I started wondering about the relationship between communications and transportation. They are related but the relationship is not simple or causal.
The first great need for long distance communication was with the advent of railroads in America. Commercially useful railroads emerged in the 1850’s. With their evident importance for the North in the Civil War, railroad coverage of the U.S. exploded. The first transcontinental railroad was 1869. It connected existing commercial networks widely developed in the East and Midwest with San Francisco. The first transcontinental commercial telegraph was 1861.
There were commercial railroads before there were commercial telegraph networks, but the two grew together and often occupied the same pathways and stations.
The explosion of engine driven commercial ocean cargo preceded the introduction of radio transmitted telegraphy. Commercial cargo was being carried on the Mississippi and Great Lakes before it was important in open oceans. After the Suez Canal was opened in 1869 there was a rapid increase in steamships because the new route allowed for each ship to carry enough coal and cargo to make a long ocean voyage economic.
Communications with ocean going vessels with radio telegraphy didn’t come until WW1. Fast ocean going engine driven vessels came well before the necessary communications.
The telephone and the automobile also developed in America in parallel. They both arrived in functioning form about the same time. By 1900 there were 3 million phones in the United States, most residential. At the same time industrial production of automobiles was underway. By 1920 automobiles and telephones were common in all urban areas of the United States.
While airplanes developed long before radar, radar came into regular use at airports in the United States in the 1950’s just as commercial aviation was becoming significant. I personally flew a commercial plane from El Paso to San Francisco in 1947. It was a few years before San Francisco airport needed radar to deal with the increased volume of aircraft.
The extraordinary explosion of traffic associated with container ships, 18 wheeler trucks and the FEDEX and UPS networks in the 1970’s-80’s is only associated with the use of facsimile machines. Both emerged commercially at the same time.
I see no transport developments associated with the cell phone and the smart phone. Uber is connected to the latter but it will be a long time before we see the important transport impacts of Uber and similar transport systems.
(The word Uber, has joined Kleenex, Google and iPad as a proper noun and verb)