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The earliest known way of transportation that people used given by Mother Nature was boats.
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In any case, the earliest known boats were simple logboats, also referred to as dugouts.
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Next, came horses. While it’s difficult to pinpoint when humans first began domesticating them as a means of getting around or to transport goods, experts generally go by the emergence of certain biological and cultural markers that indicate when such practices started to take place.
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Roughly around that period, someone finally invented the wheel. The archaeological record shows that the first wheeled vehicles
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The first navigable submarine was invented in 1620 by Dutchman Cornelis Drebbel. Built for the English Royal Navy, Drebbel’s submarine could stay submerged for up to three hours and was propelled by oars.
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Boats were among the first to take advantage of steam-generated power
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another Frenchman named Nicolas Joseph Cugnot attempted to adapt steam engine technology to a road vehicle and the result was the invention of the first automobile.
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A French inventor by the name of Claude de Jouffroy built the Pyroscaphe, the world’s first steamship.
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In 1801, British inventor Richard Trevithick unveiled the world’s first road locomotive, called the “Puffing Devil,” and used it to give six passengers a ride to a nearby village.
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While other inventors tried to make steamships that were practical enough for mass transport, it was American Robert Fulton who furthered the technology to where it was commercially viable. In 1807, the Clermont completed a 150-mile trip from New York City to Albany that took 32 hours, with the average speed clocking in at about five miles per hour. Within a few years, Fulton and company would offer regular and freight service between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi.
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So in 1814, Stephenson designed the Blücher, an eight wagon locomotive capable of hauling 30 tons of coal uphill at a speed of four miles per hour.
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By 1824, Stephenson improved the efficiency on his locomotive designs to where he was commissioned by the Stockton and Darlington Railway to build the first steam locomotive to carry passengers on a public rail line, the aptly named Locomotion No. 1. Six years later, he opened the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first public inter-city railway line serviced by steam locomotives.
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It wasn’t until 1858 that Jean Joseph Étienne Lenoir of Belgium invented the internal combustion engine.
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Developed in 1867, the two-wheeled steam-powered bicycle is considered by many historians to be the world’s first motorcycle.
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And on November 13, 1907, his Cornu helicopter, made of little more than some tubing, an engine, and rotary wings, achieved a lift height of about one foot while staying airborne for about 20 seconds. With that, Cornu would lay claim to having piloted the first helicopter flight.
