the most significant object ever
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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.
L orem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer nec porttitor tellus. Nam leo enim, vehicula nec malesuada at, hendrerit non diam. Suspendisse ornare diam convallis sapien vulputate interd-um sit amet non nisl. Nullam dapibus accumsan arcu, sit amet tristique justo dictum et. Phasellus felis ante, tristique at malesuada quis, pul-vinar nec lorem. Donec velit nulla, consequat ut mollis ut, pharetra et nunc. Suspendisse tempus eleifend lectus, sed feugiat tellus accumsan sed. Aenean ultrices, nisi at ullamcorper varius, leo lorem ullamcorp-er ante, id malesuada diam massa imperdiet urna. Donec felis mauris,
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