Transport
Discover facts about transport. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Transport
Why Hallstatt sent salt through tree trunks
Moving solid heavy minerals is vastly overrated. Back in 1595, Austrians realized it was significantly lazier to just dissolve their mined salt in water and…
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Zorb balls encase humans in giant transparent plastic
Tumbling downhill completely unprotected is a bad idea. The brilliant solution is zipping yourself inside a massive, heavily cushioned, inflatable plastic orb…
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Slip and slides require perfectly wet painted concrete
A very observant father watching his son dangerously hydroplane across a damp patio realized he could mass-produce a long sheet of slick yellow plastic to let…
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Carousels began as knight-training machines
The whimsical rotating ride with the cheerful music was originally a very serious contraption where mounted knights would violently practice spearing…
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Snowboards were first called Snurfers
Strapping both feet to a single plank of wood was a radical concept in the sixties. They haphazardly mashed together the words snow and surfer to market this…
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Restaurants once shot burgers through tubes
Some older eateries genuinely believed carrying a hot sandwich to the front counter was terribly inefficient. They actually installed air-powered tubing…
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Stand-up paddleboarding gave instructors better vision
Lounging on your stomach is terrible for situational awareness. Water instructors realized standing fully upright with a giant paddle let them easily spot…
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Pogo sticks bounce you around on a single heavy spring
Bouncing furiously in one place is somehow considered a valid form of locomotion. The classic design relies entirely on aggressively compressing a stiff…
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Ski chairlifts were inspired by banana loaders
Hauling frozen humans up a snowy peak is structurally identical to loading tropical fruit into a port's storage. The first chairlift was adapted straight from…
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The Ferris wheel built to challenge the Eiffel Tower
The iconic spinning observation wheel wasn't meant for romance or relaxation; it was an aggressive flex of structural ambition meant to entirely outshine the…
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The cable car with a roof you can stand on
Being inside a swinging glass box wasn't quite thrilling enough, so the Swiss built a cableway where you can boldly stand on the unprotected roof while…
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How conveyor belts changed sushi restaurants
A restaurateur watched glass bottles glide along an assembly line and realized he could dramatically reduce his payroll by making raw fish rotate past his…
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Cave paintings show Stone Age swimmers using breaststroke
Pushing water away in a wide circular motion isn't a modern Olympic invention. Prehistoric art clearly illustrates early humans using this exact awkward…
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Why firefighters slide down brass poles
First responders realized that navigating tight, winding descents during an emergency was incredibly inefficient. To save time, they simply cut a hole in the…
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The terrifying origins of water slides
Smooth modern fiberglass is an absolute luxury. The very first attempts at high-speed aquatic descent involved sliding down dangerously sharp roofing…
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The fabric tubes that get people out of tall buildings
Normal exits take entirely too long during dire emergencies. These woven fabric tubes allow panicking people to literally slide through a massive vertical…
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Why inline skates began with hockey players
Ice is notoriously temporary, so aggressive athletes needed a practical way to violently check each other during the summer months. This directly fueled the…
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Why ice resurfacers pour hot water
Deep ruts completely ruin a good glide, so lumbering machines slowly scrape off the damaged top layer and immediately dump scalding liquid over the surface to…
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Sledding once meant stealing a trash-can lid
Professional winter equipment is incredibly expensive, so thrill-seekers simply purloined circular metal garbage covers to spin uncontrollably down heavily…
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Why early balloonists burned straw and wool
The pioneering brothers who first achieved hot air inflation actually thought the foul-smelling smoke from burning straw and wool possessed magical levitation…
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The first water skis were bent barrel pieces
Modern composite is a massive upgrade. The very first guy to successfully glide over a lake being pulled by a rope used literal pieces of a wooden barrel he…
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Base jumping strictly requires leaping from fixed objects
Jumping out of moving objects is apparently too conventional. This extremely hazardous activity explicitly mandates throwing yourself off completely…
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Wingsuits increase human surface area for long gliding
Dropping straight down like a rock is incredibly boring. By webbing the empty spaces between your arms and legs with durable nylon, you can temporarily turn…
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The garage experiment that became the trampoline
Deeply frustrated by the absolute limits of human jumping ability, a clever athlete stretched heavy canvas across a rigged iron frame with taut springs,…
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