okaforpeacee

@ladyprowess · 01 Dec 2021

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When was the wheel invented?

A brief history

The oldest wheel found in archeological excavations was discovered in what was Mesopotamia in the 4th century BC in Lower Mesopotamia(modern-day Iraq), where the Sumerian people inserted rotating axles into solid discs of wood. It was only in 2000 BC that the discs began to be hollowed out to make a lighter wheel. The invention of the wheels has been dated back to over 5,500 years but no one knows exactly who invented them.

It was not used for transportation though, but rather as a potter's wheel. The combination of the wheel and axle made possible early forms of transportation, which became more sophisticated over time with the development of other technologies. The wheel actually arrived after the invention of agriculture, boats, woven cloth, and pottery.

The invention of the wheelbarrow, a one-wheeled cart used to transport goods and raw materials is however credited to the ancient Greeks. The innovation of the wheel led to major advances in many areas such as; transport: the wheel began to be used on carts and battle chariots. Also, it contributed to the mechanization of agriculture (animal traction, crop irrigation) and craft industries (for example, the centrifugal force of the wheel is the basic mechanism in windmills).

The wheel and axle

Early wheels were simple wooden disks with a hole for the axle. Some of the earliest wheels were made from horizontal slices of tree trunks. Because of the uneven structure of wood, a wheel made from a horizontal slice of a tree trunk will tend to be inferior to one made from rounded pieces of longitudinal boards. The wheel alone, without any further innovation, would not have done much for mankind. Rather, it was the combination of the wheel and axle that made early forms of transportation possible, including carts and chariots.

The first wheels and axle carts designed by the early Greeks were very basic in construction. They essentially consisted of just two rods, with a wheel and an axle on the end. They could be used to carry large loads through fields.

Modern wheel

Modern wheels are much different from the simple wooden wheels of the past. Innovations in materials science have made possible all kinds of tires for bicycles, cars, motorcycles, and trucks, including tires designed for rough terrain, ice, and snow. The wheel also has other applications. Watermills, for example, use water wheels—large structures with a series of blades along the rim to generate hydropower. In the past, watermills powered textile mills, sawmills, and gristmills. Today, similar structures called turbines are used to generate wind and hydroelectric power.

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