How We Travel

A long time ago, people did not have engines. To travel, they used animals! The most common way to move was the horse-drawn carriage. This was a wooden box with wheels pulled by one or more horses. Because horses are living things, they get tired. They need to eat, drink, and sleep. This meant that traveling even a short distance could take a very long time. If a town was $10$ miles away, it might take a horse $2$ hours to get there!

Later, people invented engines. Engines don't get tired like horses do! The first engines used steam from boiling water to move big wheels on trains. Later, people put engines into smaller vehicles called cars. Because an engine can keep going without stopping for a nap, travel became much faster. Today, a car can go $10$ times faster than a horse! We can visit friends in minutes instead of hours.

Now, we have amazing ways to move. We have high-speed trains that glide on tracks and airplanes that fly through the clouds. We even have electric cars that use batteries! These inventions make the world feel smaller because we can get anywhere very quickly. In the past, crossing the ocean took months on a boat. Now, a plane can do it in about $8$ hours!