19th Century Transport & Communication

19th Century Transport & Communication

1. TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Kumar Nalinaksh 75771 Master of Management (Business Management) Wyzsza Szkola Menedzerska W Warszawie [email protected]

2. 19 th Century 2 The 19th (nineteenth) century began on January 1 , 1801 , and ended on December 31 , 1900 . Long nineteenth century refers to 125-year period , from 1789 to 1914 by Ilya Ehrenburg and Eric Hobsbawm. The term refers to the notion that the period reflects a progression of ideas which are characteristic to an understanding of the 19th century in Europe . Figure 1 : World Map of 19 th Century

3. Index Transport and communication in the nineteenth century can be explored by going through: - Key Developments Inland Waterways Railways Shipping Road Transport Air Transport Information Technology [Communication] Nineteenth century novels Economic Consequences Construction And Maintenance Linkages Operational Linkages Service Linkages 3

4. In Britain at least fifty canals and navigations were authorized including several trunk routes. They were designed to improve the transport of coal in the north-west of England. In France , where waterway development was also concentrated upon the industrializing regions, many canals were built between 1815 and 1850. They improved the market links of the northern coalfields. The length of canals and canalized rivers in Germany between 1873 and 1914 doubled to 6600 km. Various tolls and prescriptive rights on the Rhine were abolished, declaring free navigation on the river from Basel to the open sea. The Dutch extended their waterway system in the nineteenth century mainly to improve port access. 4 Inland Waterways Figure 2 : 19 th century canal

5. Inland Waterways The waterways of southern Europe were mostly unsuitable as trade routes due to their shortness and unnavigability. Eastern Europe faired little better except for the long and navigable Volga and the waterway link between the Black Sea and the Baltic completed by the 1820s. Transport on inland waterways was by man or horse powered barges or small sailing vessels. Steamboats began to appear after the French Wars but were not common before the 1830s or 1840s. Waterway output continued to grow throughout the nineteenth century. There was only limited competition between road and waterway as the latter concentrated upon higher bulk a nd lower dispersion traffic . 5 Figure 3: 19 th century canal lock

6. Railways Britain led the way in the construction of long distance steam driven railway systems, by 1850 almost 10 000 km had been built. By World War One many systems had been completed; the largest were those of Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The major trunk routes were generally built first because of their greater economic importance and profitability The construction of capital intensive railway networks in the nineteenth century provides an interesting view of contemporary attitudes to government intervention. 6 Figure 4 : 19 th century railway station

7. Railways In Britain laissez-faire was followed, on mainland Europe a mixture of private and public initiative was more common. The demand for railway finance stimulated the use of fixed interest debentures and the spread of provincial stock exchanges. From the mid-1870s there was a significant move towards public ownership of the railways which was done for raising revenues, than notions of unification and rationalization. Urban underground electric trains were developed at the end of the nineteenth century. 7 Figure 5 : 19 th century Railway construction

8. Shipping Shipping was the most important and effective mode of transport at the beginning of the nineteenth century. British and French shipping had been the main beneficiaries of the growth of the colonial trades with the American continent, India and the East Indies. Steamboat were used in the first decade of the nineteenth century and they were shortly in use as river craft. By the 1820s and 1830s larger engines and more efficient paddles brought steam into coasting. In the 1840s paddles were replaced by more efficient screw propellers and in the following decade the compound engine of Elder and Randolph was patented. 8 Figure 6 : 19 th century shipping

9. Shipping In the years leading up to World War One the internal combustion engine was introduced into shipping Network of bunkering stations were developed, port facilities were improved and shipyards were reorganized. Strong coal, metal and engineering industries and a large domestic market helped British shipbuilders to dominate output before 1914. Traditional wooden shipbuilding, particularly in Scandinavia, was destroyed by the rapid technological change. Ship owning firms in the first half of the nineteenth century were concentrated and specialized, they gradually divided into liner companies and tramp owners in the second half. 9 Figure 7 : 19 th century shipping

10. Road Transport Between 1815 and 1850 7000 km of main highways and 23000 km of departmental roads were completed in Britain and France. New materials were introduced to strengthen and preserve roads including concrete and tarmacadam in Britain and asphalt in France. Improved technology and the 'demonstration effect ' of progress in Britain and France stimulated activity elsewhere in Europe. Professional common carrier were full time, long distance specialists while the local or peasant carrier , were part time, local and occasional carriers. The middle decades of the nineteenth century also saw the growth of horse-drawn omnibus services in the major European cities. 10 Figure 8 : 19 th century road construction

11. Road Transport Motorized transport were introduced at the end of the nineteenth century. Electric trams were introduced into American cities in the late 1880s. The earliest vehicle manufacturers came from various commercial backgrounds especially engineering or cycle production. Diversification into motor vehicle production was more commonly a product of necessity than part of a long term strategy United States produced most vehicles as Ford pioneered mass production in a standardised manner. 11 Figure 9 : 19 th century transport in London

12. Air Transport The Wright brothers had completed the first controlled flight by a heavier than air vehicle in 1903. Pioneers were mainly from transport background, Farman, for example, had sold motor vehicles and Bleriot had produced car headlamps. Britishers such as Handley Page, Short Brothers and de Havilland were of engineering background. 12 Figure 10 : Wright brother’s first flight

13. Air Transport The earliest air company Deutsche Luftschiffahrt Aktien Gesellschaft was formed in 1909 and operated regular flights. British airship R 34 completing the passage from New York to Norfolk in 75 hours in 1919. The First World War drew attention to the potential value of air transport. 13 Figure 11 : Deutsche Luftschiffahrt Aktien Gesellschaft

14. Information Technology The movement of information used the same transport modes as the movement of people and goods. In the nineteenth century the development of steam shipping and the railways increased the speed and regularity of information transfer. On February 18, 1911, French pilot Henri Pequet carried the first official mail flown by airplane. The flight occurred in India. 14 Figure 12 : First air mail

15. Information Technology In the second half of the nineteenth century the introduction of the telegraph and telephone provided the first opportunity for instantaneous communication. In the 1870s and 1880s a number of European countries such as Britain and France began to develop regional and national telephone networks. 15 Figure 13 : 19 th century telegraph

16. Information Technology Timeline: - 1792 – Claude Chappe established the first long-distance semaphore telegraph line. 1831 – Joseph Henry proposed and built an electric telegraph. 1836 – Samuel Morse developed the Morse code. 1843 – Samuel Morse build the first long distance electric telegraph line. 1843 – Patent issued for the "Electric Printing Telegraph", a very early forerunner of the fax machine 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson exhibited an electric telephone in Boston. 1877 – Thomas Edison patented the phonograph 1889 – Almon Strowger patented the direct dial 16

17. Nineteenth century novels Earlier nineteenth century novels, such as those by Jane Austen, the Brontës or Charles Dickens record much coach travel. Some of these slow, tiresome journeys were actually quite significant: Jane Eyre's journey of escape from Rochester leaves her symbolically stranded and lost, but she is then divinely guided in her ramble over the moors to her unknown cousins. Esther's pursuit of her mother in mid-winter up and down the Great North Road is equally dramatic and significant in Charles Dickens' Bleak House. 17 Figure 14 : 19 th century coach depicted in a novel

18. Nineteenth century novels Dickens' Dombey & Son and Hard Times both depict railway journeys. There are still pursuits but bad news now keeps pace with the guilty parties. The railway provided an important plot device and the space of stations and carriages were utilized for dramatic effect. In Dombey and Son, published in monthly parts between 1846 and 1848, the ‘railway mania' that spread through Britain in the mid-nineteenth century is described: There were railway patterns in its drapers' shops, and railway journals in the windows of its newsmen. There were railway hotels, office-houses, lodging-houses, boarding-houses; railway plans, maps, views, wrappers, bottles, sandwich-boxes, and timetables; railway hackney-coach and cabstands; railway omni-buses, railway streets and buildings, railway hangers-on and parasites, and flatterers out of all calculation. (Chapter 15) Thomas Hardy's novels also start with coach travel, but end with railway travel in Jude the Obscure. Hardy uses railway speed to symbolize the rapid disintegration of stable traditional communities into anonymous personal isolation and fracture. 18

19. Economic Consequences Szostak emphasized improvements in roads and waterways while Freeman held that it was the application of steam transport which gave transport an important role. It is helpful to regard transport as two distinct types of economic activity: a construction industry in building and maintenance and a service industry in operation. Transport tends to be capital intensive as indicated by infrastructure Backward linkage to supply industries such as heavy goods and processed raw materials. 19 Figure 15 : 19 th century transportation

20. Economic Consequences The operation of the transport service generated lateral linkages in relation to the labor, material and organizational features of transport enterprises. Consequences of the provision of new or improved transportation particularly in terms of market integration and improved resource allocation and are analogous to the idea of forward linkages. Transport contributed to industrialisation and vice versa. 20 Figure 16 : 19 th century transportation

21. Construction And Maintenance Linkages The capital intensity of many transport projects additionally influenced the development of financial institutions and markets. In order to raise this capital many projects were floated in economic upturns although this risked 'crowding out' in capital markets. The large size of many projects, on the other hand, created long investment gestation periods which imparted a countercyclical influence on factor markets. 21 Figure 17 : 19 th century shipyards

22. Construction And Maintenance Linkages Canal construction enabled engineers to confront many of the problems of major works such as tunnels, bridges and embankments thereby setting a precedent for similar challenges to be faced by railway builders. Regional concentration of shipbuilding provided for transaction cost economies through vertical integration with local metallurgy and engineering firms which fostered economies of localization such as in the growth of a local pool of skilled labor. 22 Figure 18 : 19 th century ship building

23. Operational Linkages The main operational linkage for transport innovations was to energy industries. Bunker coal represented 20 per cent of British coal exports by the end of the nineteenth century. By 1914 the fuel demand in both road and sea transport was already beginning to move towards oil by-products. Transport innovations involved the substitution of capital for labor, capital was a permanent asset of the business which could not be laid off during poor trading conditions. 23 Figure 19 : 19 th century steam car

24. Operational Linkages Railway companies were among the earliest business enterprises to adopt more sophisticated capital accounting methods, understanding, for example, the need for depreciation and amortization. Profits from transport operations created lateral linkages through reinvestment. Since the land-based operations of the maritime industries were geographically concentrated, this brought notable benefits to the locality of a thriving port. Many of the most rapidly growing regions of Europe in the eighteenth century surrounded major ports; such was the case at Liverpool, Bristol and Bordeaux. 24 Figure 20 : 19 th century car’s engraving

25. Service Linkages Quicker, cheaper, more regular and more comprehensive transport, by reducing the freight factor, fosters market integration. It provides for the widening of markets, the breakdown of local monopolies and other restrictions on competition, the decline of subsistence. Faster and more extensive passenger and mail services provided better contacts between business associates and between producer and consumer. It also served to standardize tastes and fashions across a broader area thereby providing scope for longer, more homogeneous production runs. 25

26. Service Linkages Railway systems were more comprehensive than waterways while road haulage was reorganized into complementarity short hauls. Great increases in speed resulted: the fastest road services in mid-nineteenth-century. The integration of national markets through the railway can be seen by the decline of regional price differences between producing and consuming areas. Shipping industry played a major role in the emergence of international markets and institutions 26

27. Summary Until the 1830's, the greatest distance anyone could travel in a day on land was 50-60 miles, with the aid of fast horses. By sea, in a fast sailing boat, perhaps a little more could be done. Letters were the only form of instant communication, and they could travel no faster than the fastest horse or ship. Two events revolutionized the speed of travel and communication: Railways Telegraph System 27

28. Summary Airplanes have made international travel much quicker than the ferries and liners which could take weeks or even months to reach their destination. Travel and communicating has become significantly more affordable, shrinking the world into what is sometimes called ‘the global village’. Any news can be relayed worldwide within minutes of its being reported. 28

29. Sources Ville, Simon. “The Transportation and Communication Revolution ('La Rivoluzione Del Trasporto e Delle Communicazioni ').” In E. Hobsbawm and P. Bairoch (Eds) 'Storia d’Europa ' (History of Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries) (Torino), Pp. 491-526. , 1996. Travel, transport and communication, “The world of Victorian writers 1837 – 1901”. Crossref-it.info [https://crossref-it.info/articles/131/travel-transport-and-communication] Images : All images have been sourced from Google Image Search. Wikipedia : 19th century [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_century] Long nineteenth century [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_nineteenth_century] 29

30. The End! In case of any further queries or concerns feel free to reach out at [email protected] 30