THE “MOST SIGNIFICANT” PRODUCT EVER IS THE

WHEEL

FEBRUARY 2013 001

THE MODERN WHEELWhy are we still depending on an object that has been devel-

oped centuries ago? There must be a better solution ...

right?

FEBRUARY 2013 003

1 An advert from 1919 promoting wooden spoked wheels.

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3 The Hammerhead prototype - essential-ly a flying car without wheels.

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2 An alloy wheel is milled from a block of Aluminium.

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rutrum sit amet feugiat ut, commodo eget velit. Integer fringilla enim ac diam accumsan nec pretium urna fringil-la. Pellentesque pharetra est id enim tempus aliquam. In-teger dolor nisl, cursus ac volutpat at, ullamcorper id erat.

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FEBRUARY 2013 003004

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R esearchers agreed that 3500 BC

is the year when the wheel w

as invented,

which is more of a ballpark than an exact

year. The place is Mesopotamia, th

e area now

occupied by war-ravaged Ira

q. The first w

heel for

transportation purposes is approximated to 3200 BC,

its purpose being to move the Mesopotamian chariots.

It t

ook another 1,500 years before our

ancestors thought of the next step in wheel

evolu-

tion, the spoke. The need

for

faster transportation

and

the idea of using less

ma-

terial stemmed this

technological

breakthrough. The

Egyptians are credit-

ed with the first im

plementation of a

spoked wheel on their model year

2000 BC chariots. They narrowed it

by carving both sides to shape, but it

was the Greeks that first in

troduced the

cross-bar, or H

-type, w

heel.

The fir

st iron rims around the wheel w

ere

seen on Celtic chariots in 1000 BC. The

spoked wheel remained pretty much the

same until 1802.

THE HISTORY OF THE WHEEL It’s fair to start talking about automobile wheels starting with Karl Benz’s 1885 Benz Patent Motorwagen. The three-wheel vehicle used bi-cycle-like wire wheels, which were fitted with hard rubber. Speaking of rubber, the first people who thought about using it for automobile pur-poses were André and Edouard Michelin.

Cars fitted with alloy wheels sport im-proved steering and handling and prolong the life of the brakes. As the traditional wheel design is close to exhausting any possible development, companies are looking at more and more exotic prototypes to replace it.

-“History of the Wheel.” - Au-toevolution. N.p., 28 Aug. 2009. Web. 04 Feb. 2013.

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<- TYP

ES OF W

HEELS I

N USE T

ODAY