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Advancing on the high-tech frontier as the world's most cutting-edge wireless tool, this is the catalytic reaction of wireless, Web, and TV within one dynamic print medium. The "2002 Edition" represents all things fanatically interactive for the record-breaking obsessed.

A standard track gauge—the distance between the two rails—enables connecting railway lines to exchange traffic. But despite the benefits of standardization, early North American railways used six different gauges extensively, and even today breaks of gauge at national borders and within such countries as India and Australia are expensive burdens on commerce. In Tracks across Continents, Paths through History, Douglas J. Puffert offers a global history of railway track gauge, examining early choices and the dynamic process of diversity and standardization that resulted. Drawing on the economic theory of path dependence, and grounded in economic, technical, and institutional realities, this innovative volume traces how early historical events, and even idiosyncratic personalities, have affected choices of gauge ever since, despite changing technology and understandings of what gauge is optimal. Puffert also uses this history to develop new insights in the theory of path dependence. Tracks across Continents, Paths through History will be essential reading for anyone interested in how history and economics inform each other.

This work presents a view of the history of American railroads in the nineteenth century from a somewhat different perspective. The maturation of the railroad is traced through an exposition of the railroad technology that was developed and applied during the period. Throughout the nineteenth century, a symbiotic relationship existed between railroading and technology, each dependent upon the state and progress of the other to a large degree. A great deal of new technology was created for the railroad, and the railroad, in turn, applied new technology as it became available. Volume four is about bridges and tunnels, and signals. An exposition of the various types of bridges, their foundations, and the materials of which they were made is included. Tunnels and marine railroad operations are treated also. The development of signal systems is an area that has been overlooked or neglected in the general literature but is fully covered here. The text of this volume is accompanied by 145 illustrations and accurate drawings of the equipment and appliances, many of which have not been published before outside of old technical journals. Anthony J. Bianculli is a mechanical engineer with extensive and varied experience in a Fortune 500 company.