2) Amerityre Flatfree = from $35
http://www.bikemania.biz/airless-no-flat/husky-airless-stree...
Really the best way to go is just pack a spare tube. Only takes a couple of minutes to change it on the road once you've practised a few times in your living room. Whenever I get a flat I change it out with my spare, then patch my spare later that day.
Airless tire with decent (though not great) cushioning, but terrible rolling resistance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jYcX_D09ig
Without the development of the crank, the idea of spinning wheels with pedals or gears would not occur to anyone.
Likewise the transport of goods, rather than passengers, was probably more important in forming perceptions of distance, as that's what would drive commerce and thus ongoing relationships.
Attention to goods and other point pairings probably matter a lot when you get to 1857. I expect internal communications, of goods, in the South reflected high proximity to the nearest port, and that NY was essentially on the other side of the moon. Whereas the North was probably much more homogenous in its travel times (proportionately more railroad, less river) -- but largely isolated from the South. Which would have done a lot to foster disunion among the two geographies.
That view would probably also say a lot about the border states, I bet that would show these were essentially islands unto themselves.
Attention to goods and other point pairings probably matter a lot when you get to 1857. I expect internal communications, of goods, in the South reflected high proximity to the nearest port, and that NY was essentially on the other side of the moon. Whereas the North was probably much more homogenous in its travel times (proportionately more railroad, less river) -- but largely isolated from the South.
You might be surprised. Antebellum New York actually had strong commercial ties to the South, primarily from acting as a distribution center for Southern cotton to the rest of the North. These ties were so strong that Fernando Wood, the mayor of New York City during the secession crisis, actually led a short-lived movement to take New York out of the Union and establish it as a neutral "free city" so that it could continue in the cotton trade. (See http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/first-south-... for a good account of this period.) There was actually a fair bit of support in the city for Wood's plan until the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, setting off a wave of pro-Union support in the North that swamped it.
Water travel was the first "highway" system in the US, first along the seacoast, then along rivers, then along canals (notably the Erie Canal, opened in 1825). The Saint Lawrence Seaway, offering deepwater access to Chicago and northern Minnesota, and the Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio river systems, offering access to roughly 1/3 of the present conterminious United States, was (and is) hugely important to commerce. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mississippi_watershed_map_...
Rail, then highway, then air travel are faster than ships and barges, but if you want to maximize ton-miles per hour, you bulk-load or container-load a ship or barge. Coal, grain, and other bulk goods simply cannot be moved economically by other means, and issues such as the lack of water flow on the Mississippi River will have huge knock-on effects on commerce.
During the Civil War, the Union focused a great deal of effort on blockading and controlling southern ports, particularly Savannah and New Orleans, through which the bulk of Confederate exports (and revenues) flowed. Chocking off the South's access to finance had a great deal to do with eventual Union victory.
http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/small-world
There are definitely still some very remote places on this planet.
Cars are point-to-point. Berlin to Paris by train is about 12 hours. By car it's about 10, because there's no need to stop and change. While Frankfurt->Paris is 4 hours by non-stop ICE, and 5 by car.
My wife and I took the California Zephyr from Oakland to Chicago and then the Capitol Limited from Chicago to Washington DC. It took several days (we overnighted in Chicago as the chances of making the connection there on Amtrak are effectively zero). It was a lot of fun, and quite relaxing, but clearly cross country trains sort of peaked in the late 40's early 50's and haven't moved a whole lot since in this country.
Actually, Berlin to Paris by train is 12h if you take direct night trains. During the day, the best trips are ~8h15 with 1 train change (Paris Nord through Köln [Thalys + ICE] or Paris Est through Mannheim [TGV + ICE])
On a side note, provisioning long haul rail in the age of steam must have been an incredible logistics exercise, on-top of that moving mail and other information around the country. Imagine not knowing that a new law was passed for 6 weeks!
It was a lot of fun, although I actually found Japan (where we caught a ferry to from Shanghai) more interesting.
This was of course before the internet was available and laptops were yet the expensive convenience of the industrious business man.
I played lots of card games though.
Travelling in Argentina many people use coaches to go long distances between cities as air travel is so much more expensive. You can get a coach from Puerto Iguazu to Ushuaia if you've got a spare 60 odd hours. The coaches are surprisingly comfy with big reclining seats that are not far off being full beds. We mainly did 12-14h overnight trips between cities so we got some sleep and saved on a night's accommodation.
That'll make you appreciate the Shinkansen or ICE networks.
Basically, modern train technology (although old train technology can have its charms)
I made the mistake of taking Amtrak Seattle-SF and then a later trip SF-Denver. Outside of a few interesting vistas I wouldn't have seen from a car (Mountains in Colorado, more in the Sierra Nevada area, and a few bridges in WA and OR), it really wasn't worthwhile. This was back in the Sprint 1xRTT/EV-DO days, and I couldn't keep a connection (worse than on the roads), the trains were delayed by 4-8h, and the onboard service was pretty horrible. I wish they'd just let Amtrak die an honorable death, with metro transit services, some privatized services for Acela, and maybe some specialty trains run in cooperation with the freight carriers on other lines (if profitable), probably with less frequency.
In contrast I did the Eurail thing back in 1998-1999, and saw lots of France (literally picking random destinations a long distance away; I didn't have much money, so I had to sleep on the train, so long night trips were preferable), Austria, Hungary, Germany, and Scandinavia, and more.
Costs have of course come way down.
The bigger question would be price, which I suspect would be higher than average air fares.
My break-even point is at about 6-8 hours by train, vs. a plane. That gets me to Hamburg.
Absolutely, which is why I pointed out that for the distance it wouldn't be a good idea: cross-continental high-speed rail makes little sense, the sweet spot currently tops out around 1000 miles (and even then it depends, it works well in Europe because train stations can be in the city center — where things happen and mass transportation is developed — versus airport being much further out in the suburbs or countryside, I do not know if it'd work as well in the US where the most affluent segments of the population tends to live in the suburbs rather than the city and cities are more often designed around car travel).
A five hour cross country flight really takes 8 hours, so a 15 hour train between city centers doesn't sound so bad. At half the distance, a 7 hour train vs a 5.5 hour plane excursion, sounds delightful.
from "Atlas of the historical geography of the United States" (1932)
Page here: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/genpub/abl7462.0001.001/390?view...
ToC: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/genpub/abl7462.0001.001?view=toc
Considering the traffic, not much has changed for people with four wheels.
What is particularly interesting about this was how similar the methodology that they used was to the Lean Startup methodology. With the way that the Railroad Act was structured, there was significant award for moving fast. While they were in the wilderness, it was rather difficult/expensive getting supplies. They used lower quality cottonwood ties to build out fast knowing that once the railroads were built, higher quality replacements could be brought in for far cheaper.
Anyways, I'd highly recommend this book for those of you in the startup scene.
I think (hope) that we're on a path to change this in the near future. The main reason for our lack of advancement in travel time is the cost of gasoline. The Concorde demonstrated that supersonic transport was technically possible, but economically impossible. What will change the landscape is electric planes. This is not a fantasy - there are several companies with (somewhat) viable piston planes being engineered right now.
The first company is Beyond Aviation (www.beyond-aviation.com) which is producing an electric varient of the venerable Cessna 172 (most popular plane produced, the default trainer option for pilots). It's not a perfect plane -- only 2 people can ride in it, and it's designed for flight schools, not for cruising around, but it's a big step forward for aviation.
The second company is Pipistrel, which is developing the Panthera (http://www.pipistrel.si/plane/panthera/technical-data). The Panthera Electro is a huge step in the right direction. Although it only seats 2, and cruises at 118 knots, it can go for 215NM. This is just shy of NYC -> DC. Imagine if you could travel between these cities for essentially free (solar power).
On the more viable replace-business-jets route, Elon Musk has stated that he wants to build a VTVL electric jet. From what he's stated, it sounds like his main approach to overcoming the lack of energy density is flying higher. Current jets are limited to efficient operation at ~35k feet because the oxygen density any higher is too low for an ICE to operate. Current li-ion batteries, however, don't need oxygen to operate! So they can go to 50,60,70,80k feet for reduced drag and operate just as efficiently as if they were at 35k feet. Musk has stated that he thinks battery density needs to double before this jet can become a reality (and has shown that battery density doubles once every ~10 years historically).
I'm extremely optimistic about the future of aviation. As soon as we can hook up cheap (nuclear, coal, wind, solar) and efficiently generated (~2x efficiency gains at large plants) power to planes, the cost of flying will take a huge drop.
Now I can go to any major city in the world within two days.
Higher altitude isn't everything for speed. You need to generate high-speed exhaust to produce thrust. A gas turbine compresses air and burns it so that explosively shoots out the back. How do you generate this electrically without combustion to raise the pressure? You can't just spin the turbine faster; the blade tips will go supersonic and efficiency will plummet, not to mention material stresses. Supersonic wind tunnels mechanically compress air into huge tanks, sometimes taking weeks to store enough pressure for minutes of runtime, but that obviously wouldn't work for aircraft.
Jets already produce power efficiently (constantly running at nearly the same RPM, never idling in traffic) so there's much less incentive to create electric aircraft. The cost of energy from an electric aircraft in $/joule could be higher than that of a fueled one because you're introducing an additional energy conversion. Gas/coal -> turbine -> battery -> turbine versus gas -> turbine. You're also not getting the range benefit from burning off fuel and lightening the aircraft.
You shift argument from "aircraft are too slow" to "aircraft are too inefficient," going electric won't fix either. There are applications for electric aircraft, mainly low-speed, long-endurance aircraft that can recharge from solar power without landing, and perhaps more maintainable private aircraft. These will not be challengers to the 0.85 mach 747 though.
The high-bypass turbofans used on jet airliners produce most of their thrust by using shaft power to drive a fan that directly accelerates the air. Thrust from the engine exhaust itself contributes a smaller fraction.
With electric ducted fans, presumably you would have a higher number of smaller-diameter fans.
(That's not to say that I think that large electric passenger aircraft are going to be feasible anytime soon - I don't).
What jets offer over propeller-driven aircraft isn't efficiency, but speed, and power-to-weight ratios. Propeller aircraft are limited by the tip speed of propellers (they have to be below the speed of sound), but are often much more efficient especially at lower flight speeds.
In terms of efficiency, jet aviation has largely just managed to catch up to where propeller-driven aircraft were in the 1950s, when general-aviation jet aircraft first came into general use (barring a few failed Comets).
I agree with you that electric aircraft are not particularly feasible, small drones excepted.
The market largely seems to have decided that supersonic flights aren't worth the cost or the hassle; the push has been toward slightly smaller, more fuel-efficient twin-engine craft on the long-haul routes. Which pays technological dividends of a different, but less flashy sort. Hence publicity stunts like flying a 747 on one 777 engine (it works, and think what a 1970s-era person seeing a 747 for the first time would think about hearing that).
The Concorde was introduced in 1976, the world has made it rather clear that the speed is not worth the costs.
In the infancy of a technology it always benefits only the rich. IMO the democratization of amazing technology is a far more worthwhile accomplishment than simply advancing the state of the art exclusively for the rich.
I wonder how different the US would be today without the CA gold rush. Or if the gold rush had been somewhere closer to the eastern seaboard like the Appalachians.
They did eventually get where they were going. So worst-case travel times have improved even more than these common-case data suggest.