The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round

The concept of wheels is introduced to us at an early age. I still have fond memories of singing the bus nursery rhyme. Yet, to delve into history is to discover that the wheel was not a caveman development.

Potter’s wheels are thought to have been around in Mesopotamia 3500 B.C. It was only three hundred years later that the wheels on the chariot started to go round and round. The true potential of the wheel was realised as the Greeks invented the wheelbarrow that carried the load; Western Europe was revolutionised by the water wheel (no pun intended), which powered milling and provided running water; the Arab windmills inspired the European Crusaders to build their own.

The next development that man wanted to achieve, and there are still dreams of it today, is perpetual motion – making the wheels on the bus go round and round and round and round… only having to give it a little push at the start.

With the breath of God, windmills were seen to turn continuously with no visible input. Although we can know describe wind patterns, the mystery of perpetual motion and continuous power production is still a baffling one. Archimedean pumps, weird screw configurations and wheels with various weights hanging from them were all valid attempts at solving the problem.

Salisbury Cathedral Clock

Married to this, was the use of wheels and cogs to measure time for substantial periods of…, um, time. Clocks could be developed that only needed winding a couple of times a day and stayed accurate. I make this segue to mechanical clocks because it just so happens that Salisbury, which is home to me, is also home to the oldest working clock in the world. The clock resides in Salisbury Cathedral and dates from about 1386. It’s an impressive sight when you consider its age. It sits like a bare skeleton of a machine and looking into its innards you can see the simple set of cogs and wheels that the weighted ropes are wrapped around. Two large wheels dominate the sides of the machine as they are required to wind the whole thing back up again.

Lastly, an interesting point of note is that, although we now take the wheel for granted and it is used in a multitude of modern ways, it is not always the solution. As I write this in the Emirates, it should be noted that before roads had been built throughout the country, camels still trumped wheeled transport for travel over the sand dunes. So the wheels on the bus in the desert sand get stuck and stuck, stuck and stuck.