
Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012) - Tomte
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-it-took-so-long-to-inv/
======
Houshalter
One of the most fascinating books I ever picked up from the library was
_Ancient Inventions_ ([https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Inventions-Peter-
James/dp/034...](https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Inventions-Peter-
James/dp/0345401026)), which goes over the details of stuff like this.

The historical figure that strikes me as "most likely to be a time traveller"
is Archimedes, who designed incredibly advanced machines that destroyed the
Roman fleet and protected his home city. Sadly he was accidentally killed
during the war. The Romans wanted to capture him and use him for their own
purposes. It's possible that could have changed history quite a bit.

Heron of Alexandria is another candidate that gets a lot of space in that
book. He invented the first steam engine _way_ before his time. But also many
other insanely elaborate mechanical devices. Including an entirely mechanical
little theater, with mechanical puppets and music.

Unfortunately almost all his inventions were for entertainment value only.
Sometimes I wonder if the greatest inventor of our time might be applying his
work to video game engines.

~~~
kartan
> Unfortunately almost all his inventions were for entertainment value only.

I read somewhere that one of the problems in antiquity to develop useful
machines was the abundance of slave/captive labor. Why do you want to create a
complicated inefficient first version of a machine when you have cheap humans
being to do the task?

~~~
Houshalter
Yes that's probably why the industrial revolution didn't happen. There's a
good comment below that explains other societal reasons why the industrial
revolution didn't happen, like the lack of contract law and investors.

I also read a great theory once (but I can't find it again through google!)
that the industrial revolution really required the invention of the cannon
first. Building an _efficient_ steam engine in roman times would have been
incredibly expensive and dangerous, because of their primitive metal
technology. The cannon created a tech race between nations to develop
more/better/cheaper/lighter cannons. Which resulted in better metal working
tech. Once you can make big pieces of metal that can withstand and direct the
pressure created from explosions, steam engines aren't too far away.

But Heron's invention was still useful, and would have been the fastest moving
thing ever built up to that time. Perhaps it could have been adapted to
military applications, like flinging tons of rocks really fast at high speed?

~~~
taejo
I've heard it said that the bicycle basically needed the car, despite seeming
to be much simpler: accurate mass production of ball bearings, chain drives,
and pneumatic tires were all driven by car manufacturing but needed for really
practical bicycles.

~~~
Someone
But bicycles are useful on their own (possibly more so in a world where cars
do not exist), so the existence of bicycles alone could easily have driven
innovation.

In fact, Dunlop invented the pneumatic tire for his son's tricycle and they
were initially used for bicycles
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_Dunlop#Pneumatic_t...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_Dunlop#Pneumatic_tyres))

~~~
dredmorbius
Bicycles are _hugely_ useful -- they were the first mode of transport that was
affordable to an ordinary person (though relatively about as expensive as a
car today), and _didn 't_ require feeding, shoding, tackle, or stabling. With
a bike, a person could move beyond 3 miles in an hour, or get to and from a
railroad station allowing for much longer commutes, visits, or recreational
travel.

As of the late 19th century, horses consumed about 25% of the grain production
of the US. Much of that was to provide drayage of people and goods to and from
railroad stations or train yards.

~~~
RbrtM
The first mode of transport affordable to an ordinary person was probably an
animal like a donkey or an ox, etc..

~~~
dredmorbius
Not within an urban context, and not much elsewhere. A donkey or ox required
grazing access -- which meant either owning your own land or having access to
a commons, as well as a stable. Bicycles, despite many other issues, don't
poop.

A horse was a major capital investment. And a donkey can't carry all that much
weight -- a light adult, perhaps, but only just.

The US horse population in 1915 was 20 million, contrasting with about 100
million people. Keep in mind that most of those horses were in commercial use
-- drayage, farm traction (a large combine would be drawn by 40 horses), etc.

Numbers for England/UK are harder to come by, but a Google Answers thread
gives 3.3 million for late Victorian Britain, and 14 million in Europe in
1800, the latter against a human population of 203 million.

The typical person, or family, owned zero horses.

[http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=144565](http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=144565)

[http://www.geohive.com/earth/his_history1.aspx](http://www.geohive.com/earth/his_history1.aspx)

Though you raise an interesting question: what was ownership of draught
animals throughout time, and how did that compare with bicycle sales in, say,
the US, England, France, and Germany from 1880 - 1920 or so. Keeping in mind
that mass private automobile ownership wasn't really a thing until the 1950s,
even in the US.

------
probably_wrong
I often like to fantasize how would I fare if I found myself suddenly
transported into medieval times or earlier (spoiler: poorly).

Articles like this make me appreciate even more how little difference there is
between us and humans thousands of years ago. I wouldn't have figured out how
to make a working wheel, and I've _seen_ one. I have no idea where I picked up
the idea that "ancient civilizations were dumb", but the more I read, the more
I appreciate how little difference there was.

BTW, if you haven't, you should definitely check the "Primitive technology"
channel on Youtube.

~~~
KineticLensman
The "what would I try to invent?" question one is fascinating. If I found
myself transported back to Roman times, I'd aim to make a lens. The Romans had
glass so the raw material is there. With a lens you can fairly quickly go a
telescope, which has immediate military application, so would perhaps be
widely adopted. Astronomy might then follow, heading off the whole "Earth is
the centre of Universe" thing that held back modern thinking. You can also
make a microscope, which fairly quickly leads to the discovery of microscopic
organisms, and perhaps the germ theory of disease.

For bonus points I'd give them the decimal number system.

~~~
lkrubner
The problem is with the assumption behind "which fairly quickly leads to the
discovery of microscopic organisms". In your scenario, who learns about
microscopic organisms, and when?

As a point of comparison, who discovered the existence of North America? Was
it Christopher Columbus in 1492? Or was it the Vikings in 900 AD? Or was it
some mix of people who first melded together in Beringia, somewhere around
20,000 BC?

Has a fact been discovered if one person learns of it? Or is it only
discovered if the news spreads to all of society? If the latter, then science
is a social process, not an individual one.

The historian Fernand Braudel points out that an Italian engineer, wanting to
show off his skills, built an automated saw mill in Italy, back during the
1200s. The logs were slotted automatically and run through the mill
automatically. This engineer had created an important part of the Industrial
Revolution, 500 years early!!! Did it matter? No. The project was merely a
demonstration. The abundance of wood was never used. How could it be? There
was no system of transportation for the abundance of wood, there was no
finance to cover operating expenses, nor any finance to support a building
boom that might use the wood, nor any modern labor market from which the mill
owner could hire more workers to do the initial cutting of trees, nor was
there the modern strictness regarding contracts, nor were commoners allowed to
bring civil suits against the nobility (in case of default, supposing a
nobleman contracted to have a manor built), nor was the judiciary independent,
nor... In other words, the Industrial Revolution was a social process,
involving the creation of dozens of important modern institutions, and the
public's acceptance of the legitimacy of those institutions. No single
engineer, however brilliant, could jump start the process.

~~~
summerdown2
That's impressive, but the invention of sawmills didn't need to wait until the
industrial revolution. I've just come back from The Netherlands, which had
massive uses in wind powered technology in the 1500's, including windmill
powered sawmills that led to the Dutch golden age because they could build
boats faster:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelis_Corneliszoon_van_Uitg...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelis_Corneliszoon_van_Uitgeest)

~~~
lkrubner
You are referencing an event more than 300 years later than the event I am
speaking of. But yes, to your point, much of what was necessary to the
Industrial Revolution was pioneered by the Dutch during the 1600s: contracts,
fair and impartial courts, the end of legal immunity for the nobility
(regarding civil contracts), modern finance, modern insurance, advanced
transport, modern storage facilities, etc. This is also covered by the
historian Fernand Braudel, who is worth reading.

------
jlampa
If you think INVENTING the wheel took a long time, wait till you learn how
long it took to put them on suitcases:
[http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/did-you-know-that-we-
went...](http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/did-you-know-that-we-went-to-the-
moon-before-we-put-wheels-on-suitcases.html) (spoiler alert: we got to the
moon first!)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
That's more a mass production thing isn't it - we had trolleys of various
forms you could load your bags on to.

Strong plastics, probably made such mass production cheap enough.

People rich enough to have wheeled luggage in the past would have just used
servants, it's seemingly economics rather than technology that prevented such
"inventions" as attaching wheels to things permanently instead of temporarily.

A modicum of googling suggests Templar Knights had wheeled trunks in the 12th
Century though.

~~~
monk_e_boy
> we had trolleys of various forms you could load your bags on to

and a man or boy you paid to push the trolley. Much more civilised.

------
bane
The wheel is one part of a two part invention:

1) The wheel

2) smooth hard-ish surfaces that are large enough to be worth going anywhere

Without either, the wheel on its own isn't worth much. It turns out roads are
a much older, more useful invention without which the wheel doesn't make much
sense.

~~~
maxerickson
Settlers beat trails across the American west. Granted, much of it is hard and
flat, but it didn't take a lot of improvement to get that way.

There's also still lots of relatively major roads in undeveloped countries
that are not smooth or hardish.
[http://www.flickriver.com/photos/globalizepeace/3832727846/](http://www.flickriver.com/photos/globalizepeace/3832727846/)

------
danbruc
I heard the story differently. Wheels are only really useful if you have good
enough streets to use them on and building streets is a huge upfront
investment. It is also a chicken egg problem - wheels are only useful with
streets and streets are only useful for wheels. Without streets you are better
of carrying your stuff around than trying to push it around on wheels in
natural terrain. That is also why the wheel first appeared in toys, because
you can push them around on a flat table. So the wheel was probably well known
before it saw widespread adoption for transportation which additionally to the
lack of streets had to overcome the engineering problems mentioned in the
article that come up when you scale the wheel from a toy to a wheel burrow.

~~~
dualogy
Streets? Where we came from, we needed no.. streets ;)

I mean, didn't "streets" emerge really from commonly-travelled paths carved by
feet and horse hooves and time, and really most non-paved paths are quite fine
for most wheels? Perhaps they last longer on pavement, but other than that..

~~~
danbruc
I didn't want to imply pavement when I said streets. The question is what
commonly traveled paths look like before the wheel. If they were just desire
paths, then they were not suitable for carts because they are to narrow even
if they were used with horses or other animals instead of just walking. Could
they already have been wide enough for example because of several people
walking next to each other? Certainly, but were they? I personally can not
think any path I have ever used that was wide enough for carts but never
intended or actually used by any sort of vehicle.

~~~
acjohnson55
Packs of large animals carve impressively road-like paths between their points
of interest in the scrub.

------
mythrwy
Wheels were certainly in use well before 3500BC.

[http://mentalfloss.com/article/62357/who-actually-
invented-w...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/62357/who-actually-invented-
wheel)

(A casual Google check will reveal other examples as well)

Also parent article mentions metal tools being needed to bore holes for the
shaft. Other methods could do this also... people worked intricately with wood
long before metal was used (although metal would certainly speed up mass
production.)

As far as roads, you don't really need roads for a wheel to be useful. You
just need a flat semi hard surface. People crossed the US in horse drawn
wagons without roads. Not sure where the "roads" argument comes from other
than, sure, better roads means more wheeled vehicles.

~~~
aptwebapps
The oldest artifact mentioned in the article at "5650 to 5385 years ago" is
right around 3500 BC.

------
thomasthomas
_The invention of the wheel was so challenging that it probably happened only
once, in one place_

i disagree with this premise based on kevin kelly's simultaneous discovery
phenomenon.

 _The fact that pretty well every invention and discovery you mention has
occurred to two different people at possibly the same time. Possibly three.
Possibly four. My favorite example of this is the light bulb, which in my part
of the world a man named Joseph Swan gets the credit for inventing the light
bulb and a terrible fraud called Thomas Edison came along and ripped him off.
Well, if I live in Russia, I give the credit to Lodygin, and I 'm equally
cross with Edison. But actually if you drill down into history, in the 18th
century there are 23 people in that decade alone who deserve independent
credit for coming up with the idea of the incandescent light bulb. It was an
idea ripe to be discovered. It was inevitable that it would be discovered in
that decade. And that's true of almost everything. And then of course famously
evolution itself, the idea of natural selection occurs to Wallace and Darwin
at the same time, and Darwin has to rush into print to prevent himself being
preempted. Even relativity--we tend to think of Einstein as unique in coming
up with this idea that nobody else, that it took the world by surprise and
nobody believed him. Well, that's true, but if you look at what Hendrik
Lorentz was doing at the same time, he was well on the trail. He would have
got there if Einstein had been run over by a tram. The double helix of DNA
(deoxyribonucleic acid), incredibly important discovery--big race going on to
find it. That, the technology had reached the point where we're going to find
the genetic code around that time. So, there's a sort of complete
dispensability of scientists and inventors that really surprises people when
you think about it._

[0]
[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/02/matt_ridley_on_1.ht...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/02/matt_ridley_on_1.html)

------
bhaak
The article surprised me in that it didn't mentioned the potter's wheel even
though the principles are mostly the same.

~~~
ap22213
If I remember correctly, the pottery wheel came later.

------
Razengan
Is there any realistically conceivable alternate-history/universe where cable-
suspended wheel-less trams (like [1][2][3] but closer to ground level) became
the dominant method of transportation instead of huge roads and cars?

It's something I've been musing on to incorporate into some fiction, inspired
by all the recent news and discussions about self-driving cars and the
prospect of shared fleets.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_transport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_transport)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_tramway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_tramway)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondola_lift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondola_lift)

~~~
jbpetersen
Try
[http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/](http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/)

------
vanderZwan
> _However, from that place, it seems to have spread so rapidly across Eurasia
> and the Middle East that experts cannot say for sure where it originated._

Well the very nature of the wheel itself probably helped with that - I wonder
if that holds true for all transportation-related inventions?

~~~
dredmorbius
Lateen sails took a particularly long time to spread. They had been introduced
to the Mediterranean region as early as the 2nd century BC (and had been
developed much earlier in China and Arabia), but were not brought into
widespread use in European sailing ships until the 1400s. This is _hugely_
significant as a lateen-rigged ship can sail far closer to the wind than a
square-rigged ship, giving it much better maneuverability, allowing it to
navigate complex waters (e.g., harbour entrances) under less-than-ideal
conditions, and increased the length of the sailing season -- November through
May was "no-sail" season from Roman times (with numerous interesting impacts
on historical events, messages, etc.).

The rig seems to be among the technologies lost during the middle ages.

The big hitch, as noted in James Burke's _Connections_ , was how ships and
sailing voyages were financed. A ship was a sufficiently sizeable investment,
and financing sufficiently difficult to arrange, that conservative financiers
opposed any radical explorations of such tomfoolery as them thar lateen-rigged
newfangled boats.

As for other transportation innovations ... there mostly _weren 't_ any until
quite modern times.

Once introduced, though, their advantages were immediately obvious, and they
were adopted quickly throughout Europe.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateen)

Yes, you saw further advances in ships and navigation. _Especially_ navigation
-- position-taking and timekeeping were critical, and several innovations
followed catastrophic losses of entire fleets run aground and shipwrecked
_into the 20th century_ \-- see the Honda Point disaster in which _seven_ US
destroyers sailed at full speed into rocks just offshore the Santa Barbara
coast in 1923.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Point_disaster](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Point_disaster)

After the Lateen rig and excepting other ship designs, the major transport
innovations were canals (major construction from the 1500s onward in Europe,
though much earlier in China, and some earlier European/Mediterranean
instances), the railroad (1825), steamship (1810s), safety bicycle (1870s),
automobile (and truck and bus -- 1880s), and airplane (1900s). These all
spread essentially instantly throughout the world wherever industrial capacity
(and fuel) capable of producing such vehicles existed.

~~~
nradov
And yet European naval architects continued using square rigging for most
large vessels until the end of the age of sail even when they were fully aware
of lateen rigging. So clearly there were advantages to square rigging beyond
just conservative finance.

~~~
dredmorbius
The vessels made use of square-rigged sails, but _also_ carried lateen, gaff,
or fore-and-aft rigging, allowing for better handling.

Just to give a sense for the significance of this (and later steam): ships
could spend weeks, or even months, awaiting favourable winds to enter harbour.
Improved sailing capabilities were directly beneficial to all aspects of the
shipping business.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sail-
plan#/media/File%3AShip...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sail-
plan#/media/File%3AShip_Rigging_differences_in_schematic_view.png)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sail-
plan#](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sail-plan#)

------
hyperion2010
It could also be related to the fact that in order for wheels to become
widespread you need to have terrain that they can roll on. The only obstacle
to the 'need something to roll on' hypothesis is wheelbarrows which in theory
should have appeared long before.

------
Hermel
Also, the wheel is not very helpful without compact, step-free pathes.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Water wheel, spinning wheel, pottery wheel, grinding wheel (eg for wheat
flour), ... seems useful.

~~~
dredmorbius
The domain under discussion is transportation, not use of the wheel in
industrial applications.

Spinning, water, and grinding wheels all postdate the wheel-and-axel in
transportation. It _is_ thought that the transport wheel may have evolved from
the potter's wheel.

------
a3n
Because middle managers in meetings were accusing innovators of reinventing
the cube.

