Improved Highways: "Conquering Roads" 1937 Chevrolet Division General Motors Corporation
more at
http://auto-parts.quickfound.net/
"
Highway engineering and development in the pre-Interstate era."
Public domain film from the
Prelinger Archive, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/
3.0/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Highway
A highway is any public road or other public way on land; the term exists in distinction to waterway. In
North American and
Australian English, the term frequently implies a major road such as a controlled-access highway or an arterial, generally under the control of a state or provincial agency instead of a local road authority. In
British English, highway is primarily a legal term, and normal usage implies roads, while legal usage covers any route or path with a public right of access, including footpaths etc. The term has led to several related derived terms, including highway system, highway code, and highway patrol
...
Modern highway systems developed in the
20th century as the automobile gained popularity.
The world's first limited access road was constructed in
Italy in
1922 (see autostrade). Construction of the Bonn--Cologne autobahn began in 1929 and was opened in 1932 by the mayor of
Cologne,
Konrad Adenauer.
In the USA The Federal Aid Highway Act of
1921 (Phipps Act) enacted a fund to create an extensive highway system. In 1922, the first blueprint for a national highway system (the
Pershing Map) was published. The Federal Aid Highway Act of
1956 allocated $25 billion for the construction of the 41,
000 miles (66,000 km) long
Interstate Highway System over a 20-year period.
In
Great Britain the
Special Roads Act 1949 provided the legislative basis for roads for restricted classes of vehicles and non-standard or no speed limits applied (later mostly termed motorways but now with speed limits not exceeding 70mph); in terms of general road law this legislation overturned the usual principle that a road available to vehicular traffic was also available to horse or pedestrian traffic as is usually the only practical change when non-motorways are reclassified as special roads. The first section of motorway in the UK opened in
1958 (part of the
M6 motorway) and then in
1959 the first section of the
M1 motorway...
The United States has the world's largest network of highways, including both the Interstate Highway System and the
U.S. Highway System. At least one of these networks is present in every state and they interconnect most major cities.
China's highway network is the second most extensive in the world, with a total length of about 3.573 million km. China's expressway network is the longest
Expressway system in the world, and it is quickly expanding, stretching some 85,000 km at the end of
2011. In 2008 alone, 6,433 km expressways were added to the network.
- Longest international highway: the
Pan-American Highway, which connects many countries in the
Americas, is nearly 25,000 kilometres (15,
534 mi) long as of
2005. The Pan-American Highway is discontinuous because there is a significant gap in it in southeastern
Panama, where the rainfall is immense and the terrain is entirely unsuitable for highway construction.
- Longest national highway (
point to point):
The Trans-Canada Highway is 7,821 km (4,860 mi) long as of
2006. The
T.C.H. runs east-west across southern
Canada, the populated portion of the country, and it connects many of the major urban centres along its route crossing almost all of the provinces, and reaching almost all of the capital cities...
- Longest national highway (circuit):
Australia's Highway 1 at over 20,000 km (12,000 mi).[citation needed] It runs almost the entire way around the continent's coastline. With the exception of the
Federal Capital of
Canberra, which is far inland, Highway 1 links all of Australia's capital cities...