I don't know enough about the early history of the airline industry but there was very definitely a long series of huge bubbles in the railroad industry.

I would be very interested in reading about huge bubbles in railroad, airline, or any other industry. Do you happen to have references (genuinely asking; the original article didn't include any references)?

Edits--

Found one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893

Another good one:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Utility_Holding_Company... (from cake_robot here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45056621)

For reference, apple and spotify links to the Derek Thompson podcast in reply below (thank you!):

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/plain-english-with-der...

https://open.spotify.com/show/3fQkNGzE1mBF1VrxVTY0oo

There was just a long Derek Thompson podcast with a Transcontinental Railroad scholar about this! (That's why I knew about it.)

The whole subtext of that podcast was how eerily similar the Transcontinental Railroad was to AI (as an investment/malinvestment/prediction of future trends).

[dead]