American Canal Age

Erie Canal
Current Route of the Erie Canal
Specifications
Length	524 miles (843 km)
Locks	36
Maximum height above sea level	571 ft (174 m)
Status	open
Navigation authority	New York State Canal Corporation
History
Original owner	New York State
Principal engineer	Benjamin Wright
Other engineer(s)	Canvass White, Amos Eaton
Construction began	July 4, 1817 (at Rome, New York)
Date of first use	May 17, 1821
Date completed	October 26, 1825
Date restored	September 3, 1999
Geography
Start point	Hudson river near Albany, New York (42°47′00″N 73°40′36″W / 42.7834°N 73.6767°W / 42.7834; -73.6767)
End point	Niagara river near Buffalo, New York (43°01′25″N 78°53′24″W / 43.0237°N 78.8901°W / 43.0237; -78.8901)
Branch(es)	Oswego Canal, Cayuga–Seneca Canal
Branch of	New York State Canal System
Connects to	Champlain Canal, Welland Canal

Lehigh Canal
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. Historic district
The Lehigh Canal as seen from Guard Lock 8 & Lockhouse, Island Park Road, Glendon, Northampton County, PA
Lower division of the Lehigh Canal, from Jim Thorpe, PA to Easton, PA
Location	Lehigh River Upper: Nesquehoning, PA to White Haven, PA Lower: Mauch Chunk (Jim Thorpe) to Delaware River at Easton, PA
Coordinates	40°46′09″N 75°36′13″W / 40.76917°N 75.60361°W / 40.76917; -75.60361Coordinates: 40°46′09″N 75°36′13″W / 40.76917°N 75.60361°W / 40.76917; -75.60361
Built	1818-1821; 24-27 upper: 1838-1843, Upper ruined & abandoned: 1862
Architect	Canvass White, Josiah White
Architectural style	Fitted stone, iron and wood
NRHP Reference #	78002437, 78002439, 79002179, 79002307, 80003553
Added to NRHP	Earliest October 2, 1978

The Canal Age is a term of art used by historians of Science, Technology, and Industry. The Canal eras in various parts of the world have varied in the world timeline, in the main, by civilizations (Egypt, Ancient Babylon), dynastic Empires of India, China, and Southeast Asia, and of European mercantilism. Canals are culturally dependent, and culture creating, part of industry, and industry creating and until the coming into an era when steam locomotives generated refined speeds and sufficient power, the canal was by far the fastest way to travel long distances quickly, for commercial canals generally had boatmen shifts that kept the barges moving behind mule teams 24 hours a day. Like many North American canals of the 1820s-1840s, the canal operating companies partnered with or founded short feeder railroads as were necessary appendages to connect to their sources or markets. Two good examples of this were funded by private enterprise:

Together, they and the Schuylkill Canal-Reading Railroad would supply and transport the majority of Anthracite needed by northern industries in the early North American Industrial Revolution. Unlike Europe, America did not have canals for several hundred years before industrialization. In North America, everything grew up together all at the same times.

Early railroads in North America made many canals economically feasible, and canal's needs added to the demands by industries that pushed the early railroads into pressurized research and development and rapid steady improvements.

Technology Archaeologists and Industrial Historians date the American Canal Age from 1790 to 1855 based on momentum and new construction activity, since many of the older canals, however limited later by locks that restricted boat sizes below the most economic capacities and well-behind later-developing technological capabilities, nonetheless continued on in service well into the twentieth century. In truth, the first legislation supporting canals in North America took place in the Province of Pennsylvania in 1762 with an effort to improve navigation on the Schuylkill River through Philadelphia, the largest city in North America and the surveying of a canal along the Schuylkill tributary Tulpehocken Creek which would eventually be built in 1828 as the Union Canal part of the omnibus Pennsylvania legislative package, the Main Line of Public Works, providing the only water route connecting the Susquehanna with the Delaware above the Potomac & Chesapeake Bay.