The 1830s

Continuous Track

Continuous track was conceived as a way for vehicles to travel in a fashion similar to trains. But instead of traversing a fixed set of tracks, these vehicles would be able to go anywhere because they would bring their own set of tracks with them. This is why George Cayley named it “universal railway” when he invented it.

Continuous track distributes a vehicle’s weight over a large surface area (e.g. – as opposed to the smaller, narrower size of a tire). This allows the vehicle to put less pressure on the ground. From the ground’s perspective (the one who has to carry the weight), it’s like the vehicle is much lighter. This allows very heavy vehicles to be on, and to travel across, soft surfaces without sinking. Or at least they are less likely to sink. This same principle can be seen with snowshoes, where the shoes increase the surface area of a person’s feet, which distributes their weight over a larger area. This distribution of weight allows the person to walk on top of snow without sinking, as they would if wearing regular shoes.

The large tread of continuous track also helps the vehicle achieve good traction on soft surfaces, rough terrain, and steep inclines. This is why vehicles with continuous track can often travel over ground that more conventional vehicles like cars and trucks cannot drive on.

The Victorian Era

During the Victorian era, the British Empire experienced an enormous expansion of power and influence. There were sweeping changes in just about every sector: cultural, religious, political, artistic, and technological.

One of the major changes of this era was the introduction of mass, and then compulsory, education of children in England. This movement was driven by the Industrial Revolution and the immense number of technological advances that occurred during this time period. It was a turning point at which the need for an educated workforce that was able to understand and utilize technology was seen as more important than keeping the masses ignorant so that they could be more easily controlled.

Steel Plow

Although now known as America’s breadbasket, the Midwest was considered to be completely un-farmable prior to the invention of the steel plow.

The Midwestern soil had a sticky nature that caused it to become stuck to the iron plows of the time and clog them up. This meant that farmers had to constantly stop every few feet to clean off the blade, making progress impossible. Steel plows had a highly polished surface that the soil slid right off of, making farming of this soil possible.

For this reason, Deere’s steel plow became known as “the plow that broke the plains”.

Photography

The daguerreotype was the first successful, publicly available form of photography.

Daguerreotype images were produced on highly polished, silver coated metal plates (usually copper).

Earlier efforts to produce photographs required hours of exposure time in the camera. The daguerreotype method cut this required exposure time down to minutes.

Baseball

Like most sports (and much of history), the origins of baseball are difficult to pin down. Aspects of baseball can be seen in many different earlier games.

Baseball as we know it today was mostly established by the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club (New York Knickerbockers). They established the rules of modern baseball (Knickerbocker Rules); and were also the first group to wear baseball uniforms.