HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE WHEEL

Next to controlled fire, the wheel was clearly early man’s most significant invention.
It advanced transportation, manufacturing, and warfare significantly and to this
day is present in multiple forms from rotary tools, electric generators, trains,
automobiles and jet engines to cooling fans in electronic computers and drills used
in dentistry. We want here to speculate on how the wheel and all its later
refinements were probably invented. It is likely that there were multiple sources for
this invention driven by local needs. Certainly pottery wheels and war chariots were
in use in ancient Mesopotamia by 3000BC and pictures of wagons found on pottery
in eastern Europe, dated via carbon dating , also indicate the early use of wheels in
wagons at about the same time. It is our contention that the concept of the wheel
predate these times by thousands of years. Here are our thoughts on the matter.

Early man clearly would have been aware of the circular shape of the sun and the
moon and the periodicity involved in the movement of celestial objects. Certainly
Cro-Magnon man some twenty thousand years ago would also have noticed that
certain spherically shaped rocks found along beaches have the interesting
characteristic that they roll down inclines. Soon someone would have made a toy
using such rocks by inserting an axle into the center of several of such stones. Before
long someone else would have come along and recognized that such rolling toys
would work even better by replacing the drilled spherical pebbles with round stone
or wooden discs in the shape suggested by the full moon and sun as they appeared in
the sky. At the dawn of the agricultural age where grain had to be transported
considerable distances and large jars were needed for grain storage, it was
probably noticed by several clever individuals that wheel toys could be up scaled
into the form of a simple steerable four wheeled wagons pulled by horses or oxen.
Somewhat later (about 3000BC in southern Russia and in modern day Iraq) it was
realized that a two-wheeled wagon drawn by a horse would make the war chariot a
formidable instrument of war. To increase the maneuverability of such chariots one
would look for ways to make the wheels ever lighter yet be able to maintain their
structural integrity. This led to the concept of wooden spokes for disc wheels and
thus the true wheel was born. Metal rims to minimize rim wear where also
introduced about that time. Pyramid paintings show that spoked wheels on war
chariots were in common use by the time of Ramses II in 1270BC. However, the
Egyptians were obviously not aware of the use of wheels (or rollers) as a machine a
thousand years earlier when the pyramids at Giza were being built.

It is interesting to note that civilizations in the Western Hemisphere never made use
of the wheel. This includes the Aztec, Inca, Maya, and the northern American
plains Indians . The reason must be that they never had available domesticated
draft animals and horses or the availability of level ground for extensive road
systems. Toys involving small wheels were familiar to these people but the need to
upscale did not exist. Horses were unknown to early South and Central American
Indians although the Incas used Llamas for transporting goods along steep trails not
suited for wagons anyway. Horses were not introduced to the plains Indians of
North America until after the coming of the Spanish in early 1500 AD. Before that
time the only domesticated animal available to them during their yearly migrations
were dogs. Buffalo, unlike oxen, apparently could not be domesticated.

Let us briefly look at the rolling properties of the wheel. As one is well aware from
introductory high school physics class, there are six simple machines. In order of
their probable discovery they are(1) the lever, (2) the inclined plane, (3) the wedge
(4) the wheel and axle, (5) the screw, and (6) the pulley(block and tackle). It is the
wheel and axle which is connected with functioning wheels used to move a weight
W. Here is a look at the relevant forces-

The wheel of radius R rolls about a moving contact point A and moves to the left
with speed V=ωR, where ω is its angular velocity. An axle of smaller radius r
through the center of the wheel carries a total weight W. In its motion the wheel will
elastically distort the level ground ( and also distort itself slightly) so that the ground
contact point is shifted from directly below the axle to the contact point A shown at
distance ‘a’ to the left. This length ‘a’ is known as the coefficient of rolling resistance
and one typically has a<<R. Also there is a torque opposing the wheel movement
due to a frictional forces at the axle. This frictional torque can be estimated from the
Coulomb friction formula to be approximately 2rµW, where µ is the coefficient of
friction between the wheel and axle. If we now sum the moments about the contact
point, we find-

FR cos(θ ) = Wa + 2 rµW

Since the angle θ is very small we can set cos(θ)≈1 to obtain the pull force formula-
 W
F =( )( a + 2rµ )
R

It is clear from this approximation that the pull force will be small if the axle radius
is small compared to the wheel radius, the axle is well lubricated , and the surface
(and possibly the wheel) have very little elastic distortion. Such is the case for wheels
on a railroad such as found, for example, between the iron wheels of a train and its
iron track. For a simple case let us ask how much force will it take to move a W=
1000 lb weight along a horizontal surface at constant speed when a=2mm, R=1ft,
r=1/2 inch and µ=0.1. We find-

F=(1000/1){[0.2/(2.54 x12)]+[2(0.1)/24]}=1000{6.66x10-3+8.33x10-3}=15 lb

So one gains a very large mechanical advantage over competitive methods such as
sliding the same weight which would take about a 100 lb pull force for the same µ
and W. The invention of modern day roller bearings decreases the opposing torque
at the axle even further. Bearings did not come into common use until the 1840s
with the coming of the railroads , although Leonardo daVinci discussed wooden
bearings much earlier in his 1500 helicopter design. It is interesting to note that the
early migrations of Americans to Oregon in the 1830s where mostly by Conestoga
wagon which used no bearings but had the wheel hub rotate about a conical shaped
skein of metal mounted on a stationary wooden axle. The wheel was prevented from
falling off by a large metal cotter pin. Without steel bearings the automobile and
aviation industry would not have been possible.

Although it takes relatively little effort to move a heavy weight with aid of wheels at
constant speed, it must not be forgotten that a mass M moving at V speed can have a
very large linear momentum MV. This means it will take a long time to accelerate a
heavy object(such as a train or tanker ship) to a cruising speed and also a long time
to come to a stop. A loaded train moving at even moderate speeds can take
thousands of feet to come to a halt even when maximum braking is applied. Using
Newton’s Second Law we have that the deceleration of a train will be –F/M=-Fg/W,
where g is the acceleration of gravity. With all of the train’s wheels locked so that F
has a maximum value of µW , the deceleration would be-

d 2x µWg
2
=− = − µg
dt W

This equals just -3.2 ft/sec2 if µ=0.1. So for the train to come to a complete
stop(assuming it does not derail or collide with an oncoming train) will require a
distance of s=V2/2µg equal to 1563 ft if it is initially moving at 68mph. The heat
generated in this deceleration process will be intense causing partial melting of the
train’s wheels and track.
A final aspect of the wheel evolution was the introduction of spokes. These were first
used about 2000 BC by the Assyrians for their war chariots. Before that time wheels
where constructed from several wooden planks shaped into form of a circle and held
together by cross-bars. Such wheels were rather clumsy devices but still served a
sufficiently useful purpose for the transportation of grain and other substances.
Spokes were undoubtedly invented by someone noticing that much lighter wheels
could be built by cutting out part of a wheels cross-section leaving only a few radial
support sections connecting the rim and a central hub housing the axle. This soon
led to the use of wooden spokes which made wheels much lighter yet still be able to
maintain their structural integrity and be much easier to maneuver when employed
in a war chariot. Recall that good hard wood (Hickory) can take compressive forces
corresponding to about 9,000 psi and a bending stress of about twice this amount.
Thus a few spokes of circular cross section of a square inch or so are perfectly
sufficient to keep a wheel from collapsing in compression even with loads of several
tons.

Tension spokes for wheels were not invented until 1802 by G.F. Bauer. These
wheels use multiple wire spokes under tension. Tension spokes together with
pneumatic tires and chain drives made practical bicycles possible. Bicycles were the
high tech industry of the 1890s and included in its practitioners the Wright brothers
who owned a bicycle shop in Dayton Ohio while working on man’s first engine
driven airplane. All large Ferris Wheels starting with the original wheel at the 1893
Columbian Exhibition in Chicago use tension spokes and look very much like scaled
up bicycle wheels. The latest record holder for size is the Singapore Flyer completed
in 2008 and having a diameter of 541ft. The longest extant Ferris wheel is the 212ft
diameter Riesenrad of 1897 at the Prater park in Vienna. I have ridden on it several
times during my European travels. It offers great panoramic views of the city. Some
of you may be familiar with it through the movie “The Third Man”.