192nd Anniversary of the Steam-Powered Train Provides an Opportunity To Reflect

The first steam-powered passenger railway began service in England on this date in 1825, and thus it’s a good time for us to think about the history of energy as it applies to human culture.  From the time homo Sapiens came on the scene about 200,000 years ago until the domestication of the horse in the Eurasian Steppes approximately 3500 BCE, the only energy source available to us was the conversion of chemical energy in our own bodies derived from eating and digesting food.  If it didn’t happen with our own hands, it didn’t happen at all.

Horses (and then oxen, etc.) represented the only augmentation to that scenario until about 200 years ago, when machines of various types came on the scene, tapping the chemical energy found in hydrocarbons, initially wood, and converting it to mechanical energy.  This, of course, led us inexorably forward to where we are today, where we Americans consume on average 4500 times more energy than we’re capable of producing with our bodies alone.

Needless to say, all this has implications on our environment, as most of that enormous increase in energy consumption is coming from fossil fuel consumption, a phenomenon that is unsustainable, to put it mildly.