Communications and travel.

9.4.1. Communication systems were first established by commercial concerns and merchants who needed to exchange information about trade routes and goods. The ruling aristocracy used trusted messengers to carry confidential or sensitive information from capital to capital or kingdom to kingdom, but they were typically soldiers or servants. Over time, these arrangements evolved into government-operated systems for any citizen or subject to post messages to any other, financed by charging users a tax or fee for postage (verified by postage stamps). In England, t he Post Office was founded in 1635 and is noted in history for issuing the famous Penny Black, the world’s first adhesive stamp, in 1840.

9.4.2. British fleet has always played an important role in the country’s development. It was during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I that support for naval exploration increased dramatically. In 1580 Sir Francis Drake became the first Englishman to sail around the world. Overseas commercial and trade interests were also established in the form of the English East India Company in 1600. English colonization in the Americas began with the attempted settlement of Roanoke Island off the North American coast in 1585 by Sir Walter Raleigh. This settlement did not survive. Later, British ships began to carry settlers to every part of the world. British fleet consolidated Britain’s economic and military power in later centuries.

9.4.3. Historically, railroads played a very important role in the history of the country. The Victorian era was also known as the Railway Age. The world’s first public railway was the Stockton and Darlington, which opened in 1825. It was built by George Stephenson. One of the latest large-scale construction projects is the Channel Tunnel that links England with France and runs underground beneath the relatively shallow English Channel. It was finished in 1994 and cost more than $16 billion to complete, twice its estimated budget. It has enormous symbolic importance as an unbroken link between Britain and the Continent.

9.4.4. The automobile is a chief means of transportation in the modern world. It is interesting to know that it was English physicist Sir Isaac Newton who, among other things, proposed a steam carriage. In 1794, Robert Street of England filed a patent that summarized how an internal-combustion engine might work. The first modern cars appeared in Germany, and the real revolution in car-making took place in the USA in the early XX century.

Along with other industries, the airlines were nationalized after World War II, but they were privatized in the late 1980s. British Airways is one of the world’s leading airlines and operates the world’s largest network of international scheduled services. London’s main airports, Heathrow a nd Gatwick, are among the world’s busiest centers for international travel. There are another 146 licensed civil airfields in Britain.

LECTURE 10

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