A hundred years of transportation

Exercise 18. Read and translate the Supplementary text 1 (ST 1).

1. Nearly every means of transportation we enjoy today, and certainly every means of rapid transportation, has been developed in the past century. For a proper appreciation of the present, a clear perspective of the past is needed. Primitive man had no means of transportation until he learned to capture, tame, and domesticate animals, thereupon transferring the burdens of transportation from his own shoulders to theirs. The earliest writings make reference to the elephant, camel, horse, and ass used in both peace and war.

2. After many centuries the wheel was invented, when and where is not known, but with it man made one of his great advances. Perhaps the three most important milestones in man’s progress were the discovery of the art of making fire, the development of the alphabet, and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was first used in the carts and war chariots of the ancients; it is shown in the carvings and bas-relief sculptures of the Assyrians and Egyptians that date back to 1500 B.C.

3. Many centuries passed with little or no improvement, but after a time the two-wheeled chariot was replaced by the four-wheeled covered wagon, and finally, when springs were introduced, by the coach. Coaches were first let for hire in London in 1625, when there were only twenty. Ten years later, however, they had become so numerous that Charles I issued an order limiting their number – one of the first cases of traffic regulation on record. The increasing use and improvement of the stage-coach led to a demand for better roads, which resulted in macadam highways in England and in some of the countries of continental Europe, making possible travel on quite an extensive scale. The use of the automobile has likewise led to a demand for better roads, and concrete highways have been developed.

4. In all this time, from the dawn of history to the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was nothing that could be called rapid transit. It is just a few years more than a century since George Stephenson, in 1829, demonstrated the success of his pioneer railway. Within the past few years we have seen the celebration of one hundred years of transportation on the New York Central and the Baltimore and Ohio railroads.

5. The first railway equipment was light, and speeds were from 15 to 30 miles an hour. The first stagecoaches they supplemented were of wood, with wooden benches for seats. They were heated with stoves and lighted with coal-oil lamps. Many of the improvements for comfortable rail travel were developed in the US, such as the air brake, automatic coupler, sleeping and dining accommodations, air conditioning, and electric lighting.

6. At the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, the crowning exhibit in transportation was Engine 999 of the New York Central, weighing 102 tons, which hauled the Empire State Express at 60 miles an hour. The present passenger engines of the New York Central weigh 329 tons. Engine 999 is presently on exhibition at the Century of Progress Exposition in the Travel and Transportation Building. The “Royal Scot”, a famous British train, is also exhibited there. It has one of the fastest schedules of any steam train in the world and has travelled at 88 miles an hour. The first record for speed has been established by the Germans – 143 miles an hour. This was made with the propeller rail Zeppelin in 1931, between Berlin and Hamburg, on a long stretch of tangent track, but this speed was too fast for a track with curves. They now have a streamlined train electrically driven, Diesel motored, that makes a maximum speed of 100 miles an hour.

7. About forty years ago the electric railway was developed with the result that electric traction soon became universally popular for urban, interurban, and suburban lines. But today the electric line is passing before the bus and the automobile. No doubt the future of electricity in the transportation field will always be the conversation of certain sections of steam railways to electric traction.

8. At the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893,there was no hint of the automobile, and at the World’s Fair in St. Louis in 1904 it appeared as the “horseless carriage”. Since that time the perfection of the internal combustion engine has practically revolutionized transportation on land.

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