Carrier
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Carrier. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a person, corporation, or vehicle regularly employed in carrying goods, messages, or other articles. Two kinds of carriers are recognized by the law, namely, private carriers and common carriers. Private carriers are persons who, although they do not undertake to transport the goods of all who may choose to employ them, yet agree to carry the goods of some particular person for hire, from one place to another. In such case the carrier incurs no responsibility beyond that of any other bailee for hire, that is to say, the responsibility of ordinary diligence. Common carriers are persons or companies who undertake for hire to carry goods for the general public from one place to another. A common carrier is bound to provide safe and suitable conveyances, with proper care and management, failing in which he is not exempt from responsibility, though a providential interference (snow, ice, fire, etc.) be the immediate occasion of loss. Carriers are responsible for all losses, except by providential calamity, act of an enemy in time of war, and fault of the shipper. Carriers may limit their responsibility by special contract, but they cannot free themselves from it wholly, nor escape the duty of ordinary care. If a sender misrepresent the character or value of the goods sent, the carrier is not liable if the goods be stolen. But the sender need not disclose the contents of his package unless asked. Common carriers are responsible for the acts of all their agents. Carriers must deliver goods in as good order as when received. They may refuse to take goods not prepared properly for shipment. They may demand prepayment of freight. If payable at the end of the route, they may hold the goods until payment is made. Baggage may be retained for unpaid fare. Bills of lading, shipment slips, receipts, etc., usually specify all the conditions on which goods are carried, but the law does not sustain all the announcements thus made. See RAILWAYS.
American Watchmaker and Jeweler (1892)
A piece fastened to work in a lathe and connecting it with the face plate. A dog.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The common-law skeleton Collier's set out in 1921 is still recognisable: carriers remain divided into private and common, and a common carrier is still held to near-strict liability with the old exceptions for act of God, public enemy and fault of the shipper. What has gone is the regulatory world around it. In the United States the Interstate Commerce Commission, which policed carrier rates when Collier's wrote, was stripped of most of its power by the Staggers Rail Act and Motor Carrier Act of 1980 and abolished outright in 1995, its remnants passing to the Surface Transportation Board; interstate cargo claims run under the Carmack Amendment, and international air carriage under the 1999 Montreal Convention rather than any bill of lading term. The term has also travelled: telephone companies are classed as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, which is why the phrase now turns up in fights over internet regulation. The watchmaker's sense of 1892 — the lathe carrier, or dog, clamped to the work to drive it from the faceplate — is unchanged and still sold under both names.
Written for this edition, 2026.