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Wheel
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clay model of a wheeled cart
See the technological advancement in redesigning the bicycle wheel
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Wheel

mechanical engineering
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Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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•History

Wheel, a circular frame of hard material that may be solid, partly solid, or spoked and that is capable of turning on an axle. A Sumerian (Erech) pictograph, dated about 3500 bc, shows a sledge equipped with wheels. The idea of wheeled transportation may have come from the use of logs for rollers, but the oldest known wheels were wooden disks consisting of three carved planks clamped together by transverse struts. Spoked wheels appeared about...

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