What do steam locomotives, gas-powered automobiles, and generative artificial intelligence all have in common? They’re impactful and disruptive technologies that became widely adopted.
In this post, we discuss how quickly these technologies were adopted, with the help of a graph of macrohistory data from the National Bureau of Economic Research and recent research from St. Louis Fed economist Alex Bick and co-authors Adam Blandin and David Deming.
The FRED graph above shows the number of available steam locomotives (solid line) and automobile registrations (dashed line) in the United States between 1889 and 1916. Each data series is plotted on a separate axis and displayed in a logarithmic scale to make their comparison easier.
Both transportation technologies show fast adoption rates. The number of available steam locomotives doubled between 1889 and 1911, a time span of 22 years. During roughly the same time, 1895 to 1917, the number of car registrations grew by a factor of 1 million.
On a completely different scale, the first nationally representative US survey of GenAI adoption at work and at home shows that at least 1 million subscriptions of the first GenAI model were sold in roughly two years.
Comparing the adoption rates of capital-intensive transportation goods such as steam locomotives and automobiles to a service such as computer-assisted text, image, and audio generation has obvious limitations. But, the speed of adoption of all these technologies speaks to their impact on people’s lives and the economy at large.
For more about this and other research, visit the publications page of the St. Louis Fed’s website, which offers an array of economic analysis and expertise provided by our staff.
How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Steam Locomotives Available for United States.” Click on the “Edit Graph” button, select the “Add Line” tab, and search for “Automobile Registrations, Passenger Cars, Total for United States.” Don’t forget to click “Add data series.” Next, use the “Format” tab to customize Line 2 by selecting “Y-Axis position: Right.” Last, customize the “Display” by selecting both “Log scale left” and “Log scale right” checkboxes.
Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.
