Tracks across continents, paths through history
Subtitle: the economic dynamics of standardization in railway gauge
By: Douglas J. Puffert.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 360
ISBN-13: 9780226685090
Subjects: Railroad gauges -- Standards -- History
Description: "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."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Overview; title: Technology and other systematic elements in the selection of gauge; title: Britain and Ireland; title: The development of diversity in North America, 1830 to 1865; title: The resolution of diversity in North America, 1866 and after; title: Continental Europe; title: India and Australia; title: The wider world; title: The selection of track gauge as a path-dependent economic process; title: Variations and extension; title: The dynamics of track gauge standardization.