Knowledge LibraryEngineeringMechanical EngineeringKL-ENG-HIST-1700
Moving People and Goods: Transport Engineering 1845-1950
Once ships and locomotives were reliable enough to finish a journey, the governing question became how much fuel and crew that journey consumed — because both displace payload. Nineteen milestones in answering it.
01What this series covers
Nineteen milestones in moving people and goods, over the century in which transport stopped being a matter of what could be built and became a matter of what could be run economically and safely.
This is the last of the series in this set drawn from the uploaded source, and it covers the material its transport chapters treat in depth that the earlier parts did not: the iron and steel ship as a structure, the succession of marine propulsion arrangements, compression ignition, the first practical motor car, the automatic air brake, and railway electrification.
Transport is the most heavily covered subject across this set, so this series is deliberately narrow. It does not revisit steam on rails or the commercial steamboat, which are in the first series; the internal combustion engine as a prime mover or diesel-electric traction, which are in the second; powered flight, which appears in the second and third; or the container and the motorway, which are in the fourth. Where a topic here touches one of those, this series says so and takes the aspect the other did not.
From the First Cities to the Age of Steam, 1845-1910, 1911-1969, 1970-2020, and the thematic companion The Age of Applied Science.
02Four structural shifts
From strength to fuel economy
Once ships and locomotives were reliable enough to complete a voyage, the governing question became how much fuel and crew a journey consumed, because both displace payload. Multiple expansion, oil firing and compression ignition are all answers to that.
From the vessel to the structure
Iron and then steel hulls made a ship a designed structure with framing, bulkheads and a stress distribution, rather than a shaped assembly of timbers. Subdivision for damage survival arrives with it.
From manual control to fail-safe systems
The automatic air brake is the clearest example anywhere in this set of a control system designed so that failure of the control medium produces the safe outcome rather than the dangerous one.
From one prime mover to a choice
By 1900 a transport engineer could choose between reciprocating steam, turbine, compression ignition and electric traction, each with a different efficiency, power-to-weight and operating profile. Selection became a discipline.
03Master timeline
- 1845The Great BritainMarine
Brunel's iron screw-driven steamer of about 3,500 tonnes and 1,500 nominal horsepower, roughly 98 metres long, establishing the iron ocean-going hull.
- 1858The Great EasternMarine
211 metres long with a double skin, longitudinal framing, ten transverse and two longitudinal bulkheads — principles that have governed steel shipbuilding since.
- 1869The straight air brakeRail safety
Westinghouse patents compressed-air braking at twenty-three, after seeing compressed air used to drive the Mont Cenis tunnel.
- 1872The automatic air brakeRail safety
An auxiliary reservoir and triple valve under each car apply the brakes when train-line pressure falls — so a broken line stops the train instead of disabling it.
- 1876The four-stroke cyclePrime movers
Otto perfects the gas engine on the induction, compression, power and exhaust cycle that almost every petrol engine since has used.
- 1885The first reliable motor carRoad
Benz's three-wheeler carries a single-cylinder four-stroke engine with electric ignition, water cooling and a differential gear — three features still on essentially every car.
- 1886The radiatorRoad
Without unlimited cooling water on a moving vehicle, Benz patents a rudimentary radiator to cool water for reuse — a closed loop replacing a consumable.
- 1886–96Lilienthal's gliding experimentsAeronautics
Published measurements of the lifting power of curved surfaces influence every later heavier-than-air machine. He is killed in a gliding accident in 1896.
- 1886The Burlington brake trialsRail safety
Extensive comparative testing of brake equipment on freight trains establishes performance by measurement rather than by manufacturer claim.
- 1890sMultiple-expansion marine enginesMarine
Compound, triple and quadruple expansion at higher pressures cut fuel consumption by as much as half, releasing the space for paying cargo.
- 1891Steel becomes the hull materialMarine
Eighty per cent of steamships under construction are steel, and single screws have displaced paddle wheels on ocean-going vessels.
- 1892–97Compression ignitionPrime movers
Diesel patents his engine in 1892, obtains power in 1894, and by early 1897 demonstrates under load an efficiency exceeding any thermal prime mover of the period.
- 1895Electrification of a steam railroadTraction
The New York, New Haven and Hartford electrifies its Nantasket Beach branch — the first electric operation of a steam railroad in the United States.
- 1895Main-line tunnel electrificationTraction
The Baltimore and Ohio electrifies a 2.4-kilometre tunnel at Baltimore, to eliminate smoke and heat rather than to save fuel.
- 1895The Selden patent grantedRoad
A patent for a road carriage with an engine, granted to a man who never built a car, from which he collected substantial royalties from those who did.
- c.1900The AC versus DC traction argumentTraction
Engineers dispute the merits of alternating and direct current for locomotives as bitterly as they had for city distribution a decade earlier.
- 1903Diesel goes to seaMarine
Five years after commercial production begins, diesel engines are installed in two Caspian tankers.
- 1912The first ocean-going motor shipMarine
The 7,500-tonne Selandia establishes diesel propulsion for deep-sea service.
- from 1900sOil firingMarine
Replacing hand firing removes an enormous labour requirement — one of the last large hand-fired liners needed 324 firemen and trimmers to move about 1,000 tonnes of coal a day.