Transportation Before, During & After the Industrial Revolution (if Essay

Transportation Before, During & After the Industrial Revolution (if you have a better idea please feel free to use it) - Essay Example 213) wrote, mankind has used these five machines –lever, wedge, wheel and axle, pulley, and screw – for many years. What happened shortly before and during the industrial revolution was that scientists and inventors found ways to combine these machines, control their use, and improve the efficiency in the way these machines worked. The keys to these (Van Doren, 1991, p. 214-215) were the works of great scientists – Galileo, Descartes, and Newton in the 17th and early 18th centuries – that explained why and how these simple machines did what they did. On top of this radical way of thinking, a process now known as the scientific method, were built the early inventions of Arkwright (water frame), Hargreaves (spinning jenny), Crompton (weaving), Whitney (cotton gin), and others whose machines were powered by the steam engine, developed in England by Newcomen, Watt, and Trevithick and in the United States by Evans (Bergen, 2006). The industrial revolution was marked by changes in several aspects of ordinary life: the way people worked, where and how they lived, the new uses for raw materials mined under the earth, the creation of wealth, and how the money was stored and spent. From the etymology (OED, 2001) of the word â€Å"transport†, which combines the Latin words trans meaning â€Å"across† and portare meaning â€Å"to carry†, we propose a general definition of the transport industry as one that exists and develops to meet the growing needs of people to move themselves and their goods from one place to another. Movement or motion is one of the signs of life, and our human history chronicles the movements of peoples for different reasons: escaping from natural disasters, searching for greener pastures, trading with other people, or invading peoples and territories for enslavement, preservation of territorial peace, or the accumulation of power, among other possible reasons. In each of these examples, people moved their bodies and the things