For millennia on end man and goods have been moving around on foot or on horseback and wagons on land, and on sometimes sophisticated but still primitive wooden crafts on water. Difficult as it is to believe it today, even America was discovered and re-discovered relying only on the sailors’ skills and the whims of the winds. Then in the late 18ty century – barely more than 200 years ago – the steam engine changed drastically all this and all of a sudden it became much easier to reach almost everywhere in the world. No wonder then that such a big jump left its mark in most of the books of that time – and quite naturally here too.