ABSTRACT
Since the dawn of human activity to this day, quick and safe transportation of people and goods has been a constant goal of every organized society. It is generally acknowledged that the fundamental innovations in the development of transportation included the discovery of the wheel (about 3000 B.c.), navigation (about 3000 B.C. in Niles river in Egypt, about 2000 B.C. in the sea by Phoenicians), the railway, the automobile and the airplane. Railways, in their present form, made their appearance at the beginning of the 19th century in British mines. Their main characteristic is the guided movement of the wheel by the track through a metal-to-metal contact.
