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often followed game trails. Tracks would be naturally created at points of high traffic density. As animals were domesticated, horses, oxen and donkeys became an element in track-creation. With the growth of trade, tracks were often flattened or widened to accommodate animal traffic. Later, the travois, a frame used to drag loads, was developed. Animal-drawn wheeled vehicles probably developed in Sumer in the Ancient Near East in the 4th or 5th millennium BC and spread to Europe and India in the 4th millennium BC and China in about 1200 BC. The Romans had a significant need for good roads to extend and maintain their empire and developed Roman roads. In the medieval Islamic world, many roads were built throughout the Arab Empire. The most sophisticated roads were those of the Baghdad, Iraq, which were paved with tar in the 8th century. Tar was derived from petroleum, accessed from oil fields in the region, through the chemical process of destructive distillation.[1] In the Industrial Revolution, John Loudon McAdam (1756-1836) designed the first modern highways, using inexpensive paving material of soil and stone aggregate (macadam), and he embanked roads a few feet higher than the surrounding terrain to cause water to drain away from the surface. With the development of motor transport there was an increased need for hardtopped roads to reduce washaways, bogging and dust on both urban and rural roads, originally using cobblestones and wooden paving in major western cities and in the early 20th century tarbound macadam (tarmac) and concrete paving were extended into the countryside. The modern history of road transport also involves the development of new vehicles such as new models of horse-drawn vehicles, bicycles, motor cars, motor trucks and electric vehicles.
Maritime history also deals with the development of navigation, oceanography, cartography and hydrography.
[edit] Aviation
Main article: Aviation history
Pilots of 611 West Lancashire Squadron lend a hand pushing an early Spitfire Mark IXb, Biggin Hill, late 1942. Humanity's desire to fly likely dates to the first time man observed birds, an observation illustrated in the legendary stories of Daedalus and Icarus in Greek mythology, and the Vimanas in Indian mythology. Much of the focus of early research was on imitating birds, but through trial and error, balloons, airships, gliders and eventually powered aircraft and other types of flying machines were invented. Kites were the first form of man-made flying objects[3], and early records suggest that kites were around before 200 B.C. in China.[4] Leonardo da Vinci's dream of flight found expression in several designs, but he did not attempt to demonstrate flight by literally constructing them. During the 17th and 18th century, when scientists began analysing the Earth's atmosphere, gases such as hydrogen were discovered which in turn led to the invention of hydrogen balloons.[3] Various theories in mechanics by physicists during the same period of timenotably fluid dynamics and Newton's laws of motionled to the foundation of modern aerodynamics. Tethered balloons filled with hot air were used in the first half of the 19th century and saw
considerable action in several mid-century wars, most notably the American Civil War, where balloons provided observation during the Battle of Petersburg. Apart from some scattered reference in ancient and medieval records, resting on slender evidence and in need of interpretation, the earliest clearly verifiable human flight took place in Paris in 1783, when Jean-Franois Piltre de Rozier and Francois d'Arlandes went 5 miles (8 km) in a hot air balloon invented by the Montgolfier brothers. The Wright brothers made the first sustained, controlled and powered heavier-than-air flight on December 17, 1903, in their revoloutionary aircraft, the Wright flyer. World War II saw a drastic increase in the pace of aircraft development and production. All countries involved in the war stepped up development and production of aircraft and flight based weapon delivery systems, such as the first long range bomber. After the war ended, commercial aviation grew rapidly, used mostly ex-military aircraft to transport people and cargo. This growth was accelerated by the glut of heavy and super-heavy bomber airframes like the B-29 and Lancaster that could be converted into commercial aircraft. The first commercial jet airliner to fly was the British De Havilland Comet. In the beginning of the 21st century, subsonic military aviation focused on eliminating the pilot in favor of remotely operated or completely autonomous vehicles. Several unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs have been developed. In April 2001 the unmanned aircraft Global Hawk flew from Edwards AFB in the US to Australia non-stop and unrefuelled. This is the longest point-topoint flight ever undertaken by an unmanned aircraft, and took 23 hours and 23 minutes. In October 2003 the first totally autonomous flight across the Atlantic by a computer-controlled model aircraft occurred. Major disruptions to air travel in the 21st Century included the closing of U.S. airspace following the September 11 attacks, and the closing of northern European airspace after the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajkull.
[edit] Spaceflight
Main article: Spaceflight The realistic dream of spaceflight dated back to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, however Tsiolkovsky wrote in Russian, and this was not widely influential outside Russia. Spaceflight became an engineering possibility with the work of Robert H. Goddard's publication in 1919 of his paper 'A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes'; where his application of the de Laval nozzle to liquid fuelled rockets gave sufficient power that interplanetary travel became possible. This paper was highly influential on Hermann Oberth and Wernher Von Braun, later key players in spaceflight. The first human space flight was achieved with the Soviet space program's Vostok 1 mission in 1961. The lead architects behind the mission were Sergei Korolev and Kerim Kerimov, with Yuri Gagarin being the first astronaut. Kerimov later went on to launch the first space docks (Cosmos 186 and Cosmos 188) in 1967 and the first space stations (Salyut and Mir series) from 1971 to 1991.[5][6] The first spaceflight to the Moon was achieved with NASA's Apollo 11 mission in 1969, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin being the first astronauts on the Moon. The history of transportation is largely one of technological innovation. Advances in technology have allowed people to travel farther, explore more territory, and expand their influence over larger and larger areas. Even in ancient times, new tools such as foot coverings, skis, and snowshoes lengthened the distances that could be traveled. As new inventions and discoveries were applied to transportation problems, travel time decreased while the ability to move more and larger loads increased. Innovation continues today, and transportation researchers are working to find new ways to reduce costs and increase transportation efficiency.