A Salute to the Wheel

Always cited as the hallmark of man’s innovation, here is the real story behind the wheel – from its origins to its reinvention

  • By Megan Gambino
  • Smithsonian.com, June 18, 2009, Subscribe
 
Stone wheel Evidence indicates the wheel was created to serve as potter's wheels around 3500 B.C. in Mesopotamia—300 years before they were used for chariots.

Jim Vecchi / Corbis

 

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    It’s fair to say that when an advertisement describes a septic tank as “the best invention since the wheel,” we’ve begun to take our round, load-bearing companion for granted.

    In light of Smithsonian’s special July coverage of the frontiers of innovation, we thought this would be an appropriate time to pay tribute to one of the origins of innovation by sharing some intriguing, little-known facts about the wheel.

    No wheels exist in nature.

    Throughout history, most inventions were inspired by the natural world. The idea for the pitchfork and table fork came from forked sticks; the airplane from gliding birds. But the wheel is one hundred percent homo sapien innovation. As Michael LaBarbera—a professor of biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago—wrote in a 1983 issue of The American Naturalist, only bacterial flagella, dung beetles and tumbleweeds come close. And even they are “wheeled organisms” in the loosest use of the term, since they use rolling as a form of locomotion.

    The wheel was a relative latecomer.

    We tend to think that inventing the wheel was item number two on our to-do list after learning to walk upright. But several significant inventions predated the wheel by thousands of years: sewing needles, woven cloth, rope, basket weaving, boats and even the flute.

    The first wheels were not used for transportation.

    Evidence indicates they were created to serve as potter’s wheels around 3500 B.C. in Mesopotamia—300 years before someone figured out to use them for chariots.

    The ancient Greeks invented Western philosophy…and the wheelbarrow.

    Researchers believe that the wheelbarrow first appeared in classical Greece, sometime between the sixth and fourth centuries B.C., then sprung up in China four centuries later and ended up in medieval Europe, perhaps by way of Byzantium or the Islamic world. Although wheelbarrows were expensive to purchase, they could pay for themselves in just 3 or 4 days in terms of labor savings.

    Art historian Andrea Matthies has found comical illustrations, one from the 15th century, showing members of the upper classes being pushed to hell in a wheelbarrow—quite possibly the origin for the expression “to hell in a handbasket.”

    Wheel of Fortune: More than just a game show.

    The Wheel of Fortune, or Rota Fortunae, is much older than Pat Sajak. In fact, the wheel, which the goddess Fortuna spins to determine the fate of those she looks upon, is an ancient concept of either Greek or Roman origin, depending on which academic you talk to. Roman scholar Cicero and the Greek poet Pindar both reference the Wheel of Fortune. In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer uses the Wheel of Fortune to describe the tragic fall of several historical figures in his Monk’s Tale. And William Shakespeare alludes to it in a few of his plays. “Fortune, good night, smile once more; turn thy wheel!” says a disguised Earl of Kent in King Lear.

    Camels 1; Wheel 0

    Camels supplanted the wheel as the standard mode of transportation in the Middle East and northern Africa between the second and the sixth centuries A.D. Richard Bulliet cites several possible reasons in his 1975 book, The Camel and the Wheel, including the decline of roads after the fall of the Roman Empire and the invention of the camel saddle between 500 and 100 B.C. Despite abandoning the wheel for hauling purposes, Middle Eastern societies continued to use wheels for tasks such as irrigation, milling and pottery.

    “Breaking on the wheel” was a form of capital punishment in the Middle Ages.

    This type of execution was medieval even by medieval standards. A person could be stretched across the face of a wheel and bludgeoned to death or have an iron-rimmed wheel pounded across the person’s bones with a hammer. In another variation, Saint Catherine of Alexandria was wrapped around the rim of a spiked wheel and rolled across the ground in the early fourth century. Legend has it that the wheel “divinely” broke—sparing St. Catherine’s life, until the Romans beheaded her. Since then, the breaking wheel has also been called the “Catherine Wheel.” St. Catherine was named the patron saint of wheelwrights.

    The oldest, most common design for a perpetual motion device is the overbalanced wheel.

    For centuries, tinkerers, philosophers, mathematicians and crackpots have tried to design perpetual motion devices that, once set in motion, would continue forever, producing more energy than they consume. One common take on this machine is a wheel or water mill that uses changes in weight to continually rotate. The overbalanced wheel, for example, has weighted arms attached to the rim of the wheel that fold down or extend out. But no matter what the design, they all violate the first and second laws of thermodynamics, which state, respectively, that energy cannot be created or destroyed and that some energy is always lost in converting heat to work. The U.S. patent office refuses to assess claims for perpetual motion devices unless the inventors can produce working models.


    It’s fair to say that when an advertisement describes a septic tank as “the best invention since the wheel,” we’ve begun to take our round, load-bearing companion for granted.

    In light of Smithsonian’s special July coverage of the frontiers of innovation, we thought this would be an appropriate time to pay tribute to one of the origins of innovation by sharing some intriguing, little-known facts about the wheel.

    No wheels exist in nature.

    Throughout history, most inventions were inspired by the natural world. The idea for the pitchfork and table fork came from forked sticks; the airplane from gliding birds. But the wheel is one hundred percent homo sapien innovation. As Michael LaBarbera—a professor of biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago—wrote in a 1983 issue of The American Naturalist, only bacterial flagella, dung beetles and tumbleweeds come close. And even they are “wheeled organisms” in the loosest use of the term, since they use rolling as a form of locomotion.

    The wheel was a relative latecomer.

    We tend to think that inventing the wheel was item number two on our to-do list after learning to walk upright. But several significant inventions predated the wheel by thousands of years: sewing needles, woven cloth, rope, basket weaving, boats and even the flute.

    The first wheels were not used for transportation.

    Evidence indicates they were created to serve as potter’s wheels around 3500 B.C. in Mesopotamia—300 years before someone figured out to use them for chariots.

    The ancient Greeks invented Western philosophy…and the wheelbarrow.

    Researchers believe that the wheelbarrow first appeared in classical Greece, sometime between the sixth and fourth centuries B.C., then sprung up in China four centuries later and ended up in medieval Europe, perhaps by way of Byzantium or the Islamic world. Although wheelbarrows were expensive to purchase, they could pay for themselves in just 3 or 4 days in terms of labor savings.

    Art historian Andrea Matthies has found comical illustrations, one from the 15th century, showing members of the upper classes being pushed to hell in a wheelbarrow—quite possibly the origin for the expression “to hell in a handbasket.”

    Wheel of Fortune: More than just a game show.

    The Wheel of Fortune, or Rota Fortunae, is much older than Pat Sajak. In fact, the wheel, which the goddess Fortuna spins to determine the fate of those she looks upon, is an ancient concept of either Greek or Roman origin, depending on which academic you talk to. Roman scholar Cicero and the Greek poet Pindar both reference the Wheel of Fortune. In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer uses the Wheel of Fortune to describe the tragic fall of several historical figures in his Monk’s Tale. And William Shakespeare alludes to it in a few of his plays. “Fortune, good night, smile once more; turn thy wheel!” says a disguised Earl of Kent in King Lear.

    Camels 1; Wheel 0

    Camels supplanted the wheel as the standard mode of transportation in the Middle East and northern Africa between the second and the sixth centuries A.D. Richard Bulliet cites several possible reasons in his 1975 book, The Camel and the Wheel, including the decline of roads after the fall of the Roman Empire and the invention of the camel saddle between 500 and 100 B.C. Despite abandoning the wheel for hauling purposes, Middle Eastern societies continued to use wheels for tasks such as irrigation, milling and pottery.

    “Breaking on the wheel” was a form of capital punishment in the Middle Ages.

    This type of execution was medieval even by medieval standards. A person could be stretched across the face of a wheel and bludgeoned to death or have an iron-rimmed wheel pounded across the person’s bones with a hammer. In another variation, Saint Catherine of Alexandria was wrapped around the rim of a spiked wheel and rolled across the ground in the early fourth century. Legend has it that the wheel “divinely” broke—sparing St. Catherine’s life, until the Romans beheaded her. Since then, the breaking wheel has also been called the “Catherine Wheel.” St. Catherine was named the patron saint of wheelwrights.

    The oldest, most common design for a perpetual motion device is the overbalanced wheel.

    For centuries, tinkerers, philosophers, mathematicians and crackpots have tried to design perpetual motion devices that, once set in motion, would continue forever, producing more energy than they consume. One common take on this machine is a wheel or water mill that uses changes in weight to continually rotate. The overbalanced wheel, for example, has weighted arms attached to the rim of the wheel that fold down or extend out. But no matter what the design, they all violate the first and second laws of thermodynamics, which state, respectively, that energy cannot be created or destroyed and that some energy is always lost in converting heat to work. The U.S. patent office refuses to assess claims for perpetual motion devices unless the inventors can produce working models.

    Life, liberty and the pursuit of patents.

    According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the first patent involving a wheel was issued to James Macomb of Princeton, New Jersey, on August 26, 1791—just one year after the U.S. Patent Law was passed. Macomb’s invention was a design for a horizontal, hollow water wheel to create hydropower for mills. Although the patent office is aware of this patent being issued, the original record was destroyed along with other patents from the 18th century in an 1836 fire.

    The earliest wheels in North America were used for toys.

    In the 1940s, archaeologists unearthed wheeled toys—ceramic dogs and other animals with wheels as legs—in pre-Colombian layers of sediment in Vera Cruz, Mexico. The indigenous peoples of North America, however, would not use wheels for transportation until the arrival of European settlers.

    Roulette means “small wheel” in French.

    The origin of the gambling game roulette is a bit hazy. Some sources say Blaise Pascal, a 17th-century French mathematician, invented it in his attempts to create a perpetual motion device. But what’s more commonly accepted is that roulette is an 18th century French creation that combined several existing games.

    The term “fifth wheel” comes from a part that was often used in carriages.

    By definition, a fifth wheel is a wheel or a portion of a wheel with two parts rotating on each other that sits on the front axle of a carriage and adds extra support so it doesn’t tip. But it’s superfluous, really—which is why calling someone a “fifth wheel” is a way of calling them unnecessary, basically a tagalong.

    How the bicycle ruined enlightened conversation.

    As reported in the New York Times, an 1896 column in the London Spectator mourned the impact of the bicycle on British society: “The phase of the wheel’s influence that strike …most forcibly is, to put it briefly, the abolition of dinner and the advent of lunch….If people can pedal away ten miles or so in the middle of the day to a lunch for which they need no dress, where the talk is haphazard, varied, light, and only too easy; and then glide back in the cool of the afternoon to dine quietly and get early to bed…conversation of the more serious type will tend to go out.”

    The first Ferris Wheel was built to rival the Eiffel Tower.

    Norman Anderson, author of Ferris Wheels: An Illustrated History, surmises that the first pleasure wheels, or early Ferris Wheels, were probably just wheels with buckets, used to raise water from a stream, that children would playfully grab hold of for a ride. But it was the “revolving wheel, 250 feet in diameter and capable of carrying 2,160 persons per trip,” invented by George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. and unveiled at Chicago’s World Columbian Fair in 1893, that really brought the Ferris Wheel to the carnival scene. The fair celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of the New World, and organizers wanted a centerpiece like the 984-foot Eiffel Tower that was created for the Paris Exposition of 1889. Ferris answered that call. He apparently told the press that he sketched every detail of his Ferris wheel over a dinner at a Chicago chophouse, and no detail needed changing in its execution.

    In movies and on TV, wheels appear to rotate in reverse.

    Movie cameras typically operate at a speed of about 24 frames per second. So basically, if a spoke of a wheel is in a 12 o’clock position in one frame and then in the next frame, the spoke previously in the 9 o’clock position has moved to 12 o’clock, then the wheel appears stationary. But if in that frame another spoke is in the 11:30 position, then it appears to be revolving backwards. This optical illusion, called the wagon wheel effect, also can occur in the presence of a strobe light.

    One man actually succeeded in reinventing the wheel.

    John Keogh, a freelance patent lawyer in Australia, submitted a patent application for a “circular transportation facilitation device” in May 2001, shortly after a new patent system was introduced in Australia. He wanted to prove that the cheap, streamlined system, which allows inventors to draft a patent online without the help of a lawyer, was flawed. His “wheel” was issued a patent.


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    Comments (21)

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    I disagree with the (seemingly?) common assertion that the wheel would not have been useful to the Aztecs or Mayans w/o draft animals or because they had excess manpower. Wheels are used in countless facets of industry in many different applications, such as pulleys, milling, etc. To suggest that they were not used because they weren't needed is kind of a backwards way to look at it- if the Aztecs would have been more advanced then they would have definitely benefited from use of the wheel. As it was, they did not use the wheel because basically as a culture they were not very advanced.

    Posted by lyle on November 25,2011 | 10:52 PM

    Delightful compression of the wheel's simple design juxtaposed with its complicated evolution.Is there any photographic guide to wheels over time; specifically stone wheels? In the ocean state of Rhode Island I found a semi circular (half wheel) made of soft stone (perhaps coral) used as a front door step. A later excavation revealed the other half. When pieced together it forms an elaborate inner circle comprised of five pieces surrounded by an outer circle of eleven pieces. One side of the "wheel" is flat while to other side is ragged and variable. It's about four feet in diameter and a foot to a foot and a half in width. Some form of metal (appears bronze) connected two of the stones in the inner circle. Several of the stones in the outer circle have rectangular cuts facing outward to the rounded edge. Some locals have opined: a millstone, a ballast from the islands, a 1930's purchase in Europe, and a cannon wheel convincingly similar to a photo on fotosearch.com. Any thoughts?

    Posted by Daniel B. Brewster, Jr. on July 20,2010 | 01:18 PM

    interesting an very informative stuff about wheels. it tells you almost everything.

    Posted by Prannay on June 5,2010 | 03:28 AM

    Hughesie: You are partly right. Wheelbarrows are useful with just man power - and part of the Mormon emigration to Utah had nothing but pushcarts - but draft animals, wheels, *and* roads greatly multiply the loads that can be transported.

    AFAIK, wheels never came into common use as transportation unless they were put together with horses or oxen, and were rarely used for cargo transportation (as opposed to war chariots) except by civilizations advanced enough to build roads. When the Romans ceded North Africa to barbarians and the roads fell into disrepair, pack transport on camels soon replaced wheeled transportation. (This may have worked out differently, though, if camels could be readily broken to harness. Since they won't pull a wagon, caravans had to choose between wheels and the beast of burden best adapted to the desert by far. So why bother fixing the roads?)

    The ancestral Native Americans apparently hunted horses and most other potentially domesticable ruminants to extinction. (The North American bison is a close relative of cattle and can be domesticated, but unless you really, really know what you're doing, trying to tame one will get you killed. In the Middle East they had generations of experience with sheep and goats before starting to domesticate the wild ox. There was no such smaller ruminant left in North America except the mountain sheep, and that was unsuitable for domestication in other ways. The llama is domesticable to carry loads in packs, but not useful in harness.)

    So, without draft animals, Mayas or Aztecs invented the wheel, but used it only for toys. The wheelbarrow would have multiplied the productivity of some workers, but (at least for the Aztecs) what was the point when they captured so many slaves that they could cut the hearts out of hundreds of them.

    Posted by markm on December 8,2009 | 10:02 AM

    The stoned carved wheel was made by two cavemen that then named it "fire"... grock

    Posted by James Gedroic on July 15,2009 | 09:00 PM

    There are wheels in nature, sort of. Like rocks that are very round, or pearls. They roll. As do eyes!

    Posted by square peg on July 10,2009 | 12:16 AM

    Actually, you only need a wheel if you have horsepower.

    Australian Aborignes invented the aeorfoil thousands of years before the original wheelwrights crawled out from under their logs.

    They had no need of something as utterly useless to them as the wheel.

    Posted by hughesy on July 10,2009 | 08:32 AM

    Posted by Bill Kimmich on July 5,2009

    you took the words right out of my mouth bill ^5 !

    i was gonna say that too! :) grin

    Posted by Ancient Wind on July 9,2009 | 07:01 PM

    For colleen and her highly inquisitive child: check out some books (or google key words) classified as history of science, early technology, or even the history of ideas. Arabic history is a great source for mechanical engineering -- water wheels, clocks, the astrolabe, etc. -- all the erector-set stuff boys, esp., like, as well as the history of our numbering system. In about four or five years, you can buy her/him a paperback copy of "Sophie's World" by Joesten Gaardner, which recaps in a delightful Harry Potter-like story how philosophy grew from the Greeks to the moderns. I'd also ask your librarian to help you locate some young readers' books on the history of the solar system, history of medicine, famous inventors by name, and the wonderful story of DNA by Crick and Watson. I loved "The Microbe Hunters" as an eight-year-old and vividly remember giving an entire "oral book report" to the family dinner table in which I pronounded the title word as three syllables: my-kro-bee. And, as always, be sure to go to the Librarians Internet Index and check out their categories of good places to prowl: http://www.lii.org Good luck with that inquisitive mind!

    Posted by Nan Erwin on July 9,2009 | 02:55 PM

    So... what are the origins of the terms, "big wheel" and "wheeler-dealer'? By the way, the wheel was invented by Wilburrus of Huweelrite a Roman Judge of the First Circuit Court of Stonehendge. He also established the legal principle, "vos extraho cruor ex a calx " ye canna get blud from a millstone.

    Posted by Miguel Hernandez on July 8,2009 | 08:06 AM

    If I were wanting to search for more information on early creation and how it has influenced our lives today, does anyone have any suggestions on where would be a good place to start? I'm not going to get far googling that last sentence, but I am in need of more information like this. I have a highly inquisitive 8 year old who has "always wanted to know who decided to make the things, that make the things, that make the things we use" and while this article has saved my life for this week, I would love to know where to find more information.

    Posted by Colleen on July 7,2009 | 02:46 PM

    Here's how the wheel was probably invented.

    People used to put logs under Big Things to move them.

    But as the Big Thing rolled over the logs, Somebody had to get the "used" logs and lug them to the front so the Big Thing could roll on them again.

    Somebody said, LET'S HOLD THE LOGS IN PLACE under the Big Thing. They affixed bent-metal "log holders" to each side of the Big Thing and threaded a log through them. But with the "holders" touching the ground, the log wouldn't touch the ground and the contraption wouldn't work at all, so Somebody said, CARVE THE LOG THINNER where the holders go around it (= axle). Did it work? Barely; the log rubbing against the bottom of the Big Thing was a huge brake. So Somebody said, Put an offset-piece between the thin "axle" section and the Big Thing, to keep the rest of the log clear of the Big Thing . And maybe Somebody put animal fat on the axel sections. So that's it: The Taming of the Log or, as I like to call it, The Greg Smith Theory of the Invention of the Wheel.

    Posted by Greg Smith on July 6,2009 | 05:20 PM

    Stephen Jay Gould has a classic essay on why creatures swim, fly, walk, etc., but never roll. The reason is the impossibility of an axle--the cells must be connected at all points to survive, and that rules out an axle. Then he added a note pointing out the one creature he'd overlooked: the zillion e. coli in his belly, which locomote via what might be called a whirling wheel.

    Posted by Tim Appelo on July 6,2009 | 12:36 PM

    I was always told by my biology teachers that bacteria invented the wheel, for in the subcellular structure of their flagella there is a dial-like component that performs a rotary motion. This action may not cause the whole cell to turn as a wheel does, but that spinning disc certainly qualifies as a wheel. And, if the flagella in the cells of higher life forms represent ancient spirochetes (captured) incorporated in an endosymbiotic relationship with nucleated cells, then the respiratory cilia of the tracheae and the "tails" of swimming spermatozoa are all "wheeled". This means that paramecia, moss & ferns, and animal life - to name but a few examples - all have wheels; despite the absence of spinning "white-walled tires" and spokes.

    Posted by Bill Kimmich on July 5,2009 | 12:58 AM

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