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History of Technology 2: Wheels and Axels 367 Views
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Description:
Without wheels and axles, we'd be picking up our cars and running to work like Fred Flintstone. Which...come to think of it, would be a great arm day workout...
Transcript
- 00:03
Those early log rolling techniques were pretty impressive for [caveman log rolling]
- 00:06
the time but let's get real nobody's going to ship goods across the continent
- 00:10
on a pile of rolling logs talk about splinters.. well in order to make a
- 00:15
transportation revolution happen people had to invent actual wheels and axles to us [man displaying the invention of the wheel to cavemen]
- 00:22
that sounds like no big deal because well wheels are a dime a dozen
Full Transcript
- 00:24
seriously try to imagine a world without wheel it's tough and you know half 5[car driving by a quiet road]
- 00:30
traffic is even worse well when people invented boats they were copying
- 00:34
floating logs on the river there aren't any natural wheels out in the wild to a [Wheel floating out on a river]
- 00:39
copycat the wheel was a huge leap of imagination that may have started with
- 00:44
the lowly pottery wheel which even then was known to attract the ghosts of [Demi Moore using a pottery wheel]
- 00:48
former loved ones who still wanted to you know make out especially if that
- 00:53
loved one was some ancestor of Patrick Swayze even though after we got our
- 00:57
pottery game going it was another huge leap to think of turning a pottery wheel [Man using a pottery wheel to move a cow]
- 01:01
on its side, hitching it to a cow and going out for a spin.. Moo. The earliest
- 01:07
evidence of wheels and wagons comes from a few ancient scattered drawings a word [Evidence of wheels drawn on ancient clay tablet]
- 01:12
on an ancient clay tablet and some ancient ruts in an ancient road the key
- 01:17
word here is ancient people agree that wagons came into practical use in
- 01:21
modern-day Iraq around 3500 BCE the arrangement of wheel axle wagon is so [wagon wheels in Iraq 3,500 BCE]
- 01:27
complicated that most people don't think it was stumbled upon accidentally all
- 01:32
over the world more likely that one group of people came up with a wagon and [Group of people riding in a wagon pulled by a camel in the desert]
- 01:36
then everyone else was like man i gotta get me one of those things and
- 01:40
it was a great time to be a used wagon salesman all right well the exception is
- 01:44
the core isolated new world. People in the America's has also invented the wheel but
- 01:50
it was only used for children's toys and little clay figures and a bummer they [Child playing with a clay figure on a dusty road]
- 01:54
could have been contenders so what did ancient wagon wheels look like not like
- 01:59
a little red wagon at the city park that's for sure [A red wagon at the city park]
- 02:02
in fact that little red wagon would have looked like a Ferrari compared to the
- 02:06
earliest versions.. well the very first wagons had long poles for axles and they [An old-styled axles wagon]
- 02:12
poke through holes in the center of the wheel i know there were a few problems but
- 02:16
the wheels had to fit loosely over the axles because the axle didn't turn and the [Boy falls out of a wagon and lands on the concrete]
- 02:21
wheel just you know kind of rattled around it and there was a lot of
- 02:25
friction so the raw wood deteriorated pretty quickly [Wheel falling off the wagon]
- 02:29
plus it was super annoying to keep making axles over and over again and
- 02:33
turning around corners was really hard too - okay well there were more than a few
- 02:37
problems well over the next few thousand years wagons and wheels both evolved
- 02:42
wheels with spokes appeared around 1900 BCE in Egypt someone must've asked why [Wheels with spokes on a map of Egypt]
- 02:48
why does the wheel have to be huge solid and heavy and someone else must have said
- 02:53
uhh, it doesn't ..but much later iron bands were stretched around the modern wheel to [iron bands stretched around the wheels]
- 02:59
make them stronger and more durable axles became jointed so we could actually turn
- 03:03
the thing and at long last we could you know Tokyo Drift that's the real [Horse pulling a wagon and drifting around a corner]
- 03:10
blessing here
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