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One of the Greatest Inventions in the History of Human Transport

26 points skadamat 3 days ago 6 comments

Someone 3 days ago | parent

> Had this really not been done before? Apparently not on land. Ferries are an ancient idea, both for crossing water bodies and for traveling along them. They are fixed routes, of course, but that’s mostly because the shore is fixed.

Historically, not true for the “trekschuit” in 1632. For that, the shore didn’t exist before the route was envisioned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trekschuit:

“The first trekschuit 'sailed' in 1632 between Amsterdam and Haarlem and could carry 30 passengers. The trekvaart or canal was dug in a straight line to facilitate an easy pulling process and to guarantee the shortest route”

brnt 40 minutes ago | parent

My late grandmother once told me this is how she travelled longer distances on occasion as a youth/young woman. Was a good lesson for me in understanding exactly how much she had seen the world change in her lifetime.

rationalist 9 minutes ago | parent

Just imagine how much we will see change in our lifetimes.

For some of us; that's dial-up, to AI, to who knows what.

readthenotes1 44 minutes ago | parent

"He was fortunate to live at a time (the mid-1600s) when, if you were born to the right parents, nobody told you you needed to specialize."

Or, he could have been just that much smarter than you you, dismissive author.

"At age 11, Pascal had re-derived much of Euclid’s geometry from scratch because his father kept the books from him"

Guessing not in the author's bio

flexagoon 1 minute ago | parent

Two things can be true at the same time! Pascal was certainly a prodigy, but he was also largely living off family wealth.

mr_toad 8 minutes ago | parent

I don’t think that there was much fixed scheduling for water transport prior to the the development of steam engines either, because you were usually at the mercy of the winds and the tides.