Timeline of transportation technology

[edit] Antiquity

3500 BC - Wheeled carts are invented in Mesopotamia
3500 BC - River boats are invented
2000 BC - Ships are invented in ancient Egypt
2500 BC - Earliest paved roads built in Rakhigarhi (Indus Valley Civilization)
2400 BC - Shipyard built in Lothal (Indus Valley Civilization)
2000 BC - Horses are tamed and used for transport
2000 BC - Chariots built by Indo-Iranians
500 BC - Postal system developed in Achaemenid Empire (Persian Empire)
312 BC - One of the earliest paved roads, the Appian Way, is built; the Romans eventually built over 50,000 miles of paved Roman roads
200 BC - The first hot air balloon, the Kongming lantern, is invented in China

1633 - Lagari Hasan Çelebi makes the first attempt at flying in an artificially-powered rocket
1662 - Blaise Pascal invents a horse-drawn public bus which has a regular route, schedule, and fare system
1672 - Ferdinand Verbiest may have built what may have been the first steam powered car^[1]^[2]

1740 - Jacques de Vaucanson debuted his clockwork powered carriage
1769 - Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot demonstrates his fardier à vapeur, an experimental steam-driven artillery tractor
1783 - Joseph Montgolfier and Étienne Montgolfier launch the first hot air balloons
1784 - William Murdoch built a working model of a steam carriage in Redruth, England^[3]

1801 - Richard Trevithick ran a full-sized steam 'road locomotive' on the road in Camborne, England^[3]
1803 - Richard Trevithick built his 10-seater London Steam Carriage^[3]
1804 - Richard Trevithick built a prototype steam-powered railway locomotive.
1804 - Oliver Evans (claimed to have) demonstrated a steam-powered amphibious vehicle.
1807 - Isaac de Rivas made a hydrogen gas -powered vehicle
1814 - George Stephenson built the first practical steam-powered railway locomotive
1816 - The most likely originator of the bicycle is the German, Baron Karl von Drais, who rode his 1816 machine while collecting taxes from his tenants.
1853 - Sir George Cayley built and demonstrated the first heavier-then-air aircraft (a glider)
1862 - Étienne Lenoir made a gasoline-engine automobile
1868 - George Westinghouse invented the compressed-air brake for railway trains.

1900 - Ferdinand von Zeppelin builds the first successful airship
1903 - Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright fly the first motor-driven airplane
1903 - Small 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
1926 - Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled rocket
December 17, 1935 - First flight of the DC-3, one the most significant transport aircraft in the history of aviation.^[4]
1942 - V2 rocket covers a distance of 200 kilometres (120 mi)
1947 - First supersonic flight
1957 - Sputnik 1, the first man-made satellite to be launched into orbit
December 20, 1957 - 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
February 9, 1969 - First flight of the Boeing 747, the first commercial widebody airliner.
1969 - First manned Moon landing
1971 - Salyut 1, the first space station, launched by Kerim Kerimov
1976 - Concorde made the world's first commercial passenger-carrying supersonic flight
1981 - First flight of the space shuttle

2003 - Concorde made the world's last commercial passenger carrying supersonic flight

^ "SA MOTORING HISTORY - TIMELINE". Government of South Australia.
^ Setright, L. J. K. (2004). Drive On!: A Social History of the Motor Car. Granta Books. ISBN 1-86207-698-7.
^ ^a ^b ^c C.D. Buchanan (1958). "1", Mixed Blessing: The Motor in Britain. Leonard Hill.
^ The DC-3