The wonderful century : the age of new ideas in science and invention / [Alfred Russel Wallace].

  • Wallace, Alfred Russel, 1823-1913.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The wonderful century : the age of new ideas in science and invention / [Alfred Russel Wallace]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    It was only during the first quarter of the nineteenth century that the roads of our country came to be what we now find them, chiefly through the talents and energy of two men—Telford, the great bridge and road maker, who re-constructed many of our main roads with special attention to easy gradients and a solid foundation; and Macadam, who brought about the adoption of the method of using stone broken to a uniform size as being essential to the formation of a smooth, hard and durable surface. It is certainly a curious fact that the first application of scientific methods to ordinary road-making occurred in the early part of the same century which a little later saw our coaches and waggons, for whose use these im- provements were made, almost wholly superseded by railways. And even when the first of the great railways was in process of construction, about the year 1839, so little idea was there that the great highways would not much longer be required for the conveyance of the mails and passengers, that the roads were in many places being still further improved at great expense. About the time mentioned I visited Dunstable, near which town the great North-Western Road passes through a deep cutting in the chalk downs. Hundreds of workmen were at that time employed in deepening this cutting some eight or ten feet, to make the gradient easier for stage and mail coaches, which, in less than twenty years more had entirely ceased to run. This brief account of the modes of travel from the earliest times till the construction of our great railways in the second quarter of the present century shows that there had been absolutely no change in the methods of human locomotion ; and that the speed for long distances must have been limited to ten or twelve miles an hour even under the most favourable conditions, while generally