Technology
The B&O established its Mount Clare Shops in Baltimore in 1829. This was the first railroad manufacturing facility in the U.S., and the company built locomotives, railroad cars, iron bridges and other equipment there. In general, U.S. railroad companies imported technology from Britain in the 1830s, particularly strap iron rails, as there were no rail manufacturing facilities in the states at that time. Heavy iron "T" rails were first manufactured in the U.S. in the mid-1840s at Mount Savage, Maryland and Danville, Pennsylvania. This improved rail design permitted higher train speeds and more reliable operation.
Following the B&O example, U.S. railroad companies soon became self-sufficient, as thousands of domestic machine shops turned out products and thousands of inventors and tinkerers improved the equipment. Discovery of high-quality iron ores in the mid-19th century, particularly in the Great Lakes region, led to fabrication of better-quality rails.
Steel rails began to replace iron later in the 19th century. Several railroads imported steel rails from England in the 1860s, and the first commercially available steel rails in the U.S. were manufactured in 1867 at the Cambria Iron Works in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. By the mid-1880s U.S. railroads were using more steel rails than iron in building new or replacement tracks.
Read more about this topic: History Of Rail Transport In The United States
Famous quotes containing the word technology:
“Primitive peoples tried to annul death by portraying the human body—we do it by finding substitutes for the human body. Technology instead of mysticism!”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)
“Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power ... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“Radio put technology into storytelling and made it sick. TV killed it. Then you were locked into somebody else’s sighting of that story. You no longer had the benefit of making that picture for yourself, using your imagination. Storytelling brings back that humanness that we have lost with TV. You talk to children and they don’t hear you. They are television addicts. Mamas bring them home from the hospital and drag them up in front of the set and the great stare-out begins.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)