A new, incisive history of the transcontinental railroads and how they transformed America in the decades after the Civil War.The transcontinental railroads of the late nineteenth century were the first corporate behemoths. Their attempts to generate profits from proliferating debt sparked devastating panics in the U.S. economy. Their dependence on public largess drew them into the corridors of...

It is easy to understand why regions that produce very fine goods such as port wine tend to conceal technological and scientific inputs and praise the uniqueness of the terroir. This paper suggests that, during the last decades of the nineteenth century, viticulture in the Douro region of Portugal was as much a product of soil, local farming traditions, and individual entrepreneurship as it was...

This paper uses the implications of Samuelson's spatial equilibrium model to analyze transportation rates for steam coal delivered to electric utilities in the United States. The analysis indicates that transportation rates declined in every year but two since railroads were substantially deregulated in 1980. While some utilities may have experienced some rate increases, coal-®red electric util...

The period between the middle of the nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth century represents a remarkable period in the history of science and technology. During this epoch, several discoveries and inventions removed many practical limitations of what individuals and societies could achieve. Especially in the field of communications, revolutionary developments took place such as high spee...