Industrial

From about 1849, sharp-bowed composite clippers such as Thermopylae and Cutty Sark sprinted from Foochow, Fuzhou, to London in rou...

Steel four-masted windjammers such as Pamir, Passat and Pommern ran Australian wheat, and earlier Chilean nitrate, eastward around...

The cotton gin of 1793 made short-staple upland cotton profitable, and Southern plantations fed Liverpool's docks and Manchester's...

Dug largely with hand tools and animal power between 1817 and 1825, the canal ran from Albany to Buffalo through 83 locks. Freight...

The first steamboat reached New Orleans in 1811, and within decades shallow-draft, high-pressure boats pushed cotton bales downstr...

The Mannheim Act of 1868 internationalized navigation and abolished tolls, opening the river to industrial traffic just as the Ruh...

Built 1859 to 1869 under French direction with Egyptian labor and capital, the 193 kilometer channel has no locks. Britain bought ...

Built from 1891 in stages, partly to bind Siberia and move its grain, coal and timber, the line ran initially through Manchuria be...

The Union Pacific built west from Omaha and the Central Pacific built east from Sacramento with Chinese laborers forming the major...

Opened in 1855, the 77 kilometer railway from Colon to Panama City caught the California gold rush, carrying tens of thousands of ...

Opened in 1910 after decades of surveys and construction, the route crossed the Andes through the Cumbre tunnel at about 3,200 met...

When Mexican independence opened New Mexico to foreign trade in 1821, freight wagons began running roughly 1,300 kilometers from F...

After the Civil War, Texas held millions of longhorns worth little locally but far more in northern cities. From 1867, when Joseph...

The Duke of Bridgewater hired engineer James Brindley and agent John Gilbert to move coal from his mines at Worsley, where the can...

Ancient rulers dreamed of cutting the isthmus, and Nero even started digging in 67 AD, but for centuries ships were dragged across...

The Ottoman Empire granted a concession to the Deutsche Bank backed Baghdad Railway Company in 1903 to extend the Anatolian line t...