Timeline of Transportation Technology - 20th Century

20th Century

• 1900 – Ferdinand von Zeppelin builds the first successful airship
• 1903
  • Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright fly the first motor-driven airplane
  • Diesel engine tested in a canal boat by Rudolph Diesel, Adrian Bochet and Frederic Dyckhoff
• 1908 – Henry Ford develops the assembly line method of automobile manufacturing
• 1911 – Selandia launched, the first ocean-going, diesel engine-driven ship
• 1912 – Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled rocket
• 1935 – First flight of the DC-3, one of the most significant transport aircraft in the history of aviation
• 1939 - First jet engine powered aircraft, the Heinkel He 178, takes flight.
• 1942 – V2 rocket covers a distance of 200 kilometres (120 mi)
• 1947 – First supersonic manned flight
• 1955 – The first nuclear powered vessel, the USS Nautilus, a submarine, is launched
• 1957
  • Sputnik 1, the first man-made satellite to be launched into orbit
  • Gateway City, the world’s first purpose-built container ship, enters service
  • First flight of the Boeing 707, the first commercially-successful jet airliner
• 1961 – Vostok 1, the first manned space mission, designed by Sergey Korolyov and Kerim Kerimov, makes two orbits around the Earth
• 1969
  • First flight of the Boeing 747, the first commercial widebody airliner.
  • First manned Moon landing
• 1971 – Salyut 1, the first space station, launched by Kerim Kerimov
• 1976 – Concorde makes the world's first commercial passenger-carrying supersonic flight
• 1981 – First flight of the space shuttle
• 1994 - The Channel Tunnel opens