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Little Lucy and her family are on a drive to visit great uncle [Lucy and her family in a car]

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Egbert in Arkansas. Lucy whines to her parents "How long am I gonna be stuck

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in this car" and they say something like "11 hours Lucy and if you keep complaining

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we're leaving you at the next stop." Just kidding ya they're good parents, [Lucy's parents leave her behind]

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they'll come back for her after an hour... or so... But eeech, if Lucy was throwing a fit over [Lucy's parents pick her up when it is dark outside]

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an 11 hour trip imagine the trouble she would have caused back in the day.

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We're talking about the days when people had to get the Arkansas via horse-drawn

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wagons or even further back when everybody just walked or canoed [People riding on a horse and wagon]

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everywhere. A whining Lucy would not have survived. Hey got to make the wagon [Lucy and her family in a canoe]

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lighter somehow... Seriously though well let's think about that 11 hour

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estimate for a second. 11 hours means great uncle Egbert is somewhere around [Uncle Egbert waving]

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700 miles away. Well in the past the same journey could have taken days weeks or

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even months. In this unit we'll figure out why we can make the trip to Eggy so

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quickly. We won't find out how he feels about the nickname Eggy though. [The uncle chucks badge that says 'Eggy' into a fire]

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We'll be discussing how transportation made the world a smaller more globalized

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place, and how transportation technologies are more than just faster [Footage of a busy city road]

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way to visit our relatives. Good roads were the secret behind the Roman

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Empire's world conquering success. Fast ships let Europeans explore the whole

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world and basically conquer it. It was kind of Europe's hobby back then... Oh and America's

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railroads unified the whole country during the 19th century. That trip from New York [Railroads appearing all over map of the U.S.]

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to San Francisco, well it wasn't five months and a thousand dollars anymore it

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was suddenly five days and a hundred fifty dollars. But well you know the food

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was still bad... We'll investigate technological history to figure out how [Man with a pipe holding up a magnifying glass]

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human beings went from walking on two feet to driving pickup trucks and we'll

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think about how we've come full circle with strong guys on YouTube pulling

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pickup trucks on their own two feet. And hey look up in the sky it''s a bird it's [Man lifting up the front of a truck]

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a plane... Well yeah it's just a plain our bad...

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I didn't mean to get anyone excited. By the mid 20th century humans were taking to the

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skies. Admittedly the first planes looked like total death traps and some of them [Plane falls out the sky into the ocean]

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were but it wasn't long before we were like "oceans? we can jump them in a few

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hours now." Next thing we know, space flight even became possible. And sure [Passenger jet flies over the ocean]

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cruising space may not yet be a public activity we're still waiting on our

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tickets to the moon. But space flight is the travel tech of the future, huge

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questions on the horizon. How did transportation technology change the [Satellite in orbit around Earth]

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world? What is globalization? Why can't we beam our selves to work Star Trek style?

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All will be answered, well expect that Star Trek one... If we knew the answer that we'd be beaming [Man teleports]

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tutors right into your room... (laughing) Or would that be kinda creepy... [Tutor appears and student screams]

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