Final Product

Means of transport
It was a historical, anthropological and biological weapons which led man to develop different means of transport available. But the curious feature of the human being, it has led to want to explore their home, the Earth. From the first moment of its existence, the man moves, walks and moves, to go ever further, and to satisfy these cravings will undoubtedly be invented. Thus, from the first logs used as rollers for moving the wheel, sailing ships, planes and space rockets, the man was creating the means to, by necessity or curiosity, transported through the space. The revolution in transport that Europe experienced during the nineteenth century is considered one of the most important part of the total economic transformations of the century. A time to pause on the fundamental characteristics of development of the second phase of the Industrial Revolution, the study of progress in the field of roads and communication systems is essential to understand both the development of population and exchanges such as the infrastructure to facilitate the streamlining of the production market. In this sense, the historical process of industrialization in England during the eighteenth century, had offered definitive experiences, from which would begin in the first third of the nineteenth century, a massive technical renovation. France, the Netherlands and then Germany began the great task of bringing their communication and transportation systems to the needs created by new models of industrial development.

At the stage that goes from the late eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth witnessed a systematic reconstruction of roads. Many of them were paved and some services and innovation of dual carriageway. Moreover, the system of toll roads (roads turpike), which was implemented in England in the late eighteenth century, became widespread, which attracted mainly to private enterprise. British policy was to provide free construction of new roads by the United Enclousures Acts, which prevented the distribution of land. However, the progressive development of land communication networks known principles of a remarkable stay, when, as in the second phase of the Industrial Revolution, the railroad finally was imposed as a means of transport. The resounding victory of the rail, the dramatic increase in speed that resulted in time-bin compared to the traditional means of loading goods (exclusively animal traction), and the extraordinary possibilities offered for industrial expansion, the long-distance trade etc., reduce the role of roads in an "affluent" supplementary railways, conditioning, however, the location of the stations and retain a redistributive role.

Between 1850 and 1900, the triumph of a conditioned rail era, left a clear imprint of a symbol of progress and hope that the West missed a walk among the major wealth and social conflicts, set new forms of life and nurture utopian socialist Saint-Simon on a world conquered by the railroad, where men find themselves in paradise with technical development. Also multiply the greed of the monopolists, immense mobilizing private capital and powerful, to stimulate heavy industry, between a sack in the new areas of colonial influence, spread their nets in the fever of imperialism, leaving a trail of temporary cities, factories, bank branches or commercial sites, its territories or conditioned shaped rails or borders become strategic, real targets of attack as it sounded when the battles and the great powers shared the world. The locomotive was the mascot of the second half of the nineteenth century: the image of the second phase of the Industrial Revolution, bringing capital and goods, or stopping at the doors of the big industrial cities where the workers were lying on the rails.

More than any other factor, the railroad changed the nature and intensity of industrial life, over a long period of our history. We must take into account that up to half of the twentieth century would be replaced by other forms of transport. The invention of the steam engine running on iron rails, first, and later steel, led, as we said before, a dramatic increase in the speed of land transportation. The first railway lines were built in England in the mid-1 830, as solutions to communication needs agile at close range. Previously they had been built to track convoys animal drawn wagons in the vicinity of coal deposits. The first use of the steam engine was made in 1821 by the initiative George Sthephenson, with the opening line of the Stockton-Darlington public. The railroad experienced its first major triumph.

England in 1830 only used steam engines, counting only two railways. France in 1832, and the private initiative of the Seguin family tended a 58-kilometer railway line between Lyon and Saint-Etienne, also used the steam engine. In 1835, Germany decided on what we now call a pilot, and opened a line of three miles between Nuremberg and Fuerth. Brussels followed by a more ambitious project: to combine with Brussels Antwerp through one hundred and fifty miles of railroad. What at first was merely an attempt to technological renewal, particularly in the transportation of minerals, rose quickly to become private companies, and later in agile exchange of goods, supply of raw materials, mail information, and so on. In 1860, both in Europe and the United States, the railroads began to form large and complex networks.

In 1870 Europe had more than one hundred thousand miles of railway. As a curiosity it should be noted that in England it was possible to go from Edinburgh to London in just twelve hours of travel. Was changing the whole concept of speed and distance. Then the problems started between the state and private initiative. During the second third of the century occurred frequently between the wars, the agreements between private companies and state, as well as conflicts of interest on the transport business. The rapid expansion of railway networks and a definitive victory in the field of transport means in the second phase of the Industrial Revolution would cushion those tensions.