The Industrial Revolution · The first wave
Railways & Railway Mania
Steam on rails shrank the map, and Britain's 1840s railway stock bubble shows how real tech booms still crash.
Step 1 of 4 · Overview15 min read ·
1825
Stockton & Darlington (steam freight)
1830
Liverpool–Manchester: first inter-city passenger line
1845–46
Railway Mania: hundreds of lines authorized
1847
crash; many investors ruined
1869
US transcontinental railroad
Railways cut travel times dramatically and made national markets for goods, coal and news. Investors rushed in; in 1846 alone Parliament authorized hundreds of new railway companies.
Key idea
Bubble pattern: real transformative tech + easy money + retail frenzy → overbuilding → crash → the infrastructure survives and powers the next era. Compare the 1990s fiber build-out and today's AI capex.Next: Practice