Canals are artificial channels for water. There are two types of canals: water conveyance canals, which are used for the conveya
Canals are artificial channels for water. There are two types of canals: water conveyance canals, which are used for the conveyance and delivery of water, and waterways, which are navigable transportation canals used for passage of goods and people, often connected to existing lakes, rivers, or oceans. For canals used for water supply, see canals are part of an existing waterway. This is usually where a river has been canalised: making it navigable by widening and deepening some parts (by dredging, weirs or both), and providing locks with "cuts" around the weirs or other difficult sections. In France, these waterways are called lateral canals and in the UK they are generally called navigations, and the length of the artificial waterway often exceeds the natural. The individual cuts that make up such a canal system may each be called a reach. Smaller transportation canals can carry barges or narrowboats, while ship canals allow seagoing ships to travel to an inland port (: Manchester Ship Canal), or from one sea or ocean to another (: Caledonian Canal, Panama Canal).At their simplest, canals consist of a trench filled with water. Depending on the stratum the canal passes through, it may be necessary to line the cut with some form of watertight material such as clay or concrete. When this is done with clay this is known as puddling. Canals need to be flat, and while small irregularities in the lie of the land can be dealt with through cuttings and embankments for larger deviations, other approaches have been adopted. The most common is the pound lock which consists of a chamber within which the water level can be raised or lowered connecting either two pieces of canal at a different level or the canal with a river or the sea. When there is a hill to be climbed, flights of many locks in short succession may be used. Prior to the development of the pound lock in 984AD in China by Chhaio Wei-Yo and later in Europe in the 15th century, eith
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