Timeline of Transportation Technology - 19th Century

19th Century

• 1801 – Richard Trevithick ran a full-sized steam 'road locomotive' on the road in Camborne, England
• 1803 – Richard Trevithick built his 10-seater London Steam Carriage
• 1803 – William Symington's Charlotte Dundas, generally considered to be the world's first practical steamboat, makes her first voyage.
• 1804 – Richard Trevithick built a prototype steam-powered railway locomotive.
• 1804 – Oliver Evans (claimed to have) demonstrated a steam-powered amphibious vehicle.
• 1807 – Robert Fulton's North River Steamboat, the world's first commercially successful steamboat, makes her maiden voyage.
• 1807 – Nicéphore Niépce installed his Pyréolophore internal combustion engine in a boat and powered up the river Saone in France.
• 1807 – Isaac de Rivas made a hydrogen gas powered internal combustion engine and mounted it on a vehicle.
• 1814 – George Stephenson built the first practical steam-powered railway locomotive
• 1816 – The most likely originator of the bicycle is the German, Baron Karl von Drais, who rode his 1816 machine while collecting taxes from his tenants.
• 1819 – SS Savannah, the first vessel to cross the Atlantic Ocean partly under steam power, arrives at Liverpool, England from Savannah, Georgia.
• 1825 - Sir Goldsworthy Gurney invented a series of steam powered passenger carriages and by 1829 completed the 120 mile journey from London to Bath, Somerset and back.
• 1838 – Isambard Kingdom Brunel's SS Great Western, the first purpose-built transatlantic steamship, inaugurates the first regular transatlantic steamship service.
• 1852 – Elisha Otis invents the safety elevator.
• 1853 – Sir George Cayley built and demonstrated the first heavier-than-air aircraft (a glider)
• 1862 – Étienne Lenoir made a gasoline engine automobile
• 1867 - first modern motorcycle was invented
• 1868 – George Westinghouse invented the compressed-air brake for railway trains.
• 1868 – Louis-Guillaume Perreaux's steam velocipede, a steam engine attached to a Michaux velocipede.
• 1880 – Werner von Siemens builds first electric elevator.
• 1894 – Hildebrand & Wolfmüller became the first motorcycle available to the public for purchase.
• 1896 – Jesse W. Reno builds first escalator at Coney Island, and then reinstalls it on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge.
• 1897 – Charles Parsons' Turbinia, the first vessel to be powered by a steam turbine, makes her debut.
• 1897 – The most likely first electric bicycle was built in 1897 by Hosea W. Libbey.