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Although Fulton's steamboat was small, it was the beginning, and form it there developed large ocean-going vessels. The first transoceanic steamboat, --Sirius crossed the Atlantic in eighteen days in 1838. Better roads, canals, and steamboats aided transportation, but they were not enough. The most successful of -- early locomotives was built in Great Britain by George Stephenson. His Rocket, built in 1829, traveled thirty-one miles, at the average speed of fourteen miles an hour on its first trip. Many persons objected to the noisy, frightening monster. They feared it would make horses extinct and farmers would not be able to sell their hay and oats; it would pollute the air with its smoke; it would frighten the cows and -- chickens as it passed by; and it would set fire to houses near the tracks. Despite the objectors, railroads grew in number. Iron tracks were soon laid in Belgium, Italy, France, Germany, and the United States, as well as in Great Britain. In the United States, for instance, between 1830 and 1870, a network of railroad tracks was laid throughout --- northwestern part of the country, and steel bands spanned the continent from east to west, linking the oceans.

--gasoline engine was invented in the middle of the 1830's. It as used as motive power for a launch,-- bicycle, and --buggy. In the United States several companies sprang up in the opening years of the twentieth century to make automobiles. Henry Ford popularized automobiles by making them cheap enough so that an average American could afford them. He did this by mass production. Every part of a car was standardized and turned out in large quantities. Slow-moving assembly lines were set up in plants. As the partially finished car passed-- workers, each of them added a certain part, until at the end of the line the finished product was rolled off. By this method of standardization, parts could be turned out by-- thousands. Mass production methods were applied to hundreds of other industries. In France, Germany, and Great Britain, automobile factories were established also, although there were more automobiles produced in the United States than in all the rest of the world put together.

Ever since the time of --ancient Greeks, man had dreamed of flying. According to Greek mythology, a youth named Icarus had made a pair of wings, fastening them ti himself with wax. Unfortunately, he flew too near the sun and the sun's heat melted the wax. The wings fell off and Icarus plunged into the sea and was drowned. Leonardo da Vinci spent a good deal of effort trying to learn the secret of flight, but he did not succeed, although many of his principles of construction were correct. In the late eighteen century some Frenchmen ascended high into the air in gas-filled balloons. Starting in the 1890's-- German Count von Zeppelin designed large dirigibles filled with hydrogen and it looked as though the lighter-than-air craft would have a great fortune. Others, like Santos Dumont in Brazil, experimented with heavier-than-air craft lifted by means of motors and wings instead of gasses.

It as not until 1903 that Wilbur and Orville Wright, two Americans, built the first successful flying machine. Just as the automobile industry grew rapidly, so did the airplane industry. European countries at first were ahead of the Untied States in the use of planes, despite the fact that they were an American invention. Beginning in the 1920's regular routes were established for travel and commercial purposes. The military value of the airplane caused almost the whole world to be airminded, and the future of the airplane was assured also for business and pleasure.

In 1896 an Italian, Guglielmo Marconi, made a machinery for wireless telegraphy.The radio was useful to the navies of the world in the early twentieth century, but there were no commercial broadcasting stations until the beginning of the 1920's. Then they sprang up in nearly every country of the world. Like the automobile, the radio was accepted most readily in the United States, where millions of people bought radio receiving sets. Television followed in a few years.

One of the most astounding results of the Industrial Revolution was this shrinking of space through the use of railroads, telephones, steamships, telegraphy, airplanes, radio, and television. No place was any longer isolated from any other place. This was to affect international relations vitally.