Vehicle

A vehicle () is a piece of equipment designed to transport people or cargo. Vehicles include wagons, bicycles, motor vehicles (motorcycles, cars, trucks, buses, mobility scooters for disabled people), railed vehicles (trains, trams), watercraft (ships, boats, underwater vehicles), amphibious vehicles (screw-propelled vehicles, hovercraft), aircraft (airplanes, helicopters, aerostats) and spacecraft. Land vehicles are classified broadly by what is used to apply steering and drive forces against the ground: wheeled, tracked, railed or skied. ISO 3833-1977 is the standard, also internationally used in legislation, for road vehicles types, terms and definitions. The oldest boats found by archaeological excavation are logboats, with the oldest logboat found, the Pesse canoe found in a bog in the Netherlands, being carbon dated to 8040 - 7510 BC, making it 9,500–10,000 years old, a 7,000 year-old seagoing boat made from reeds and tar has been found in Kuwait. Boats were used between 4000 -3000 BC in Sumer, ancient Egypt and in the Indian Ocean. There is evidence of camel pulled wheeled vehicles about 4000–3000 BC. The earliest evidence of a wagonway, a predecessor of the railway, found so far was the long Diolkos wagonway, which transported boats across the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece since around 600 BC. Wheeled vehicles pulled by men and animals ran in grooves in limestone, which provided the track element, preventing the wagons from leaving the intended route. In 200 CE, Ma Jun built a south-pointing chariot, a vehicle with an early form of guidance system. The stagecoach, a four wheeled vehicle drawn by horses, originated in 13th century England. Railways began reappearing in Europe after the Dark Ages. The earliest known record of a railway in Europe from this period is a stained-glass window in the Minster of Freiburg im Breisgau dating from around 1350. In 1515, Cardinal Matthäus Lang wrote a description of the Reisszug, a funicular railway at the Hohensalzburg Fortress in Austria.