A Brief History of Motion

Title: A Brief History of Motion – From the Wheel to the Car to What Comes Next

Author: Tom Standage

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021 (First)

ISBN: 9781526608314

Pages: 246

 

Transportation of men and material from one location to another in a fast and efficient manner is an indicator of civilizational progress when taken over a large interval of time. I insist on having the disclaimer on time because in most cities and urban landscapes of the world, transportation speed and efficiency is considerably less than what it were a half-century ago. However, a liberating breakthrough is sure to occur and take human progress to the next level. That is the lesson we learn from the history of various cultures and their technology. Innovative technologies often initially present themselves with potential for doubt and confusion about its feasibility. Today, there is once again that sense of change, opportunity and uncertainty, as a result of a sudden proliferation of new forms of transport. Experts predict a not-so-late demise of the car as a mode of travel which moved humanity in the twentieth century. This book is a good narrative of man’s progress from invention of the wheel to smartphone-enabled ride sharing services on a driverless vehicle. Tom Standage is deputy editor at the Economist and editor of its future-gazing annual ‘The World Ahead’. He is also the author of many best-selling books and lives in London.

 

Just as it is apt to begin from the very beginning, Standage starts the narrative with early forms of transport. It is widely believed that the wheel was invented in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BCE as a means for conveying grain from one place to the other. This book proposes that it was invented in Europe, in the Carpathian mountain region in west Ukraine, for transporting copper ore about 400 years earlier than the date on which wheel was supposed to have come into being in Mesopotamia. To consolidate the claim, the author alludes to Ljubljana Marshes wheel found in Poland at around the same time. Wherever it may have originated, some of the formal rules governing the use of wheeled vehicles and the earliest examples of urban environments being reshaped to accommodate them date to the Roman period in the late centuries BCE. There was public pressure not to allow wheeled vehicles on city streets which were the preserve of the townsfolk. However, Julius Caesar introduced a law in 45 BCE, the Lex Julia Municipalis, allowing their use in the city of Rome only from dusk until dawn.

 

The next revolution in transport occurred around the early-twentieth century with the development of cars. Horses, which were used for transport and hauling carriages, had become a nightmare for most cities when their numbers proliferated and horse manure had become a grave environmental issue for the town’s inhabitants. Alternate vehicles used steam, petrol and electricity. It is curious to learn that battery-powered cars entered the fray more than a century ago. But with the discovery of new petroleum reserves in many parts of the globe, cheap fuel oil replaced all others as the prime mover. Cars became accessible to the common man with the introduction of Ford Model T. Prices of cars ranged from $2800 to $7000, but the Model T was priced at $850 only. Unlike others, its advertisements did not depict a target customer or context of use, implying that this universal car was suitable for everyone. The challenge was to build an engine that was light but powerful. Ford identified Vanadium steel, which had just then become commercially available in Europe. Ford’s ‘moving assembly line’ concept reduced the production cost to a great extent. The Model T sold for just $298 in five years and it cornered a market share of 55 per cent. By extending car ownership down the income scale, the Model T brought motoring to the masses.

 

After building up the story of the automobile, the book looks into the mess it had unintentionally brought about in urban settlements. Clogging of road lanes due to heavy traffic and pollution has prompted authorities to curb vehicular traffic in selected areas of the city. This was necessitated due to transfer of population to the suburbs when better transportation was available a half century ago. Standage examines the urban layouts by Cesare Marchetti. It suggests that one hour is, on average, how long people are willing to spend travelling to and from work each day and has been so for centuries. Some people commute much shorter or longer, but the average holds for a whole city’s population. When faster modes of transport emerge, cities grow in size.

 

The author also studies the impact cars and automobiles have brought in re-moulding social relationships and societal restrictions. Cars and the freedom they provided were central to the teenage culture that began to take shape in 1940s America and exported worldwide. It changed the eating habits too. The drive-in restaurants that sprang up along American highways, catering to time-pressed drivers with fast service and the promise of consistency under a nationwide brand, gave rise to the modern concept of fast food. Cars have been the driving force in creating shopping patterns. In a future in which cars would assume a decidedly less prominent role, its owners’ habits are bound to change. Although teenagers and young adults embrace malls and large supermarkets as a social space, malls are in retreat. By 2005, around 1500 enclosed malls were built in the US, but hardly any have been built since then. Smartphones provide a far more convenient venue to chat with friends and other social activities. The Covid pandemic has also encouraged customers to buy from online stores rather than physical nearby outlets.

 

Standage makes a few intelligent guesses about the future of personal transportation in future. An obvious candidate is the electric car which makes a comeback facilitated by the Lithium-ion battery that expanded the storage capacity of batteries. He argues that the concept of a personally owned car would soon become obsolete. Ride-sharing and ride-hailing are suggested as the two alternatives enabled by powerful smartphones. Improvements in mass transport systems such as the Hyperloop are not even mentioned. Similarly conspicuous by absence is the story of air travel and its potential for the future. The book can be clearly divided into two halves – one being the historical development of automobiles and the other being deliberations on the future. The first part is very interesting to read, but the latter appears to be labored. The practical implications of the author’s imagined future would become apparent only after a few decades. The author’s prediction that personal ownership of cars would shrink in the future is a bold one as it requires letting go of a major icon of flaunting one’s wealth in many societies. The availability of shared vehicles in the case of a national or climate emergency is also a point which would weigh heavily in the decision-making process of the people.

 

The book is recommended.

 

Rating: 3 Star