The History of Land Speed Records

If you want an incredible story of progress that keeps on getting more incredible, then the land speed record is a very visible symbol of humanity's capacity for ingenuity.

Up until the steam locomotives of the early 19th century, it was thought that travelling at heady speeds like the break-neck 25 mph that the likes of Stephenson's Rocket was capable of would most probably kill the occupants. Humanity had never travelled faster than the speeds that a horse could gallop.

The history of land speed records in motor vehicles starts in 1898 at a blistering 39.24 mph in an electrically powered wheel-driven vehicle. By the early 1960's, wheel driven cars had topped out at about 400 mph and were overtaken by jet and rocket powered successors. Since then we have nearly doubled the land speed record, adding over 350 mph.

Source: Figures from Wikipedia

The current record is a giddying 763.04 mph, set in 1997. But that's not the end of things, not by a long shot.

A British team is assembling and testing Bloodhound SSC which is aiming to top 1,000 mph. That would be over 25 times the speed at which Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat travelled in 1898, a feat achieved in just 117 years.

Source: Wikipedia