Leonardo da Vinci

That enlightened period was followed by the era of European exploration and discovery,

of long distance open water navigation, and the opening of extended trade routes still in use today, along with a commercial appreciation of the meaning of time and distance. Latitudi­nal position, or north-south location, had for some time been capable of being established by reference to the celestial bodies, using instru­ments from early times like the gnomon or the Arabian kamal, and later the astrolabe, the cross­staff and, in 1731, the sextant. While a laborious methodology using the sextant could approxi­mate longitude after 1731, the lack of a defini­tive longitudinal reference had prevented from time immemorial the accurate determining of positions of longitude, which resulted in costly navigation errors, loss of life and property, and commercial uncertainty.

In 1714, British Parliament offered a prize of 20 thousand pounds sterling for a reliable method of determining longitude on a ship at sea.

The best minds in Europe, including astronomers and physicists, worked on the project for 50 years without success. John Harrison, a carpenter and clockmaker with little formal education, rea­soned that if a ship’s local time at sea could be compared to the time at the port of origin, the calculation could readily be made to find the ship’s longitudinal location. Local time could be accurately calculated at any point on earth by ref­erence to astronomical observation and, although accurate pendulum clocks existed at the time, there were no portable clocks. Due to the water’s motion, pendulum clocks would not work at sea.

Harrison produced a series of timepieces beginning in the early 1730s that produced increasingly accurate results, ultimately settling on a design that resembled a very large pocket watch. By 1762, a sea trial of his clock on a voy­age from London to Jamica showed it to be only 5.1 seconds slow. A second trial at sea in 1764 proved the clock’s error to be three times better than required to win the prize. Yet, the prize was not awarded.

The body set up by the royal government to judge the longitude prize, known as the Board of Longitude, consisted of astronomers, mathemati­cians, admirals, and a variety of other leading lights, who collectively could not bring them­selves to believe that a mere carpenter could pos­sibly have solved the longitude problem that had stumped civilization all for all time. The dispute was finally presented to Parliament and to King George III, the latter of whom said, “. . . these people have been cruelly wronged. . . , and By God, Harrison, I will see you righted!” But it was not until 1773 that an Act of Parliament finally awarded the full prize and the recognition for having solved the longitude problem to John Harrison.

The missing universal frame of reference, the Prime Meridian, was officially established in 1884 at Greenwich, England, at which Universal time is now found.

In transportation, while marginal improve­ments were seen in matters nautical, no significant advance had been otherwise made since the dawn of time. Motive power for land transport was pro­vided either by animals or by men themselves. George Washington, for instance, in 1776, was unable to travel from Philadelphia to New York City any faster than Julius Caesar could cover the equivalent distance from Rome to Pompeii. In the middle of the 18th century, the problem was the lack of motive power.

We will begin the study of aviation, and the role of government, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. The fruits of this period in world history would, for the first time, drastically alter essentially every aspect of human existence, and would, within the space of 54 years in the 20th century, accomplish a journey from the bicycle age to the space age.

f

he City of London, although of ancient Roman origin (Londinium), had little to dis­tinguish it from the other potential candidates of Europe and the Middle East (Paris, Venice, Athens, Alexandria) for the honor of becom­ing the jumping-off place for the economic and military conquest of the world. One might have thought, for example, that such a place might more logically be somewhere in the Cradle of Civilization—the Middle East—or at least the Mediterranean, where for centuries commerce had steadily proceeded as invaders and traders crisscrossed the area bartering food, raw materi­als, and spices. Those people developed new and better sailing ships and means of propulsion (such as the triangular sail as an improvement on the square rigger), and they had a leg up when it came to understanding and practicing the art of politics, the use of centralized power, the formulation of ideas, and the development of institutions through centuries of inheritance. The earliest cities, governments, law codes, and alphabets were of Middle Eastern origin, as were the earliest forms of religion—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The roots of the Industrial Revolution, how­ever, can be found in English inventiveness. In 1750, most people in the world lived in relative self-sufficiency, filling their needs from the sea
and through the husbandry of their own or oth­ers’ land. People produced not only their food, but also their clothes, fuel, candles, and even fur­niture. Items that could not be produced locally, such as spices, tea, and precious stones, could be purchased in limited quantity from entrepreneur­ial efforts. The issue of labor was rather simple: one essentially did for oneself.

But there was a difference between England and the rest of Europe. England had developed a type of middle class, a mercantile base that dealt in the leather and wool trades, shipping, and bank­ing. Most of Europe was still stuck in the vestiges of the feudal system of the Middle Ages where one’s future was defined by one’s status at birth. In England, trade had become a leveler of class dis­tinction to some degree, where the opportunity to engage in free market exchange brought the oppor­tunity for financial gain. Financial success meant escape from dependency on the upper classes and service to those with wealth and property. A lack of dependency brought with it not only self-sufficiency, but also freedom from the servile bondage of a class-bound society. It brought hope to the common man, and it invigorated him.

Production of woolen goods was revolution­ized by inventions, like the flying shuttle in 1733 by John Kay, and the spinning jenny in 1764 by

James Hargreaves. These and other inventions led to machinery that provided a mechanized means of production whose places of operation came to be known as factories. Factories required people to operate the machines, men and women who could offer their labor in return for wages. In a society that was primarily agrarian, employ­ment opportunities were not widespread. But among the descendents of feudal peasantry, the opportunity to work for a wage, and thus gain a measure of independence, was a step up.

The implementation of the factory system brought with it a significant change in the organi­zation of work. While the production of goods had always been an individual endeavor, requiring the application of some skill in the craft, the factory system introduced a repetitive, routine, and boring set of hand-eye coordination that required, at the most, minimal skill. Over time, workers became more restive, dissatisfied, and unconnected.

Perhaps the most seminal of all develop­ments during this time was the 1769 appearance of the reliable steam engine by Scottish inventor, James Watt. This invention would institution­alize the factory system, both in terms of the development of the labor movement and in terms of the efficient production of goods. It would change the course of the maritime trade, begin­ning with the installation of a steam engine on a barge to provide motive power, the forerunner of the steamship. Not long after, the steam engine would inaugurate an entirely new mode of trans­portation on land when installed on a carriage, the precursor of the locomotive.

The Industrial Revolution set the stage for the modem age to come. Figure 2-1 lists important events in the Industrial and Technological Revo­lution. It provided the impetus for the creation of the modern corporation as a legal entity, which developed as the vehicle by which to raise the large sums of money that were required to engage in the business opportunities that were gener­ated by the Industrial Revolution. It provided the means necessary to commence the first land mass transportation system, the railroads. As the relationship was being established between the railroads and labor, and between both of them with government, the paradigm for the airlines in these same areas was being set. Procedures among the various maritime countries of the world, defining the relative rights and obliga­tions of nations engaged in international shipping, would similarly be made applicable to the airlines.

The Industrial Revolution caused a new involvement by government in the affairs of busi­ness, and spawned an era of regulation and leg­islation. It gave rise to the labor movement and cast the die for early labor-management strife. It created a new demand for manufactured goods, ranging from steel for use in the construction of railroad tracks, locomotives, and cars to cloth for denims for their workers, a consumerism that continues unabated today. It fueled an explosion of new industries, and new companies within each industry to compete under primitive free enter­prise, or laissez-faire principles. And it produced a dependent worker class whose members, because of industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and specialization, were no longer self-sufficient.

An understanding of the history and experi­ence of the railroads is important to our purpose for at least four reasons:

1. As the first modern form of national trans­portation, the railroads set the model in many ways for the succeeding modes of transport, particularly air transportation.

2. The experience of the railroads defined the relationship between carriers and the government, particularly in respect to the concept of the public interest.

3. The experience of the railroads defined the relationship between carriers and the public, the shippers, and passengers.

4. The railroad experience saw the beginning of a cohesive labor movement that was inherited by the airlines and that has been central to the airlines’ experience in the 20th century.

We will review each of these developments in more detail in the next two chapters.

1452	(April 15) Leonardo da Vinci born.
1492	Columbus discovers the New World.
1502	The first watch is made.
1512	Copernicus concludes that the earth circles the sun.
1519	(May 2) Leonardo dies in Amboise; Magellan launches first round-the-world voyage.
1733	John Kay invents flying shuttle.
1765	James Hargreaves invents the spinning jenny, automating weaving the warp (in the weaving of cloth).
1775	Watt’s first efficient steam engine.
1779	Hirst steam-powered mills.
1793	Lli Whitney develops a device to clean raw cotton, called a cotton gin.
1801	Robert Trevithick demonstrates a steam locomotive.
1807	Robert Fulton’s Clermont is the first successful steamboat.
1811-15	Luddite riots: laborers attack factories and break up the machines they fear will replace them.
1821	Michael Faraday demonstrates electro-magnetic rotation, the principle of the electric motor.
1837	Samuel Morse develops the telegraph and Morse Code.
1844	First long-distance telegraph message (Washington to Baltimore).
1858	First transatlantic cable completed. Cathode rays discovered.
1859	Edwin Drake strikes oil in Pennsylvania. Ltienne Lenoir demonstrates the first successful gasoline engine.
1860	Science degrees awarded at University of London.
1863	Steel begins to replace iron in building: steel framing and reinforced concrete make possible "curtain-wall" architecture—i. e., the skyscraper.
1867	Alfred Nobel produces dynamite, the first high explosive which can be safely handled.
1873	Christopher Sholes invents the Remington typewriter.
1876	Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone.
1877	Thomas Edison invents the phonograph.
1878	Microphone invented.
1879	Edison invents the incandescent lamp.
1883	First skvseraper (10 stories) in Chicago. 1 he Brooklyn Bridge opens. This large suspension bridge, built by the Roeblings (father and son), is a triumph of engineering.
1885	Karl Benz develops first automobile to run on an internal-combustion engine.
1888	Heinrich Hertz produces radio waves.
1892	Rudolf Diesel invents the diesel engine.
1895	Wilhelm Roentgen discovers X-rays.
1896	Guglielmo Marconi patents the wireless telegraph.
1897	Joseph Thomson discovers particles smaller than atoms.
1900	First Zeppelin built.
1901	Marconi transmits first transatlantic radio message (from Cape Cod).
1903	Wright brothers make first powered flight.
1908	llenrv Ford mass-produces the Model T.

FIGURE 2-1 Important events in industrial and technological development.