In fact, early stagecoaches were no faster than walking, achieving an average speed of 3 mph along roads that were little more than muddy tracks, and exposing passengers to the dangers of both accidents and highwaymen.

American cars were not simply more numerous; they were also much bigger than cars in other countries. On average, they were three quarters of a ton heavier than those made in Europe and Japan, and their V-8 engines had more than twice the engine capacity of the four-cylinder engines most prevalent elsewhere. As a result, they used a lot more fuel.

Writing in 1971, Henri Lefebvre, a French philosopher, called the automobile “the epitome of possessions” because of its unique ability to signal social status. But today the smartphone is fast taking its place. And compared with cars, smartphones are arguably more democratic.

Much of the early enthusiasm for the automobile stemmed from its promise to solve the problems associated with horse-drawn vehicles, including noise, traffic congestion, and accidents. The fact that cars failed on each of these counts was tolerated because they offered so many other benefits, including eliminating the pollution—most notably, horse

While men rode horses, wheeled vehicles had come to be associated with Rome’s elite women.

After conducting a series of experiments starting in the 1780s, John McAdam, a Scottish engineer, refined this approach with his proposal that roads be surfaced using small, sharp-edged stones made from crushed rock, rather than rounded pebbles. The straight edges of these small stones caused them to pack together more tightly as vehicles passed ov

The first electric traffic light was installed in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1914. Like its predecessor from 1868, it used two colors—red and green. But by this time the railway industry had switched the meanings of green and white, so that green meant “go” and white meant “caution.” This was because the increasing use of gas and electric lighting meant t

People living in the Carpathian region would have had both the means and the motivation to create wheeled vehicles during this period, which is known as the Copper Age. As the name suggests, this was when metalworking first began, allowing tools to be made from copper rather than stone. (Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, was subsequently found to

bicycles did have immediate social impact in one area in particular: romance. They broadened people’s social circles, letting cyclists travel beyond their own communities and greatly increasing the number of potential marriage partners. Cycling became a popular social activity that allowed young men and women to escape the oversight of chaperones.