The early wheel: Solid, wooden and round versus spoked, wooden and round?

12-11-07 | Dean Baker

[Dean Baker]

Just a simple question to kick-around unless someone knows for sure?

I'm watching the Nativity Scene the other day (Good movie, by the way) and I notice that the villagers around Mary, Joseph and family have pull carts with solid, wooden wheels.

I guess I've always assumed this type of wheel came first as far as history goes...

Then I started thinking about other movies like Gladiator, The 10 Commandments, various other "BC" movies and notice that they've got wooden, spoked wheels...Even though all of these movies took place much, much earlier in history than the Nativity Scene.

The only answer I can come up with myself is that maybe the more wealthy had wooden wheels with spokes and the less wealthy had solid wooden wheels?

Or is it all a big plot hole and once the spoked wooden wheel came around, the much less useful, comfortable and more easily damaged, (But probably much less expensive) solid wooden wheel went the way of the Doh Doh??

[Fresh Wind]

The invention of the square wheel made shopping carts possible.

[HeadOn]

My 2 cents: Have you ever seen a demonstration of how to build a spoked wheel? Much more difficult than a solid wheel. If I went out into my shop right now, I could lay two layers of planks at 90 degree angles, fasten them together, and lay out a circle (wheel) to be cut out very quickly. Then, all there is left is to cut the outer circle, and a smaller one for the axle. I’ll bet, even way back then, you could do that in a short time.

As for a spoked wheel, you have to lay out the hub, and the outer wheel “just so”, in order to distribute the load properly, and then you have to deal with joining the pieces of the outer wheel together. In the case of chariot or wagon wheels, as we think of them, you have to fit a metal band around them. This was done by forging a flat ribbon of iron into a ring, “welding” it together, and placing it around the wheel, hot, to allow it to shrink the whole assembly tight.

Google up “Wheelwright” to get some good information.

You could probably cut corners, and make it a little easier to build a spoke wheel, but I’d lay big money the solid ones came first, based solely on the simplicity to make them.

[muawiyah]

Steel Belted Radials came first. Cheaper products then moved in.

[SampleMan]

I’m guessing the first wheels were simply logs. Then longs with the inner portion shaved to be a smaller axle.

[jrd]

have you ever seen a spoke shave?...maybe you mean the hub!

[magslinger]

I'm not sure of this, but don't wooden spoked wheels require iron tires?

If true, that would make spoked wheels beyond the reach of anyone but the military or the wealthy. Metal of any type was very expensive at the time.

[Larry Lucido]

I find this hole discussion tiring.

[Old Professer]

I don't know but the blueprint example of the spoked wheel complete with ub was exposed when the first lemon or orange was cut across the longitude; perhaps the knife came first.

[magslinger]

"Modern" wooden wheels are held together by the iron tire which was heated to make it expand and allowed to cool and shrink around the wooden parts, holding them together.

There may be an all wood way of doing this, but I don't know what it is.

[Old Professer]

Interesting link on pouring babbet:
http://www.metalwebnews.com/howto/babbet/babbet.html

[Borderline]

Have to watch out for the historical perspective of those movies. The writers take a lot of license to make their ‘art’. Like in Gladiator the type of armor worn by the Roman soldiers wasn’t invented for a couple centuries. Many little breaks from reality in a movie like that.

Good question on the wheel though. I would bet solid wheels are technologically much easier to tool for than a spoked wheel. Spoked wheels probably came much later.

[theDentist]

According to wikipedia the first spoked wheels were invented about 2000 BC.

The first traffic cop was then invented in 1999 B.C., issuing 883 citations in the first month, bringing in 3532 gold pieces.

[Dacus943]

"I would assume that solid came first. Spokes would be lighter but I suspect that there would be a lot more work involved in making them."

Hmmmm! I'm thinking that logs were used first to roll heavy things around. Then different forms of the wheel evolved from that use.

[HeadOn]

Yep. I’m pretty sure rollers were first... It’s usually a pretty safe bet to think the simpler method came first, and anything else is a refinement.

[Ben Hecks]

Solid wheels were standard equipment. If you got the optional GT package, you got spoked wheels and a high speed doubletree.

[HeadOn]

Hard to describe, but think of three wooden circles stacked like checkers (layers). Now, think of three rings of wood instead, stacked the same way.

If you made those rings out of wooden pieces, say six arcs of 60 degrees, you could stagger the gaps and peg them together. In other words, spin the middle ring (layer) 30 degrees, so that the middle ring’s gaps no longer line up with the top and bottom ring’s gaps. Sort of like stacking bricks. Now you have a wooden wheel that would require a hub and spokes, but does not need a metal ring.

[The Pack Knight]

My guess would be that early spoked wheels would have been reserved for "high performance" applications, particularly on chariots.

Chariots were very expensive, and, in their heyday, ownership of one was probably marked one as a member of the military elite, like a knight during the middle ages. Kind of like a tank and a Ferrari all in one, weapon and status symbol.

They were expensive because they had to be lightweight for speed, but also durable enough for both cross-country travel and combat. The spoked wheel was probably a key part of that, and might have been the very innovation that allowed the step peoples who first developed the chariot to raid and conquer so much of the civilized world.

Something similar was happening with metals around the same time. Effective iron smelting techniques had yet to be invented, so bronze was the only durable metal they had to work with. Bronze was certainly superior to stone for both tools and weapons. However, as tin, never terribly common in the first place, began to run out in the West, bronze became too expensive to be used for tools, and thus it was typically reserved for weapons.

[Calvin Locke]

I'm not sure when the term came into use, but "windfall" may have played a part in it.

That is, if the wind takes down a tree above a certain diameter (4"?) on your property, it's yours. The realm/empire owns it otherwise.

Ergo, you are quite limited as to what size a single diameter, or even width, of wood available to you.

That's not to say you can't come up with a "lamination" scheme.

So, spokes, and forming lengths to a circle, might be the best alternative out of necessity.

[KC Burke]

And since brake systems were complex, it was decided that they didn’t need them for many centuries as they already had horns.

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

While the inventor long ago ran out of steam, we still benefit from his hub-ris.


When one of these early vehicles got a flat,
no doubt there was an awful Bam Bam sound.







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