History
Prior to the building of the canal, navigation between the towns of Bridgwater and Taunton was possible by using the River Parrett and the River Tone. The Tone had been improved by its Conservators, who had obtained Acts of Parliament in 1699 and 1707, which had allowed them to straighten and dredge the river and parts of the Parrett, and to build locks and half-locks to manage the water levels. The initial work was completed by 1717, although further improvements including more locks continued to be made until the early 19th century.
Read more about this topic: Bridgwater And Taunton Canal
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)