IF articles

Summary - In the history of man there have been numerous and significant changes in the methods and technologies used to move people and things. Both of them followed the distributive needs and economies of their time but have, very often, also generated or at least contributed to the social and economic evolution of human communities. The analysis proposed in this article is based on the hypothesis that transport system innovations occur with different speeds and impacts at different historical moments. We propose a reading of the history of transport innovations according to the categories of revolution and evolution. This article proposes six transport revolutions that occurred in the history of humanity, followed by evolutionary phases, even very long and often still operating. In a future work, these results will be applied to the multiple and coeval strands of technological innovation in progress and to the emergence of a possible seventh revolution.