If you're going to look as far back as the creation of the railway, I think a more accurate perspective is that it took a few thousand years from the dawn of ci

If you're going to look as far back as the creation of the railway, I think a more accurate perspective is that it took a few thousand years from the dawn of civilization to the railway, a hundred years from rail to cars, a couple decades from cars to popular commercial aviation. Speed of innovation accelerating still applies.