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History of Technology 2: Introduction 416 Views
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Description:
Transportation technology has evolved faster than you can say, "transportation technology sure has evolved!" ...Okay, not literally, obviously you can say that faster. You get the point though.
Transcript
- 00:03
Little Lucy and her family are on a drive to visit great uncle [Lucy and her family in a car]
- 00:07
Egbert in Arkansas. Lucy whines to her parents "How long am I gonna be stuck
- 00:13
in this car" and they say something like "11 hours Lucy and if you keep complaining
- 00:18
we're leaving you at the next stop." Just kidding ya they're good parents, [Lucy's parents leave her behind]
- 00:23
they'll come back for her after an hour... or so... But eeech, if Lucy was throwing a fit over [Lucy's parents pick her up when it is dark outside]
Full Transcript
- 00:28
an 11 hour trip imagine the trouble she would have caused back in the day.
- 00:33
We're talking about the days when people had to get the Arkansas via horse-drawn
- 00:37
wagons or even further back when everybody just walked or canoed [People riding on a horse and wagon]
- 00:41
everywhere. A whining Lucy would not have survived. Hey got to make the wagon [Lucy and her family in a canoe]
- 00:46
lighter somehow... Seriously though well let's think about that 11 hour
- 00:49
estimate for a second. 11 hours means great uncle Egbert is somewhere around [Uncle Egbert waving]
- 00:54
700 miles away. Well in the past the same journey could have taken days weeks or
- 00:59
even months. In this unit we'll figure out why we can make the trip to Eggy so
- 01:04
quickly. We won't find out how he feels about the nickname Eggy though. [The uncle chucks badge that says 'Eggy' into a fire]
- 01:08
We'll be discussing how transportation made the world a smaller more globalized
- 01:12
place, and how transportation technologies are more than just faster [Footage of a busy city road]
- 01:16
way to visit our relatives. Good roads were the secret behind the Roman
- 01:20
Empire's world conquering success. Fast ships let Europeans explore the whole
- 01:25
world and basically conquer it. It was kind of Europe's hobby back then... Oh and America's
- 01:30
railroads unified the whole country during the 19th century. That trip from New York [Railroads appearing all over map of the U.S.]
- 01:34
to San Francisco, well it wasn't five months and a thousand dollars anymore it
- 01:39
was suddenly five days and a hundred fifty dollars. But well you know the food
- 01:44
was still bad... We'll investigate technological history to figure out how [Man with a pipe holding up a magnifying glass]
- 01:47
human beings went from walking on two feet to driving pickup trucks and we'll
- 01:52
think about how we've come full circle with strong guys on YouTube pulling
- 01:56
pickup trucks on their own two feet. And hey look up in the sky it''s a bird it's [Man lifting up the front of a truck]
- 02:01
a plane... Well yeah it's just a plain our bad...
- 02:05
I didn't mean to get anyone excited. By the mid 20th century humans were taking to the
- 02:10
skies. Admittedly the first planes looked like total death traps and some of them [Plane falls out the sky into the ocean]
- 02:15
were but it wasn't long before we were like "oceans? we can jump them in a few
- 02:21
hours now." Next thing we know, space flight even became possible. And sure [Passenger jet flies over the ocean]
- 02:27
cruising space may not yet be a public activity we're still waiting on our
- 02:31
tickets to the moon. But space flight is the travel tech of the future, huge
- 02:36
questions on the horizon. How did transportation technology change the [Satellite in orbit around Earth]
- 02:40
world? What is globalization? Why can't we beam our selves to work Star Trek style?
- 02:46
All will be answered, well expect that Star Trek one... If we knew the answer that we'd be beaming [Man teleports]
- 02:51
tutors right into your room... (laughing) Or would that be kinda creepy... [Tutor appears and student screams]
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