November 18, 2022
by Building The World
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Transport has advanced civilization in many ways, but did you know that trains gave us standard time zones? When railroads began to connect the world, there were no established time zones. Each city had a town clock, sometimes a sun … Continue reading
July 22, 2022
by Building The World
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Airline woes have lately taken a toll on passengers, crew, aircraft maintenance, and profits. But during this week’s heat wave, an airport runway melted. When London, England, UK suffered a temperature rise to 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), Luton airport had … Continue reading
December 7, 2021
by Building The World
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Air transport, first achieved in December 1903, reached an important milestone in December 2021. United Airlines flew a commercial jet with a full complement of guest passengers entirely on renewable, non-fossil, fuel derived from sugar and corn. The flight Chicago … Continue reading
June 17, 2021
by Building The World
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The history of civilization may be measured by connection. First it was the Silk Road that connected cities; then it was the age of ships that created ports from Singapore to Suez. Canals threaded connection through waterways, making one route … Continue reading
August 22, 2020
by Building The World
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World time zones came to us via the Canadian Pacific Railway, and clocks are as old as the hourglass or the water clock famously given to Caliph al-Mansur, founder of Baghdad, by a visiting Byzantine emperor. But now there is … Continue reading
April 13, 2020
by Building The World
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India is rebuilding trains as rolling hospital wards, refitting coaches into care facilities with 16 beds. Indian Railways is modifying 20,000 carriage coaches, for a total of 320,000 new isolation pods, announcing the program on the same week COVID-19 cases … Continue reading
December 17, 2018
by Building The World
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In Katowice, Poland, at COP24, almost 200 nations of the world, represented by 28,000 participants, set common standards to measure climate change. This is one of very few such achievements in history. When transcontinental rail systems were first built, Canadian … Continue reading
October 13, 2018
by Building The World
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The Nobel Prize in Economics, awarded to William D. Nordhaus and Paul M. Romer, followed a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warning of urgent and dire effects if the world does not limit global warming to below … Continue reading
March 11, 2018
by Building The World
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Did you spring forward, overnight? Daylight Saving Time(DST) refers to advancing clocks in the springtime. The first national practice of adjusting timepieces to lengthen summer evenings began on 30 April 1916, in Europe. It was not long after the very … Continue reading
January 1, 2018
by Building The World
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Seen from space, the Americas look a bit like a green 8 in a sea of blue. One glance reveals our planet is made of regions, not nations. Rivers do not stop at lines arbitrarily drawn on a map: transboundary … Continue reading