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The Coaches

The wheel seems so obvious to us that we imagine its invention must have quickly followed the use of tree trunks as rollers under heavy stones. But in fact, it’s a very tricky engineering problem that took until 3500BC before it was invented! The difficulty is working out how to sit a solid platform onto something that rolls.

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The breakthrough idea was the axle. It seems so obvious to us but it wasn’t. It needs high level manufacturing skills to get the ends of an axle perfectly round and smooth and to get matching holes in the exact centre of perfectly round discs. Anything less than perfection and the wheel simply wouldn’t function.

The axle and the hole have to be a snug fit. Too loose and the wheel will be wobbly and unstable; too tight and it won’t turn. 

The axle must also be thick enough to strong, but the thicker it is, the more friction it generates. A thin axle is better but is weak! This conundrum was solved by making the first vehicles very narrow. Short axles can be relatively thin and strong.

So it’s not so much the wheel that was invented but the wheel-and-axle system. It couldn’t be invented bit by bit. It had to be one complete solution and it wasn’t until about 4000BC that copper chisels and gouges became common and it was probably that technology that led to the invention of the wheel. 

Once invented, it quickly spread throughout the human population.

Find out more here:

https://www.livescience.com/18808-invention-wheel.html 


Next: Wheeled Vehicles

Section 4:

The Coaches

Introduction

The Wheel

Wheeled Vehicles

The First Coaches

Stage Waggons

Flying Waggons

The First Coach Service

Flying Coaches

Stage Coaches

Glass Coaches

Mail Coaches

Coach Names


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Part 1: Living Memories

Anecdotes written by people who actually travelled on the coaches

Part 2: The Age of Coaching

The coachmen, the inns, the coach proprietors - they’re all here. Come in and meet them

Part 3: The Roads

Britain’s roads were pretty impassable for most of our history.  Coach travel was very difficult until they improved

Part 4: The Coaches

Wheeled transport evolved over many years. Find out how coaches developed

Background

Sources and information about how I came to create this website

Home Page

Home Page of the Coaching Website