Реферат на тему Transcontinental railroad

Содержание:

Introduction 3
1 Historical Roots of Transcontinental Railroad 4
2 Construction of Transcontinental Railroad 5
3 Social Challengers and Language Peculiarities 9
4 New Era of Transcontinental Railroad 12
Conclusion 15
References 16

Введение:

The choice of the theme regarding to the railroads as an object of our research is not accidental. Rail transport is not just one of the professional areas of human activity. The advent of modern rail transport in the first half of the 20thcentury largely changed the course of civilization. In its nearly 200-years history, rail transport has undergone a long and complex evolutionary development from the first steam rail lines to the largest transport system – highly efficient and reliable.
One of the most interesting stages within a historical development of railroad transport is the construction of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. The transcontinental railroad construction had a lot of the important national consequences. Mostly it changed demography and economics of the American West forever. The lack of a complete picture and clear fundamental scientific investigations in this sphere has determined the choice of the present research as well as its actuality.
The purpose of this work includes the complex analysis of the history and the development of the first transcontinental railroad in the USA. The realization of such goal shall be achieved by solving the following integrative tasks:
1. to study and analyze the historical roots of the transcontinental railroad under the framework of the railroad transport development;
2. to analyze and describe all stages of the transcontinental railroad construction and its major results, which united the country into the only community;
3. to reveal the major social challengers arisen within a process of the transcontinental railroad construction and analyze the ways of their solving;
4. to describe the main ways of penetrating the railroad terminology into everyday American English;
5. to reveal and describe the new era of transcontinental railroad and its general perspectives within the cargo and passengers transportation system development.

Заключение:

Taking into account the studied materials (thesis, arguments and counter arguments) we have analyzed the following conclusions can be drawn, revealing the main problems of historical and nowadays development of the transcontinental railroad in the USA.
1. Transportation of goods and passengers could not be existed without railroad trains. Such important transportation paradigm became one of the humanity’s greatest technical and social achievements, especially within a period of industrial revolution.
2. The construction of the first transcontinental railroad in the USA was finished on May 1869 completing the world’s first transcontinental railroad. It changed demography and economics of the American West forever.
3. In spite of all economic and financial advantages, the constriction of transcontinental railroad had a lot of social disadvantages and challengers. Sweat, blood and money were the main components of the most ambitious transport project in the history of the United States. The construction of the first transcontinental railroad is a good example of the US government policy against the national minorities.
4. There a lot of railroad terms and stable word combinations that were actively used within a process of constructing transcontinental railroads, but one day a lots of them worked their way into language through the literature and oral folklore channels.
5. The new era of the transcontinental railroad radical renovation is closely connected with the containerization under the framework of multimodal transportation.
Summing up, we can conclude that construction of the first transcontinental railroad has greatly influenced on the economic, political and social activities not only in the United States, but also in the other countries all over the world.

Фрагмент текста работы:

From the moment of their establishment the large continental countries such as Russia, the USA, Canada, Australia, China and others were searching for the routes of consolidating their territories into the whole integrated community in order to build a system of trade and commerce connecting people throughout the country. For example, Thomas Jefferson, the third US president, had a strong wish to discover a waterway that crossed from the Atlantic Ocean to Pacific, because at that time the United States did not stretch all the way across the country. Jefferson sent a group of explores to discover a waterway dividing the North American continent. As a result of that expedition, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark discovered no coast-to-coast waterway. Therefore, Jefferson decided that a different transportation system would best connect American communities. That system involved roads, rivers and railroads. By the middle of the 1800s, dirt roads had been built in parts of the country. The use of river steamboats increased. Boats also traveled along man-made canals which strengthened local economies. The first railroads had been appeared.
In nineteenth-century American culture, railroads became more than just a way to travel. “American communities could develop themselves away from major waterways. Railroads helped many industries, including agriculture. Farmers got a new way to send grain to ports, from which the vessels could carry the goods and passengers around the world.” [10]
Transportation of goods and passengers could not be existed without railroad trains, that revolutionized the industry, human expansion, and the way of moving across the country. Such transportation paradigm became one of the humanity’s greatest technical and social achievements within a period of industrial revolution.
It all began in more than 2000 years ago in ancient Egypt, Babylon and Greece. Transportation of people and goods was done with carts pulled by bulls and/or horses, and their engineers noticed that animals move quicker traveling on predetermined paths. By 18th century, all mines in Great Britain had their own rail networks with horses pulling carts with rocks to factories.