history of the wheel

However, humans didn’t always have the wheel. From its invention in around 3500 B.C., the wheel spread quickly throughout Eurasia, although in parts of the world cut off from the Eurasian landmass (such as the Americas and Australia) there was no wheel until the coming of the Europeans.

The combination of wheel and axle has fundamentally changed human society, allowing for transport between towns and cities that would not have been possible otherwise. The great historic (and prehistoric) projects of the Pyramids at Giza and Stonehenge were likely built with the help of the wheel, thus showing how fundamental an invention it was to the ancient world.

Indeed, such is the genius of the wheel’s invention, that it often seems like a simple piece of technology.

Although, to develop a wheel capable of turning around an axle requires a subtle knowledge of physics and the concepts of momentum, friction, and balance. Hence the fact that, while the wheel is – arguably – the most useful invention of all time (perhaps challenged by fire), it was not invented until relatively late in human history.

It is most likely that it was invented in one place and then spread throughout the world, rather than developed by multiple peoples simultaneously; this again shows that it wasn’t a simple invention.

More recent discoveries, however, have challenged this thesis and suggest that the earliest evidence of wheel usage may be European.

The word for wheel or ‘vehicle’ is similar across languages in the Middle East, the Caucasus, and even as far as Western Europe. The word ‘wheel’ in English is directly related to the Proto-Indo-European word for a wheel. This suggests that the wheel was invented by Proto-Indo-European people.

The second piece of evidence is the fact that the earliest archaeological evidence of the usage of a wheel comes from the Tripolyte culture of Western Ukraine.

The geography of the region supports this as the origin of wagon wheels, with forests providing large trees for axles and the wooden wheel, and yet close to the plains where a wheel would be useful for long-distance travel on wheeled carts.

In terms of the first, it was the Greeks who invented the wheelbarrow at some point between the sixth and fourth centuries B.C.; this allowed them to move building equipment, stone, or even produce with relatively little effort. According to the Smithsonian, purchasing a wheelbarrow was expensive, although the labor saved would repay the cost within three or four days.

Wheeled wagons took goods and people from city to city throughout the Empire, thus creating a major trade network that wasn’t possible by water alone.

Indeed, such was the impact of the Roman road that, after the Roman Empire declined in North Africa, wheeled vehicles began to drop out of favor. The invention of the camel saddle at some point between 500-100 B.C. meant that camels were preferred as a means of transport.

The demonstrates that the history of the road and the history of the wheel are fundamentally intertwined.

It was not long before the combination of a powerful engine and the ease of movement of a wheel united to form the rail engine.

These wheels came equipped with a flange to help them stay on the track, although the fundamental wheel-and-axle concept remained unchanged from the earliest days of horse-drawn carts.

One key innovation was that the axle was fixed to the wheel on railroad cars, rather than allowed to turn in the hole. This meant that the wheels move in unison, thus helping to keep the train on the track.

The railway era spread throughout the Western world in the mid-nineteenth century, emanating from the United Kingdom, and gradually spreading throughout the rest of the world.

With its development, the wheel spread too, and the flanged, fixed-axle technology soon became standard. By the latter part of the 19th century, however, inventors were making more progress with a smaller engine with a greater power-to-weight ratio. This engine was driven not by steam but by the internal combustion of oil-based fuels. This invention was crucial in the development of the car.

Although the car was relatively slow to take off (they were not designed for the mass market until the beginning of the twentieth century), once they did, the car has become globally ubiquitous with an estimated one billion cars currently in use throughout the world.

This means that there are roughly four billion wheels in use globally in cars alone (not including trucks or other vehicles). The wheel truly has taken over the world.

Many large corporations have been investing large sums of money in future wheel research and design.

One of the big challenges for the modern wheel (and transport in general) is the growth in global population, which is set to hit 10 billion people by 2050. As a result, more people will be traveling, and yet there will be less space to do so, particularly in urban environments.

Companies are now actively testing technology that allows for lateral movement of wheels without the wheels themselves needing to change direction. It is expected that this will integrate with driverless cars to allow for more efficient route selection, particularly in busy urban environments.

Furthermore, the wheel may actually return to its simpler roots, as the development of a personalized wheel technology allows for individuals to have a vehicle that is little more than a wheel and a platform (like the ‘hoverboards’ that are now commercially available).

Certainly, there would be no modern, globalized world, driven by international air travel, satellites facilitating communication, and the Internet providing instantaneous connectivity.