This canal lock is at York along the River Ouse where the River Foss enters the larger stream. We saw a lot of canal "longboats" at York and Stratford. In Scotland the cruise that took us onto Loch Ness travelled along the Caledonian Canal engineered by Thomas Telford, starting at Tamnahurrich lock. In London there are canal boat rides from Camden town.

Canals were an important form of transport all through the 1800s, and they are still used for a surprising amount of commercial traffic; they certainly are an efficient way to move very heavy cargo. perhaps in the future we can again make more use of this energy efficient transport.

Railroads and steam engines depended on metal working skills and chemistry for the production of the coal and iron that made them work, and they also depended on new engineering skills that created the road beds, tracks and factories to build, supply and carry them. Almost none of these skills existed in 1750, but by 1850 they were well established in Britain, and rapidly developing in the rest of Europe and the United States.