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17 - Transportation and communication, 1750 to the present

from Part IV - Ligaments of Globalization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

By
Daniel R. Headrick
Edited by
J. R. McNeill  and
Kenneth Pomeranz
J. R. McNeill
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Kenneth Pomeranz
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Summary

This chapter discusses the age of revolutions in transportation and communication: the application of new machines and energy sources to transportation, and the liberation of communication from the need to transport objects. By the eighteenth century, the quickening of business and political affairs in Western European nations was reflected in improvements in transportation and communication. In North America, the Post Office Act of 1792 inaugurated a new era in communication. The falling cost of shipping freight by sea, air, and train and the lowering of tariffs and other trade barriers since World War II have fueled the increase in world trade, a major aspect of globalization. The evolution of motorcars illustrates the divergence between communication and transportation. As all kinds of information can now be digitized and transmitted through the same computers, cables, and microwaves, the result is a convergence of media and a proliferation of new devices and organizations.

Keywords

creative artsdepartment storescommodification of culturenational products campaignsindustrial revolutionmulti-story renaissance-style buildingsearly modern Europe
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History , pp. 401 - 422
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

Further reading

Aitken, Hugh. Syntony and Spark: The Origins of Radio. New York: John Wiley, 1976.Google Scholar
Aitken, Hugh. The Continuous Wave: Technology and American Radio, 1900–1932. Princeton University Press, 1985.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butrica, Andrew J. Beyond the Ionosphere: Fifty Years of Satellite Communication. Washington: NASA, 1997.Google Scholar
Castells, Manuel. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. Oxford University Press, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D. Inventing the Electronic Century: the Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries. New York: Free Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Fischer, Claude. America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flink, James J. The Automobile Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Haws, Duncan. Ships and the Sea. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1975.Google Scholar
Headrick, Daniel R. Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850–1940. Oxford University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Headrick, Daniel R. The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and International Politics, 1851–1945. Oxford University Press, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Headrick, Daniel R. When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700–1850. Oxford University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Holzmann, Gerald R. and Pehrson, Bjorn. The Early History of Data Networks. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 1995.Google Scholar
John, Richard R. Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
John, Richard R. Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Levinson, Mark. The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger. Princeton University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Lubar, Steven. InfoCulture: The Smithsonian Book of Information Age Invention. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.Google Scholar
Robinson, Howard. The British Post Office: A History. Princeton University Press, 1948.Google Scholar
Sachs, Wolfgang. For Love of the Automobile: Looking Back at the History of Our Desires, translated by Don Reneau. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Robert L. Wiring a Continent: The History of the Telegraph Industry in the United States, 1832–1866. Princeton University Press, 1947.Google Scholar
White, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. New York: Norton, 2011.Google Scholar

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