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A vehicle (Latin: vehiculum)
is a mechanical means of conveyance, a carriage or transport. Most often
they are manufactured (e.g. bicycles, cars, motorcycles, trains, ships,
boats, and aircraft), although some other means of transport which are not
made by humans also may be called vehicles; examples include icebergs and
floating tree trunks.
Vehicles may be propelled or pulled by engines or animals including humans,
for instance, a chariot, a stagecoach, a mule-drawn barge, an ox-cart or
rickshaw. However, animals on their own, though used as a means of
transport, are not called vehicles, but rather beasts of burden or draft
animals. This distinction includes humans carrying another human, for
example a child or a disabled person. Means of transport without a vehicle
or animal would include walking, running, crawling, or swimming.
Vehicles that do not travel on land often are called craft, such as
watercraft, sailcraft, aircraft, hovercraft, and spacecraft
Land vehicles are classified broadly by what is used to apply steering and
drive forces against the ground: wheeled, tracked, railed, or skied.
History of vehicles
* The oldest boats to be found by archaeological excavation are logboats
from around 7,000-9,000 years ago,[1][2][3][4]
* a 7,000 year-old seagoing boat made from reeds and tar has been found in
Kuwait.[5]
* Boats were used between 4000BCE-3000BCE in Sumer,[6] ancient Egypt[7] and
in the Indian Ocean.[6]
* There is evidence of camel pulled wheeled vehicles about 3000-4000 BCE.[8]
* The earliest evidence of a wagonway, a predecessor of the railway, found
so far was the 6 to 8.5 km long Diolkos wagonway, which transported boats
across the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece since around 600
BC.[9][10][11][12][13] Wheeled vehicles pulled by men and animals ran in
grooves in limestone, which provided the track element, preventing the
wagons from leaving the intended route.[13]
* Railways began reappearing in Europe after the Dark Ages. The earliest
known record of a railway in Europe from this period is a stained-glass
window in the Minster of Freiburg im Breisgau dating from around 1350.[14]
* In 1515, Cardinal Matthäus Lang wrote a description of the Reisszug, a
funicular railway at the Hohensalzburg Castle in Austria. The line
originally used wooden rails and a hemp haulage rope, and was operated by
human or animal power, through a treadwheel.[15][16]
* 1769 Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot is often credited with building the first
self-propelled mechanical vehicle or automobile in about 1769, by adapting
an existing horse-drawn vehicle, this claim is disputed by some[citation
needed], who doubt Cugnot's three-wheeler ever ran or was stable.
* In Russia, in the 1780s, Ivan Kulibin developed a human-pedalled,
three-wheeled carriage with modern features such as a flywheel, brake, gear
box, and bearings; however, it was not developed further.[17]
* 1783 Montgolfier brothers first Balloon vehicle
* Richard Trevithick built and demonstrated his Puffing Devil road
locomotive in 1801, believed by many to be the first demonstration of a
steam-powered road vehicle, although it was unable to maintain sufficient
steam pressure for long periods, and would have been of little practical
use.
* push bikes draisines, or hobby horses were the first human means of
transport to make use of the two-wheeler principle, the draisine (or
Laufmaschine, "running machine"), invented by the German Baron Karl von
Drais, is regarded as the forerunner of the modern bicycle (and motorcycle).
It was introduced by Drais to the public in Mannheim in summer 1817.[18]
* 1885 Otto Lilienthal began experimental gliding, and achieved the first
sustained, controlled, reproducible flights.
* 1903 Wright brothers flew the first controlled, powered aircraft
* 1928 Opel RAK.1 rocket car
* 1961 Vostok vehicle carried first man (Yuri Gagarin) into space
* 1969 Apollo Program first manned vehicle lands on the moon
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