Transportation Revolution (1970)

[Music] do you want to go from New York to California you can do it in a few hours there are many planes to take you there or perhaps you'd like to visit someone in another state nothing to it today America is all one because all parts of it are connected by transportation we take traveling for granted some of us even complain about it and yet it was not always this easy America as a nation was formed by Transportation this is the story [Music] the first settlers in America found a huge wild beautiful land but the country was so vast the mountains so high they could only imagine what lay Beyond them how they longed to cross those mountains but how could they ever do it so at first they stayed along the Eastern Seaboard and eventually a few Villages sprang up first further Inland there was little trade Farmers grew what they needed for themselves and for their families they almost never left the land for those early Americans travel was sometimes a necessity seldom a [Music] pleasure horses were the chief means of transportation people relied on a good dependable horse hitched up to a buggy or a wagon it would always get you there provided you were not in a hurry and you weren't going too far longdistance travel was downright hardship the conastoga wagon was the first American contribution to Transportation but the wagon's top speed was only 3 m an hour at that pace the country would never be settled the steamboat was a great invention the first time mechanical Power had been applied to Transportation the steamboat was fine on water but what would carry Travelers swiftly across the [Music] land then in 1829 Peter Cooper introduced his tiny steam locomotive the Tom Thumb on its first run the locomotive lost a race to a fast horse but the idea worked the train had come to [Music] America on Christmas Day 1830 the best friend of Charleston became the first regular passenger train on this continent everyone was enthusiastic what was it like to ride one of those early trains well a passenger wrote this is the Millennium flying on wing of the wind at 15 mph and leaving all the World Behind America fell in love with the Train the trains became faster more powerful they were The Wonder of the age and they made life easier more convenient civilized They Carried the farmer's produce to Market They Carried searly the railroads created trade and trade created New Towns but that was only in the eastern part of the country by 1860 there were 3,000 M of track in America more than in all the rest of the world combined the tracks pushed as far as the banks of the Missouri River and there they stopped beyond the Missouri lay more than onethird of the continent unsettled land the home of the Indian only a few hunters and Trappers had crossed it and the people in search of gold in [Music] California by 1855 there was a monthly Stage Coach service St Louis Missour to Oregon in California 2700 m in 25 days it was a terrible trouble one traveler wrote almost 4 weeks of kidney jolting and Bone cracking Indians on the hill bandits in the bushes read about it don't try it but Americans wanted their country to stretch as far as the Pacific Ocean it would take more than stage coaches to do that so Congress decided there must be a Transcontinental Railroad one company the Union Pacific would begin in Omaha Nebraska while the Central Pacific would start in Sacramento California they would meet somewhere in between it was a giant task never before had a railroad been built across 2,000 miles of wilderness everything had to be hauled more than 1,000 miles to where it was needed the Union Pacific workers were Civil War veterans or new immigrants mostly from Ireland they were paid $2.50 a day in food they work 72 hours a week after a year they were across Nebraska and 1,000 miles of wilderness still lay [Music] ahead at the other end of the line in California the Central Pacific had its own trouble a route had to be hacked and blasted through the Sierra Nevada mountains solid Granite they used Chinese in their work gangs there were thousands of Chinese in California men who had come to find gold but were not welcome among the miners they proved great workers theirs was the most terrible part of the whole transcontinental Railway they had no modern explosives to help them tunnel through the rock they did most of it by pick and Shuffle hundreds of them were killed by Falling Boulders and snows slides in the winter they built miles of wooden sheds along the precipice to protect the tracks some of them are there today and still in use after 3 years of work in the summer of 1868 they had finished the tuns they had cut through 20 m of solid rock no one had thought it could be done but now they were through the mountains once on the Flatland the railroads raced towards the meeting spot after all the hardship and the danger the goal was nearly accomplished the tracks from east and west would finally be joined May 10th 1869 at Promontory Utah was the great day America had been waiting for one locomotive Drew slowly towards the other at last the mighty mountains had been crossed the dream of those first immigrants had come true the two coasts Atlantic and Pacific were physically United and America was one country this was the miracle of the Transcontinental train [Music] now railroad was King the railroads made it possible for America to develop into one of the greatest industrial nations in the [Music] world trains brought raw material to the factories They Carried goods and farmed produced to markets that had never known them [Music] before by 189 0 trains that opened up all of [Music] America the railroad station became the most exciting place in town it was there you heard the latest news everyone wanted to ride on the trains railroad would take you to the city it could even take you clear across the country to people who still remembered stage coaches the railroad seemed a palace on Wheels during two hours of comfort I travel the distance my parents with hardship covered in 2 months railroad advertisements concentrated on the romance and the luxury of trouble children were welcome aboard trains travel was educational and broadening the railroad said then there were all the natural beauties of America just waiting to be [Music] SE train settled the West there was plenty of land to be had and train fairs were slashed for settlers thousands of new immigrants from Europe flocked to America's PLS they created Farms where there had only been Sage Brush and Tall Grass the railroads had unified America they had settled the country they had developed it but Farmers still had to Hitch up the same old horse and buggy to go from home into town the problem of fast convenient personal Transportation had not yet been solved but help was on the way they called it a Horseless Carriage and when it appeared upon the scene in the 1890s it seemed ridiculous an engine in a box with wheels was this noisy Gadget going to challenge the mighty train but the automobile meant freedom and adventure it could go places impossible for a train to travel at first the automobile was only for the rick the elegant or the Devil May care for those who could afford it the automobile was all the range but how could a working man ever own one it seemed impossible then in 1908 Henry Ford built a revolutionary car he called it the Model T and he made it so inexpensive that anyone could buy it of course ladies had to get in last to save money the door on the driver's side was only painted on and did not work but people loved it they could go anywhere anytime a new owner said I'd rather have a car than a bathtub you can't drive a bathtub to town [Music] the Model T changed America's customs and of her ways young people saw in it instant Independence off for a ride in a car eventually the Model T came to cost as little as $290 it was the product of the world's first assembly line the more cars produced the less each cost the more was sold by the 1920s there were 5 million cars in America and 80% of them were Model [Music] te's the automobile had created a new world it had brought freedom of movement Independence but people were still looking for a way to go even faster and farther some people actually wanted to fly in 1908 Wilbur and Orville Wright tested their new flying machine for the United States Army Army it was an historic occasion the first public demonstration in America of their invention the crowd was excited most of them didn't think the contraction could get off the ground but it could and it [Music] did few of the spectators that day realized that a whole new age was being born before their very eyes now more people built flying machines but most Americans saw no practical use for them they thought them gadgets and they thought the people who flew them were lunatics to most flying was as remote as the man in the moon in those days people paid to see airplanes fly there was always the possibility of a [Music] crackup World War I changed all that the airplane was used as a military tool it became faster a little more reliable every day it was romantic it was new Americans rushed to volunteer as Pilots but soon after the first American air units were sent to Europe the war was done what could the government do with all the planes it had built most people thought the airplane was useful only in Wartime so they decided to burn the thousands of airplanes which had never seen combat some few planes were safe for a new Postal Service the first air mail was introduced in 1918 a young man named Charles limberg was one of those early air mail Pilots limberg was dedicated to Flying he thought that the airplane and America's future belong together so Lindberg decided to risk everything even his life for what he believed in in 1927 he took off from San Diego California to start an incredible Adventure he would fly first to New York and then across the Atlantic alone in a single engine monoplane the Spirit of St Louis no one believed he could do it but he did 33 and 1/2 hours and all alone enormous crowds waited to greet him when he landed on the Airfield at Paris and again in New York and his return to [Applause] America Aviation had caught the imagination and the heart of the [Music] country now more and more people wanted to fly there were more and more CrossCountry flights for [Applause] [Music] passengers even trips across the ocean became easier and increasingly Popular by the 1930s America was linked by air to all the great continents of the world the modern day of Transportation had arrived now we have accomplished what seemed only a dream we've crossed the mountains and seen all that lies Beyond them we've conquered the Wilderness today we can travel anywhere in America we want to go we have the great gift of Mobility but we have had to pay the price roads have eaten up the land we struggled so hard to conquer there are almost 4 million miles of PVE roads in America a mile of road for every square mile of land and even they are not enough our highways are jammed with automobiles they pollute the air we breede because of the automobile sprawling suburbs spread across the country passenger trains are almost non-existent railroads haul nearly half our freight but commuter trains are are dirty crowded and reliable our airplanes carry thousands of people but they too pollute the air and sometimes that air is so crowded the plains cannot even leave the ground and yet these problems created by Transportation today are no greater than those at the beginning of our [Music] history by perseverance and Ingenuity we met the great challenges of yesterday 200 years ago those problems seemed impossible yet we found ways to solve them the challenges which faces today seem even more difficult but New Times create new challenges and new Solutions the future is up to all of us and that includes you [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music]