Industrialization and Urbanization

When in 1815 the volcano Tambora in far-away Southeast Asia erupted, it did not only cause enormous destruction on the island of Sumbawa in the Dutch East Indies but impacted weather patterns across the Northern Hemisphere over the next decade. The extremely cold weather and lack of sunshine caused global food shortages and famines. As a result of the lack of sunlight in 1816, which has been dubbed as the year without a summer, harvests fell far short of expectations. Humans and animals suffered equally. Horses did not find sufficient hay and starved to death or were slaughtered for human consumption. The end of 1816 saw a continent-wide shortage of horses, which were still the major means of transporting goods across Europe, bringing the transportation of foodstuff nearly to a standstill. The development of alternative means of transportation, which had already begun in England before this environmental catastrophe, sped up. New technologies for travel were needed and this search resulted in the invention of the bicycle by Karl Drais. This transportation revolution quickly moved from the production of bicycles to the introduction of railway lines and railways.