Infrastructure before 1700 consisted mainly of roads and canals. Canals were used for transportation or for irrigation. Sea navigation was aided by ports and lighthouses. A few advanced cities had aqueducts that serviced public fountains and baths, while fewer had sewers.
The earliest railways were used in mines or to bypass waterfalls, and were pulled by horses or by people. In 1811 John Blenkinsop designed the first successful and practical railway locomotive,[1] and a line was built connecting the Middleton Colliery to Leeds.
The electrical telegraph was first successfully demonstrated on 25 July 1837 between Euston and Camden Town in London.[2] It entered commercial use on the Great Western Railway over the 13 miles (21 km) from Paddington station to West Drayton on 9 April 1839. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell achieved the first successful telephone transmission of clear speech. Soon, a bell was added for signaling, and then a switch-hook, and telephones took advantage of the exchange principle already employed in telegraph networks.
In 1863, the London Underground was created. In 1890, it first started using electric traction and deep-level tunnels. At the Paris Exposition of 1878, electric arc lighting had been installed along the Avenue de l'Opera and the Place de l'Opera. In 1924, Italy was the first country to build a freeway-like road, the Autostrada dei Laghi ("Lakes Motorway"; now parts of the Autostrada A8 and the Autostrada A9), which linked Milan to Lake Maggiore and Lake Como.
In 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized and the concept of a world-wide network of fully interconnected TCP/IP networks called the Internet was introduced.