Following up on how the shipping container reduced loading costs by 97%, which reminded me of this datum on how steam power dramatically lowered transportation costs:
“In pre-steam days it had cost $5 to carry 100 pounds up to Louisville [from New Orleans]. It had dropped to $2 by 1830, and soon fell to 25 cents.”[1]
Nice: A 95% reduction in less than a century since James Watt’s steam engine was developed in the 1760s.
Similar cost reductions were achieved by canals. For example, the Eire Canal in upstate New York was completed in 1825 and was both “faster than carts pulled by draft animals and cut transport costs by about 95%.”[2]
All three are good examples of disruptive innovation, in contrast to incremental innovation.[3]
Sources:
[1] Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern (HarperCollins, 1991), p. 196.
[2] “Eire Canal.”
[3] “Innovation Models,” The Economist, September 22, 2013,