Courtesy of the Ford Motor Company

The early 20th century saw remarkable advancements in transportation—by air, by sea, and by ground. Transcontinental and transoceanic passages made communication over long distances much easier and quicker than ever before. New transportation lines also led to the development of remote areas throughout the world.

A retired German military officer named Ferdinand Zeppelin invented a steerable airship, known as a dirigible, whose first successful flight took place on July 2, 1900, in Germany. Used for surveillance and bombing raids during World War I, dirigibles such as the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg became popular in passenger service after the war. Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first engine-powered flight by a piloted craft in 1903. The many developments in aviation prompted by World War I were followed by the postwar development of passenger service by plane.

On the seas, transport was revolutionized by the construction of the Panama Canal, which began in 1904. The need for a canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans had long been recognized, but attempts were unsuccessful until the Panama Canal was completed in 1914. The canal was an invaluable shortcut for oceangoing vessels, as ships no longer had to sail around the tip of South America to pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Engineering triumphs permanently altered ground transportation in the first decades of the century as well. Production of the Model T Ford, which began in 1908, encouraged the building of roadways in the United States, as Americans began to view the automobile as a necessity instead of a luxury. A major development in ground transportation of another kind was the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad in 1916. The railroad drew waves of settlers to Siberia, a region that was sparsely populated and largely unexplored before the 20th century.