Here is a diagram from the Sunday Times, Eureka; History of Invention from 1970.
The diagram is from the entry about steam railways and shows the shrinking effect, on geography, of mechanical railway acceleration in the middle of the 19C. Of course, the diagram is a generalisation…the country didn’t get smaller in such a regular way.
The geographical distortions associated with the acceleration of the railway machine-ensemble are much more complex, especially after the great cull of smaller lines, and the increasing speed of the main lines from 1960 onward.
Still, this is a diagram from 1970s; for a newspaper.